Marks & Spencer: H1 results beat estimates

(CercleFinance.com) - British retailer Marks & Spencer has reported better-than-expected H1 results on Wednesday, a performance that it considers "robust" given the ongoing Covid pandemic.


The group, which tends towards upmarket products, posted a 15.6% drop in sales to 4.1 billion pounds for the 26-week period to 26 September, in the first half of its fiscal year.

Sales of clothing and home furnishings fell by 40.8% in the UK during the six months, while financial analysts expected a greater fall of 42.6%.

In the food sector, sales in the UK fell by only 0.3%, just better than the consensus of a 0.4% decline.

The company made a post-tax loss of 17.4 million pounds, although there again this was better than expected, with analysts expecting a loss of 58 million pounds.

On the London Stock Exchange, the M&S share jumped almost 6% after these results. However, note that the share has lost more than 8% over the past month, significantly underperforming the FTSE 100 index.


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