Marks & Spencer reiterates outlook after 'solid' Christmas

(Sharecast News) - Marks and Spencer Group left its full-year guidance unchanged on Thursday, after what it called "solid" Christmas trading. The high street bellwether saw like-for-like food sales rise 5.6% in the 13 weeks to 27 December, to £2.72bn

That helped offset a 2.9% decline in fashion, home and beauty, to £1.27bn. The division is continuing to recover from a major cyberattack earlier in 2025, although the retailer also acknowledged that high street footfall had been lower this year.

Overall group sales - which include Ocado Retail - rose 24.2% to £4.99bn, or by 3.3% once the online grocer was stripped out, at £4.15bn. Ocado Retail sales increased 13.7%, with M&S own label sales up 16.3% on Ocado.com. M&S branded sales account for around 30% of total Ocado Retail sales.

M&S has a 50% equity stake in Ocado Retail, after it formed a joint venture with Ocado Group in 2019.

Stuart Machin, chief executive, said: "A record number of customers shopped M&S this Christmas.

"Food sales were strong, and the business continues to outperform, hitting a new market share milestone in the period.

"Fashion, home and beauty is getting back on track as we work through the tail end of recovery.

"We enter this new calendar year full of ambition and laser focused on our plan to reshape M&S for further growth."

Looking to the full year, to March end, M&S said its guidance remained unchanged.

"As we enter 2026, we plan to accelerate the reshaping strategy against the context of an uncertain consumer environment," it noted.

Clive Black, head of consumer research at Shore Capital, said: "Most fundamentally, and we assert encouragingly, given all the firm went through in 2025, we are not changing our full-year financial estimates - so pre-tax profits of £655m, which feeds into, at this early stage, no adjustment to our 2027 full-year forecasts too.

"The 2026 full-year does not characterise the M&S investment thesis, but if the firm meets and beats our 2027 expectations, then its equity is grossly under-rated and the stock undervalued, noting enormous discounts to those of Next, J Sainsbury and Tesco."

M&S is a Shore Capital house stock.