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2003-5-22 10:24:00
British high street giant Marks & Spencer on Tuesday posted an 11.5 per cent hike in full year profit from the previous year despite difficult trading conditions and flat fourth quarter fashion sales.
The country’s largest apparel retailer said in a statement its annual profit rose to £721.3 million from £646.7m with turnover up six per cent to £8.07 billion from £7.61bn in the year-ago period.
Domestic clothing sales rose 10 per cent due to a strong performance in the first three quarters. It increased market share by 0.7 per cent over the year, with womenswear, menswear and lingerie all showing gains, with a particularly strong performance across casualwear ranges.
M&S said he improvement in clothing sales performance is attributable to volume increases of approximately seven per cent, lower average price cuts on reduced merchandise, and changes to the product mix, towards higher value items.
It added: "The performance of childrenswear has been disappointing. Action has been taken to improve design and to consolidate ranges to offer more choice.
"The initial strong response to the DB07, David Beckham, range has been maintained, and in addition schoolwear is now showing signs of improvement.
"Markdowns as a percentage of sales were lower than last year, leading to a further 0.3 percentage point improvement in the clothing achieved margin. In absolute terms markdowns were higher than planned and largely arose within childrenswear and womenswear."
It added: "The company gained a further 1.3 per cent in the clothing primary margin as a result of further improvements in its worldwide sourcing and has made progress on delivering the next phase of supply chain efficiencies."
Chief executive Roger Holmes said UK market conditions had become tougher in recent months. "The market has slowed down from a very buoyant level of a year ago," he said.
"We now see (the UK clothing market) being subdued to a lower level, still growth, but perhaps less than three per cent."
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