You’d have to hope that Marks & Spencer is doing a better job of keeping abreast of the latest trends in fashion than it is in keeping up to date with its corporate filing obligations.
The retailer’s Irish arm has finally got around to filing accounts with the Companies Registration Office for the 12 months to the end of March 2024. That’s unusually tardy. Until this week, it hadn’t filed accounts since February 2024, almost two years ago.
No explanation for the delay is given, and the group’s normally receptive communications team in London did not respond to questions in advance of Cantillon’s deadline on Wednesday.
To be sure, the high street giant has had a lot on its plate in the past year. In its half-year results in November, the parent group said it will take a £136 million (€154 million) hit to its annual profits in 2025 from the cyber attack last April that wreaked havoc on its operations.
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M&S was forced to suspend online clothing orders for seven weeks and click-and-collect services for nearly four, resulting in a 55 per cent fall in first-half profits to £184.1 million, down from £413.1 million a year earlier.
The retailer will report its Christmas trading figures in the UK on Thursday. But for those still curious about how the group’s Irish unit performed in 2023 and early 2024, the latest filings are full of detail.
M&S Ireland reported gross profits of nearly €141.9 million in the 12 months to the end of March 2024, up by more than 12 per cent from the previous financial year, helped by rising sales and lower costs.
But the detail shows a mixed picture for the venerable retailer. While foods sales were 7.9 per cent up on the year – boosted in part by its growing partnership with Applegreen – in-store sales of clothing and homewares were 2.7 per cent weaker, even though online sales in these two areas did grow by 2.3 per cent.
All told, M&S Ireland reported a modest 2.4 per cent rise in overall sales.
However, it still fell to an operating loss of nearly €6.8 million, compared with an operating profit of €24.4 million in the previous year.
This was largely related to certain one-off exceptional costs, according to the accounts, including a €35.8 million impairment charge related to the Irish company’s investment in a Turkish subsidiary. The cost arose from a change in the accounting method used to assess the value of the investment, which the directors noted in the accounts.
M&S Ireland also incurred exceptional charges of €6.5 million related to the closure of its Drogheda, Co Louth, and Clarion Quay, Dublin 1 stores, and redundancy costs at its support centre in Dublin.
