Marks and Spencer Group plc (MKS) Q4 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good day and welcome to the Marks and Spencer analyst call. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to Archie Norman. Please go ahead, sir. Morning, everybody, and welcome to our results session. It's a very good day today because we've got a decent set of results and excellent weather coming for the bank holiday weekend. And so we got here in this room, obviously, Stuart, Alison is here, Fraser, and a whole lot of other people who don't get to say anything. But we're going to start off with Stuart's usual opening. Thank you, Archie. Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. When we held this call a year ago, it was under a very different set of circumstances, and I'm pleased to say we're in a far better place today, and as a team, very much looking forward. Let me give you a take on last year. This was a year of two halves. The first half, as you know, was dominated by operational disruption. As always, our focus during that time was our customers. We found new ways to keep serving them, and we were transparent with our communications throughout. We're grateful that they rewarded us with their trust, and M&S remains the most UK's trusted brand, according to YouGov. We served 34 million customers last year, our highest number ever. And we never take trust for granted. And I want to thank every single customer who shopped with us last year. And as I always say, if you haven't shopped with us, then please do. Our colleagues worked incredibly hard to recover our business. And in the second half of the year, we returned to sales and profit growth. The work done in recent years to strengthen cash generation and improve resilience meant that we were able to respond and recover without compromising our financial h...