Marks & Spencer Share News (MKS)

It has been a remarkable year for the General Retail sector, with the UK index´s 33 per cent rise comfortably outstripping gains in the rest of the market. However, 2013 has also seen high single-digit downgrades across the space. That has left valuations (the average price-to earnings multiple sits now at 15 times´ next year´s forecast profit) quite stretched, wrote Credit Suisse on Friday. Only a modest recovery in consumption is expected for next year. Furthermore, in the US spending is likely to shift towards deep cyclical consumer durables in response to the housing market, which may tend to substitute for spending in apparel. On the bright side, bottom-up estimates for several metrics, such as sales growth rates, EBIT and EPS growth all point to a notable acceleration over the next two years, the Swiss broker has calculated. EPS is expected to expand by more than 10% for all stocks in the sector during that period, except for one in 2015. As a result Credit Suisse believes that 2014 should favour companies such as Kingfisher or those with potential for self-help, such as H&M. However, UK data points for M&S in the third quarter had been tracking below forecasts. Hence, the broker has cut its forecasts for clean PBT to £636m or flat year-on-year. The analysts added that their expectation is for transition costs to continue to outweigh the benefits for at least another year.They chose to maintain their 12-month forward price target of 425p and 'underperform' rating on the company. AB