Marks And Spencer Share Discussion Threads

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 22:34

debsdowner: agreed, M&S has a miles better business model then NEXT.
Chalk and cheese. Next on way down, M&S on way up

[xxxxxy] 10/8/2021 22:32

Is It Too Late To Consider Buying Marks and Spencer Group plc (LON:MKS)?BySimply Wall StPublishedAugust 10, 2021?Marks and Spencer Group plc (LON:MKS), might not be a large cap stock, but it received a lot of attention from a substantial price movement on the LSE over the last few months, increasing to UK£1.71 at one point, and dropping to the lows of UK£1.32. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Marks and Spencer Group's current trading price of UK£1.40 reflective of the actual value of the mid-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Let's take a look at Marks and Spencer Group's outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.See our latest analysis for Marks and Spencer GroupWhat is Marks and Spencer Group worth?Good news, investors! Marks and Spencer Group is still a bargain right now. According to my valuation, the intrinsic value for the stock is £2.02, but it is currently trading at UK£1.40 on the share market, meaning that there is still an opportunity to buy now. What's more interesting is that, Marks and Spencer Group's share price is quite volatile, which gives us more chances to buy since the share price could sink lower (or rise higher) in the future. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for how much the stock moves relative to the rest of the market.What does the future of Marks and Spencer Group look like??LSE:MKS Earnings and Revenue Growth August 10th 2021Future outlook is an important aspect when you're looking at buying a stock, especially if you are an investor looking for growth in your portfolio. Although value investors would argue that it's the intrinsic value relative to the price that matter the most, a more compelling investment thesis would be high growth potential at a cheap price. Marks and Spencer Group's revenue growth are expected to be in the teens in the upcoming years, indicating a solid future ahead. Unless expenses grow at the same level, or higher, this top-line growth should lead to robust cash flows, feeding into a higher share value.What this means for you:Are you a shareholder? Since MKS is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to increase your holdings in the stock. With a positive outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as capital structure to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation.Are you a potential investor? If you've been keeping an eye on MKS for a while, now might be the time to make a leap. Its prosperous future outlook isn't fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means it's not too late to buy MKS. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to make a well-informed buy.If you'd like to know more about Marks and Spencer Group as a business, it's important to be aware of any risks it's facing. At Simply Wall St, we found 1 warning sign for Marks and Spencer Group and we think they deserve your attention.If you are no longer interested in Marks and Spencer Group, you can use our free platform to see our list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.PromotedIf you're looking to trade Marks and Spencer Group, open an account with the lowest-cost* platform trusted by professionals, Interactive Brokers. Their clients from over 200 countries and territories trade stocks, options, futures, forex, bonds and funds worldwide from a single integrated account.This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature..... The negative..Interest payments not well covered by earnings

[smurfy2001] 10/8/2021 20:29

debs, Sorry wrong stock!

[debsdowner] 10/8/2021 20:02

smurfy, the yield isnt 5% the company passed the divi.

Careful, you cannot compare MARKS with NEXT, the latter makes excellent proftis and cash-flow.

[mitchy] 10/8/2021 18:47

Going by the chart - if it finishes above 141.75 this week it's likely to go higher . Or below 137.23 it will go lower.
This week looks like being crucial. I said a few posts ago that I thought it would go sideways between 140 and 150 for a while. Well I got the range wrong as it went down to 130 but I still believe it's range bound going sideways until we get the next update.

It's hard to say how much the problems with the Irish border after Brexit is going to impact the results but there's no doubt mainland stores have seen some impressive footfall.

One point further. The prices for household and clothing at MKS have clearly dropped in recent years in an effort to stimulate trade. However the perception of 'middle class' prices at MKS still prevails. A bit like Skoda's being poor cars, which they aren't but reputation,once earnt takes a while to change.

[smurfy2001] 10/8/2021 16:22

Yield currently 5.0% !

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 15:50

It is 24c more or less all over IK today.
Great shopping weather

[careful] 10/8/2021 15:31

Just topped up.
a recovery situation.

MKS is valued at £2,6bn.

Its one time rival Next valued at £10.5bn.and has left MKS far behind in every way.
Today everyone at MKS is focussed on turning it around, the culture of the past is dead.

Such a low valuation, well worth a punt.
Lots of potential and in this World of online there is still room for the shopping experience in a store.

A long term hold.

