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It will go back up. M&S is still in a better position today than it was a few weeks ago. There will be no 'lockdown' that shuts all the shops and that's absolute rubbish that Amazon compete with M&S- go away nasty person!

Green shoots.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8726179/Ocado-sales-2bn-M-S-tie-up.html

Disappointed with today. Yes the whole UK market went down but M&S and a few others fell more sharply, despite the fact the company as of now has a fully established, well run online offering. I’ve read some of the commentary about the venture, the bbc was particularly negative with a ‘retail expert’ criticising M&S for not sticking to the high street as it may ‘devalue’ it’s products by offering them online, this is in stark contrast to the past 5 years of criticism from the same experts that M&S should have a greater online presence...it’s like they can’t win. My view is they are now in a better position than yesterday and with the sad but necessary recent job cuts their costs should also be lower. Hopefully one day the market agrees with this view.

Every share forum has one I’m afraid, I don’t know what they get out of it, I think they like to wind people up- a sad human trait, I guess they are frustrated in other walks of life. I know a number of companies I would never invest in but certainly would not go on the companies forum to tell the shareholders what I think (I mean why bother!?).

Written by the same author who had M&S shares as a buy or hold for the last 2-5 yrs when the price was Between £2-£5...Looking at some past predictions, I’ll take this story with a pinch of salt.

No that these things matter (the market does not seem to like Kier at the moment) but i see another £25M contract was awarded to Kier yesterday https://www.kier.co.uk/media/news-releases/

Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer have a food retail business which makes £237m in earnings before interest & tax (EBIT), according to RWC’s Lance.

“If we value this at 12x historical EBIT, add their £750m investment [in online supermarket] Ocado at cost – less the future performance payments, take away net debt and give no benefit for the company’s freehold property, the total is around £2bn,” said the manager. “Which is in line with today’s market cap.”

“The entire clothing and home business, which is still the largest clothes retailer in the UK and which last year made a profit of £224m, is therefore in for free.”


https://www.trustnet.com/news/7464876/these-five-uk-value-stocks-could-offer-potential-long-term-gain

Such poor reporting that they don’t disclose Waitrose will no longer sell their products through Ocado from 1st September.

Thanks Neil, hahahehehoho (nice name). I think those comments are fair. But £17.8bn wow!

Here’s a conundrum, Ocado has a market cap of £17.8bn based on today’s share price. Ocado retail, a 50:50 joint venture with M&S, makes 94% of the company revenue according to their H1 20 trading statement. M&S market cap is £2bn. Am I missing something here?

Either M&S is undervalued or Ocado is overvalued or I suspect a mixture of the two- Thoughts?

Kate Calvert, an analyst at Investec, said she expected pre-tax profit to fall to £232m from £403m last year. Both figures exclude exceptional charges, which are likely to be significant in the current year because of the job losses.

Ms Calvert said that while she still regarded M&S’s transformation plan as “more of a stabilisation strategy”, the business was likely to emerge from the pandemic in better shape, that its finances were robust and that investors appeared to be undervaluing its ability to generate cash.

https://www.ft.com/content/1ffab5b1-4e9f-493f-8470-f7832478f6d4

The results to date are ahead of the budget assumptions in both food and clothing, if you see their recent annual report at one point like for like clothing and home sales were down 98.8% due to the pandemic so the recent update is promising. It’s a real shame about the job losses though, online is clearly the direction then need to take so the right decision but a tough decision to make. Ocado in September you would think should help.

In February 2019, when the deal was unveiled, City analysts thought it looked expensive, especially as M&S had to raise £600m from shareholders to fund the deal, with no guarantee that Ocado’s picky customers wouldn’t just move to Waitrose’s online service. Analysts at HSBC estimated that more than 2% of them might jump ship.
Lockdown is unwinding, but the rapid growth in the online grocery market is not expected to be significantly reversed
But after a bruising few months in lockdown, during which the shift to online has accelerated rapidly, attitudes have changed. “Archie has lucked out,” says one retail analyst. “A lot has changed and this now looks like quite a good deal.”

M&S’s absence from the fast-growing online market has long held it back, but that has never been truer than over the past few months, when there has been little interest in its posh sandwiches at city centre stores – and the group has been mostly excluded from a surge in home deliveries.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/15/waitrose-marks-and-spencer-ocado-switch-food-supermarkets

Ocado Group CEO Tim Steiner believes that, thanks to Covid-19, grocery shopping has changed forever. Now accounting for 13% of the market [Nielsen], online grocery will double and become “the mainstream method for grocery distribution”, he predicts. Smith is even more ambitious. “I thought he was soft – I thought he should have been bolder,” she tells The Grocer, in a call from Ocado’s Hatfield headquarters. “Half the market should be shopping online, it’s just a question of when. I don’t think this is bullish, I think this is realistic.” Ocado’s long-awaited venture with M&S, which kicks off on 1 September, will put it in the best position to capitalise on this mass adoption of online, she adds. Rather than a high-end, niche offering, she sees this as a mainstream proposition.

https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/online/can-ocado-go-mainstream/647382.article

British fashion retailer Marks & Spencer, which launched its e-commerce portal in India right before the lockdown, has seen customer visits more than double on its websites since May. “Our marksandspencer.in flagship website is experiencing a doubling of customer visits and purchases since May’20," said James Munson, managing director, Marks & Spencer India.

https://www.livemint.com/industry/retail/retailers-reach-out-to-shoppers-directly-amid-shift-in-habits-11597282763564.html

Anyway...did you all see this, strategy being played out for all to see, finally feels like we are heading in the right direction https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/m-s-copies-waitrose-to-boost-ocado-deliveries-t82ccmsnm

More nonsense, how do you know the virus ‘is coming back in a big way’ drivel. Did you see the Bank of England comments today about the economy that’s based on real information

‘ Spending on clothing and household goods were back to pre-Covid levels.
However, the Bank warned of a "material" rise in unemployment this year as it held interest rates at 0.1%.
Governor Andrew Bailey said recent data suggested the recovery in consumer spending was gaining traction, while spending on food and energy bills remained above pre-Covid levels.’

the Ocado deal, apps with better options to buy, sustainability are all part of this. It’s still profitable, still a major brand, still very British- we need M&S in these dark days

Why entertain this nonsense, whilst I agree the market currently isn’t overly positive about an M&S turnaround, we are now at historic low levels, Archie Norman (chairman) has made it quite clear things need to change and given this is a listed company we will all see what those changes play out in the open, Closure of old stores in place of new food stores,