Marks and Spencer recovery stalls as non-food sales fall

Marks & Spencer’s recent recovery stalled in the second quarter after reporting a fall in non-food sales.

But general merchandise (GM) sales – which include clothing – were broadly level against the same period a year ago in what M&S described as a “challenging quarter”.

Food like-for-like sales were up 0.3% against a Shore Capital estimate of 1.0% and a positive like-for-like from the first quarter of 2015 of 1.7%.

Marks and Spencer Group plc will report its half year results on 4 November 2015.

Bolland took over at M&S in 2010 and during his tenure he has seen rival Next overtake his business.

M&S has spent huge amounts of money trying to revamp its ailing clothes sales.

Items such as a much-talked about 1970s-style suede skirt worn by TV presenter and model Alexa Chung were supposed to have helped improve the image of Marks’ clothing range.

The move will cheer shareholders gathered at the group’s annual meeting in at Wembley Stadium in London today.

Food sales up 3.2%.

Fears are now being expressed that a seeming turnaround in its clothing sales in the previous three months may turn out to be little more than a blip although the firm did increase its general merchandise gross margins of between 1.5 and 2 per cent.

All of this comes after Sainsbury’s reported its first annual loss in a decade in May, falling into the red by £72 million after writing down £628 million on the value of its property estate.

Global business showed modest growth on a constant currency basis, notwithstanding the ongoing challenging macro-economic environment, with key priority markets such as India and Hong Kong performing well.

Bolland has stressed his non-food strategy is to primarily focus on gross margins, the difference between the price it buys goods and the price it sells them, through improvements in its sourcing operations, rather than driving sales growth.