[debsdowner] 10/8/2021 11:56

netcurtains, I wish you well actually I wouldnt want you to lose money but MARKS is not a ten bagger in anyones money. The heady days of MARKS making a billion profits are well into the past.

You could double your money in a few years time but also lose some short term, the share price too uncertain at the moment.

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 11:25

I ten bagged Acadia next and French connection. But so what?
The past is the past. This is now.
M&s is the one

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 10:19

debsdowner: If you are so negative what on earth are you doing owning the share?
I'm in it to win it.
I know a lot about retail (I was a shopkeeper for many years).
It is doing well.

Next stop, I think will be around about 145 (in my view).

[debsdowner] 10/8/2021 10:09

netcurtains,

You need to open youself up you are blinkered with your curtains in front of the window.

If the share price was going to explode it wouldnt have fallen after the results. The maket scpetical about the transformation.

If the public tighten up their finances later in the year once furlough ends MARKS could see a sales slip.

There are no proper forecasts out there for the next few years which I have seen yet, have you?

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 09:36

Naw you're so far wrong its incredible.
I've just been in a load of M&S's from Guildford to Edinburgh.
Rest assured this stock is going to explode north.
Its heaving everywhere.
This is about the best bargain in the entire retail industry world wide.

[debsdowner] 10/8/2021 09:29

netcurtains, mid market or whatever, they still encourage shoppers to update their wardrobe which makes them a technically fast fashion business.

diku is right its sky high prices for mid market.

The bulls can puff and blow and let off steam as much as they can but MARKS are struggling to sell mid market gear and even their new initiatives will take some time to bear fruit with the likes of Joules and Jaeger.

As for being the last man on the High Street they may pick up some lost trade from Debenhams but it will come at a higher cost form other players will online sales.

The share price is struggling since results the market isnt convinced MARKS got it right yet.

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 09:18

diku: M&S now have huge new ability at getting rent and rate reductions. They can simply up and move to different locations. They have lots of choice.
They are now the KING of the high street.
Boom times for M&S.

[diku] 10/8/2021 09:14

A mid price store but with sky high selling prices...the up keep of those mega huge stores is a dampner...

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 09:12

debs: M&S is a mid price store (not fast fashion) and as such is a huge winner in the new anti-fast-fashion market. You can accuse M&S of being many things but being big in teenage fast fashion is clearly NOT M&S. Ha ha ha.

This should go up big time. It now has much of the high-street to itself.
Debenhams is gone.
Frasers now does posh labels for non-existent plonkers.
Next has gone off-piste in down market tat.

It just leaves M&S as winner takes all.

[debsdowner] 10/8/2021 08:57

Harvey Nicks goes to enter the re-sell market



This is an interesting development because the climate activists are out to stop waste and encourage people not to throw away or buy second hand.

Some of MARKS previous policies flawed by buying back clothes from the public to goive to OXFAM which only encouraged new clothes to be bought.

With the activists out again more pressure will be placed on the public to hold back from fast fashion.

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 08:57

Certainly a good price....

[middlesboroughfc] 10/8/2021 08:51

Buying a few rude not to

[debsdowner] 10/8/2021 08:48

Retail sales up but slowing down, stay at home wear down and so is furniture



Moat people would have already bought their stay at home wear and furniture last year at hight of pandemic and now returning to cormal wear.

BRC said:

“After improvements in footfall in the early part of [the year], the situation has plateaued, with little change in footfall levels for a third month in a row.

“The turbulent weather, with initial heatwaves giving over to torrential rain, appears to have dampened the mood for shopping in July, with a particularly pronounced fall in footfall at retail parks.

“[But] the last week of July offered a glimmer of hope for retailers as the easing of restrictions lead to the best weekly performance of [the year].

“Retailers hope this trend will continue as the rise of vaccinations and falling coronavirus case numbers boosts consumer confidence.”



Retail footfall down 28% !

[netcurtains] 10/8/2021 08:38

The good thing about M&S on wet days is they nearly all have nice tea rooms inside. So people stay longer.
What I have noticed, that is weird, the Guildford store has loads of men's jumpers and the Edinburgh store has loads of men's t-shirts. I spoke to the staff about this, they say individual stores are stocked to meet individual demands.
This probably means that people in Southern England like to walk outside more than people in Scotland. This probably makes sense as it tends to be a degree or two warmer down here. Still I did find it surprising.

