Well I work for M&S so Iām biased.
I feel like online retail world for clothing is becoming large marketplaces with various associated smaller brands, ASOS, Boohoo, Zalando, Next are obvious examples, but by expanding to brands I think M&S has stumbled into this too.
We are putting significant resources into completely revamping our tech side - we are still planning to hire out many engineers as we grow online. Sure, everyone is, but from what Iāve seen of the data science side (for example) at other retail companies, we are miles ahead of them but nowhere near fully utilising.
Fundamentals are decent, p/e of 9 for example, debt is reducing, performance is better in terms of both revenue and profit (I think!) than 2019ā¦writing this off the top of my head.
When I started there 3 years ago I constantly heard ārevenue is lower than targetā many weeksā¦but now, at least when I actually join such calls, everything seems to be positive. For example, we had much less stock to put in the summer sale than forecastedā¦because weāve been selling at full price. And we started our sale later than other retailersā¦because weāve been selling at full price.
Plus in software engineering, where I work, we are light years ahead of where we were 3 years ago when I joined, with a huge website modernisation project just starting.
Of course, I think it likely Iām biased because I work there, and very possible Iām only seeing the good news and the exciting parts. One expects the upcoming likely recession to be tricky for profitsā¦but so far, I donāt think it hasā¦though maybe wait until the next update from the financial bods rather than little old me!