Based on trading in the 19 weeks to 14 August 2021, M&S is today updating the market on the resulting improvement in its sales performance and profit delivery.
At the start of the year, continued restrictions across large parts of the M&S store portfolio meant that the trading outlook was highly uncertain. Since then, M&S has seen an encouraging performance providing confirmation that the transformation programme is on track.
Food revenue in the period has outperformed, increasing 10.8% on last year and 9.6% on 2019/20.
Core categories and retail park locations have traded strongly. Hospitality and franchise are progressively improving, although remain below 2019/20 levels due to reduced footfall and the slow return to more normal work patterns.
Despite the variable location performance, overall trading has been ahead of the market. To date, cost reduction programmes are helping to mitigate cost inflation and disruption in the supply chain, and the cost of increased colleague absence in the period.