[xxxxxy] 09/8/2021 18:55

How mighty New Zealand can teach us Brits a thing or twoAugust 09, 2021By Catherine McBride – 7 minute readYOU REALLY have to hand it to mighty New Zealand. It certainly punches above its weight. By the end of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games it had won 7 gold medals – more than larger countries such as Spain (3), Poland (4) or similar-sized Ireland (2). And New Zealand achieved this with relatively few Olympic athletes – its team of 220 participants looks large but about half are involved in team sports such as Football, Rugby 7s and Hockey. It only entered 20 athletes in athletics and swimming combined, concentrating its efforts instead on rowing and canoeing – where it won 6 of its 7 gold medals.The secret to New Zealand's success is specialization – it plays to its strengths – and it does this in other activities as well. Most obviously its agricultural exports.  New Zealand has a similar land mass to the UK – NZ is the 75th largest country in the world, just beating the UK at 78th. Admittedly New Zealand is closer to the equator stretching from about 35o South to 45o South (the UK covers 50o to 59o North), so New Zealand is warmer, has more sunlight and is slightly wetter than the UK with annual rainfall at 1250mm compared to the UK's 1154mm. But there are a few major differences. New Zealand has a surprisingly small amount of arable land. According to the CIA World Fact Book, NZ has only 564,200 hectares of cultivated land growing everything from maize to apple orchards to grapevines. While the UK has about 11 times as much arable land at 6,163,100 ha. New Zealand has less grazing land than the UK as well: only 9 million hectares while the UK has 11.4 million ha of permanent and temporary grasslands. And yet New Zealand is a major exporter of agricultural products while the UK imports 45% of its food. How can this be so? Well one difference that stands out is New Zealand's free market credentials – it was one of the first countries to drop all of its agricultural subsidies and embrace free trade. Incredibly, since doing this, although its agricultural exports have boomed, the amount of agricultural land in New Zealand has fallen considerably. According to the World Bank in 1980, 65% of New Zealand 's land was used for agriculture but since subsidies were removed this area has fallen to just under 40%. Meanwhile, and this isn't surprising, the UK's agriculture – still heavily subsidized on a per hectare basis – occupies 72% of UK land. And yet the UK imports 45% of its food – mostly from the EU – a similarly expensive and heavily subsidized producer. Additionally, according to the OECD, NZ employs 164,000 people in agriculture while the UK employs 319,000. DEFRA puts that figure at 476,000 but if true that only makes the UK appear even more hopeless – using more people and more land to not produce enough food to meet local demand.So let's recap: NZ and the UK are of similar size; 72% of the UK is under agricultural use; agriculture employs between 319 to 476 thousand people depending on who you believe; and yet UK farms are unable to supply the UK's demand for food – even though they are heavily subsidized. While New Zealand only uses 40% of its land mass for agriculture, agriculture employs only 164 thousand people; New Zealand farms are completely unsubsidized and unprotected from international competition; and yet its agricultural production makes up about 80% of its total exports and is valued at over US$30 billion. In contrast, the UK's total income from farming was only £5.3 billion in 2019 and Defra puts agriculture's GVA at only £10.4 billion (US$14.4 billion).While some will quickly point out New Zealand has a much smaller population to feed than the UK (5.1 m against 67.8m), I would retort the Kiwis are producing enough to feed their own population multiple times. For example, NZ exports 95% of its dairy products earning the country over US$10 billion, 94% of its sheepmeat, 87% of its beef, 90% of its Kiwifruit, 90% of its fish (by weight after cleaning), 85% of its onions, 86% of its apples, and 85% of its wine – with the US, UK and Australia its biggest customers even though both the US and Australia have domestic wine producing industries. So New Zealand could feed a population many times its own – provided they enjoy dairy, lamb, beef, wine, apples, kiwis, seafood, honey and onions. And that is the point of this article and a lesson for the UK – New Zealand has become a successful exporter of food because it specialise in areas where it has a natural advantage. Spurred on no doubt by the fact that New Zealand farmers are unsubsidised – there is no government to fall back on for lazy, unlucky or simply chillaxed lifestyle farmers. Unlike the UK, the New Zealand government is worried by the amount of prime agricultural land being used for urban development and semirural lifestyle farmers who do not take the agricultural industry seriously. Now the UK has just finished the sixth round of its trade negotiation with New Zealand. This trade deal should have interesting results. New Zealand imports cars, delivery vehicles, crude and refined oil, and pharmaceutical products, while it exports are focused on the aforementioned nine agricultural goods. Meanwhile UK trade is the polar opposite. It exports cars and other vehicles, crude and refined oil, and pharmaceutical products while importing pork, beef, lamb (in the off season), butter, cheese, fruit, vegetables and wine. Gee whiz – do you think these two countries could do a trade deal? Well possibly, but no doubt the UK's National Farmers Unions (NFU) will be demanding protection as it did during the recently concluded Australian Trade Deal. But this time it will be harder to limit New Zealand imports with tiny quotas as the NZ lamb quota is already 114,000 tonnes. And astute UK shoppers will have noticed that New Zealand apples, kiwifruit and wine are already available in the UK – albeit apples mainly outside the UK apple season.  