Marks & Spencer sales continue to fall

Marks & Spencer has experienced another dip in sales at the year’s halfway mark, ending on 26 September 2015, after it’s fashion range performs poorly.

During the first half of this current financial year, M&S saw sales of general merchandise, which includes the company’s clothing division, decrease by 1.2%. This figure is alarming for the High Street retailer as clothing accounts for approximately 40% of its sales.

M&S also reported a 23% dip in pre-tax profit of £216m, compared to £279.4m last year. In addition, international sales saw a decline of 0.9% to £506.6m with operating profit also falling to £24.7, (2014: £51.3m).

However, M&S did see a strong performance in the company’s food business, which outperformed the UK market, with total sales up 3.3% and like for like sales up 0.2%. As a result, M&S opened 32 new Simply Food stores.

Marc Bolland, Chief Executive, said: “We delivered good underlying profit growth in the first half and made strong progress against our key priorities. Our Food business again outperformed the market by over 3% points as our focus on quality and innovation continues to set us apart.

“In General Merchandise we decided to improve profitability by focusing on gross margin, delivering another significant increase, which in part resulted in slightly lower sales. As a consequence of good performance and strong cash generation we have decided to increase our dividend.”