Nick Bubb: It's the Archie Norman show at Marks & Spencer

When it was revealed back in May that Norman was to become the new chairman of M&S from September, it was made clear that his role is a non-executive one.

Today’s interim results announcement from M&S did not contain any statement from him about his approach.

But those who know how he operated at Kingfisher and Asda in the past would not have expected him to simply take a back seat and let the executives get on with it.

In fact, Norman had a starring role at the analysts meeting this morning at one of M&S’ many headquarters buildings in Paddington.

He introduced the meeting and after paying fulsome tribute to his old friend Helen Weir, the finance director who has suddenly decided to pursue “a portfolio career” after two and half years in the job, he launched into a long explanation of how not everything he had discovered at M&S since he joined had been good.

He said the culture of the business really needed to change, to help it face up to the challenging market environment and become “special” again.

M&S is clearly no longer the force it used to be in the retail sector, but that has not stopped the company culture from being rather arrogant. So Norman’s focus on ‘the unvarnished truth’ was welcome.

And this new focus on honesty came through in the presentation this morning by Helen Weir and chief executive Steve Rowe on the interim results and the strategic outlook.

Food falters

Back in July, on the back of the mixed first-quarter sales figures, I wrote in a column here that “it would be ironic if M&S food starts to go wrong just as M&S clothing starts to come right, after years of disappointment”.

And so the admission by M&S that its first-half performance in food was “disappointing” rings some alarm bells.

In the Q&A at today’s analysts meeting, Norman said that the sign of a healthy food business is if it can grow like-for-like sales at least in line with the growth in its costs.

“M&S clearly has work to do to fix its food business. It needs to improve the price architecture, focus the product ranges and cut back on the confusing number of promotions”

On this basis, the M&S food business is not in a healthy state, as although total first-half sales grew by 4.4% on the back of all the Simply Food store openings and 2% food price inflation, like-for-like sales were fractionally down by 0.1%.

And food gross margins were down by as much as 130bps over the half.

M&S clearly has work to do to fix its food business. It needs to improve the price architecture, focus the product ranges and cut back on the confusing number of promotions.

And as all the new Simply Food stores seem to be cannibalising sales from the M&S Foodhalls on the high street, the rapid expansion programme is clearly going to be scaled back.

Fortunately, Steve Rowe has managed to put out some fires elsewhere in the business and the fact that adjusted first-half pre-tax profit of £215m was only 5% down owed much to a surprisingly strong recovery in international profits, from £18m to £60m, reflecting the elimination of loss-making overseas markets and stores.

And although M&S enjoyed some helpful weather conditions in its second quarter, it was encouraging to see that like-for-like sales in UK clothing and home were only fractionally down.

First-half gross margins were up by a better than expected 140 basis points, reflecting improved sourcing and reduced discounting.

It is also encouraging that M&S has the confidence to accelerate the UK clothing and home space rationalisation plan, having been pleased with the sales transfers from closed stores so far.

That the business aspires to be one-third online by 2022.

Running hard to stand still

But the world is not standing still, waiting for M&S to gets its act together.

Steve Rowe’s presentation today highlighted that the business faces competitors like Asos and Amazon Fashion that were barely around 10 years ago, let alone the likes of Primark.

And it goes without saying that the outlook for UK consumer spending growth is restrained, to say the least.

Although M&S aspires to cut at least 10% off its UK operating cost base in the next few years, it remains to be seen how much, if any, of this drops through to the bottom-line, given the need to invest in value.

The City is willing to back Norman, given his impressive track record, and together with Rowe it may be possible for him to transform M&S over the next five years.

But the external challenges may ensure that M&S simply has to run hard to stand still – the fact that its share price has been broadly unchanged today speaks volumes for the uncertain outlook.

• Nick Bubb is a founding member of the KPMG/Ipsos Retail