But that does not mean that the UK's National Farmers Union won't be trying to stifle any concessions Liz Truss may give to New Zealand dairy or beef products. But I would urge Truss to hold firm and not to give in to these protectionists. The embarrassing part of this trade deal is that New Zealand doesn't charge tariffs on many imports especially if they are products that New Zealand doesn't produce such as cars, vans, trucks – the government understands that this would only hurt New Zealand consumers. Even agricultural products like beef have no import tariff. Instead, it is the UK that will have to lower its tariffs and other trade barriers if it is to strike a trade deal. But why would the UK do this? Well as we keep being told – the UK hopes that agreeing a trade deal with New Zealand will help it gain access to theComprehensive and Progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTTP) – a group of 11 countries with a combined market value of $13 trillion. But, to achieve such a deal, the UK may have to drop its ridiculous agricultural protections. Although such a move will upset the NFU there are many consumers as well as secondary food manufacturers in the UK that would benefit from less expensive food or raw materials. The UK Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has recently published a massive tomb called the National Food Strategy (NFS) that reached fourteen rather contradictory recommendations for what we should be feeding our children as well as about the future of UK farming. If there is anyone interested in Whitehall in actually saving UK farming – I recommend they ignore the NFS and instead follow New Zealand's example: drop all farm subsidies including the so-called 'green' ones. A swift dose of market reality will force UK farmers to concentrate on the products where the UK has a natural advantage and where there is market demand – even if that is just UK market demand. It is embarrassing that the UK farmers cannot even meet local demand in basic goods such as pork, beef, butter, or cheddar and yet demand protection from non-EU imported products by imposing massive tariffs and small quotas. The NFU may try to protect its market by claiming some sort of environmental superiority over food imported from the other side of the world but as the National Food Strategy points out – if UK farmers used more intensive farming practices they could, like New Zealand, use less land for agriculture and more for habitat restoration and broadleaf forests. But one problem with intensive agriculture is that it is only environmentally efficient if the animal feed is grown locally. If farmers are importing soymeal from Brazil or the US to feed their animals, then there will be little environmental advantage. It would be better to simply import the parts of the animal that you want to eat than to import the feed to produce a whole animal and then discard most of the carcass. If it takes 3 kg of imported feed from Brazil, to produce a 2 kg chicken in the UK, which will then be filleted to remove the 1kg of breast meat while the brown meat is exported to South Africa – environmentally it would be better to just import the chicken breast meat from Brazil. No doubt the NFU will disagree with this analysis – but as Mandy Rice Davies once said:  'they would say that wouldn't they'. New Zealand has also worked this out and it has found markets for every part of a sheep. Sheep carcasses are divided into over 40 different cuts to supply different markets. Importers no longer waste fuel shipping whole carcasses around the world as they once did. This is good for the environment and good for importers. Leaving very little waste.There are a lot of problems with UK farming that need to be addressed not just in terms of their environmental footprint, but also in their general efficiency. If an industry needs to be subsidised to survive, should it exist? Especially when there are alternative suppliers such as New Zealand. But for this the UK needs to drop its tariffs and trade barriers that limit the availability of New Zealand products in the UK market. This would be a massive bonus for UK consumers and help address the UK food poverty and inequality that the National Food Strategy highlights. It will not turn UK children into Dutch giants – that is more nature than nurture (NFS page 60) but it may have the bonus of helping the UK join the CPTTP which would support the UK's service and industrial exports and consequently the UK Government's levelling up agenda.