Stuart Rose’s final flourish at M&S

Stuart Rose’s last trading update before Marc Bolland takes over the reins was a strong one, but no-one wanted to talk about it this morning. I got up absurdly early to do two interviews about M&S on Radio 5’s Wake Up to Money (here, 25:45 in) and then Radio 4’s Today programme (here, about 10 minutes in) - both before the update came out - and all the questions were about what Bolland is going to do, and I’ve just hearnd Rose talking to John Humphrys and all the talk was about THAT letter on National Insurance.

But the update is worth a look, as it certainly seems that M&S is winning market share in fashion at the moment. Its current advertising campaign is working particularly hard on getting younger shoppers in and seems to be meeting with some success. Like many I’m still not convinced that going forward M&S can compete serving all customer groups at good, better and best price points and might be better off focussing on categories of customer, but to be fair it is doing its best to prove those of us who think that wrong. Food is still tough but John Dixon knows what needs to be done in terms of innovation and price competitiveness and the trend is in the right direction.

To be honest though it was no wonder all the questions were about the future. Rose has his eye on life after he retires next month and despite his denials to Humprhys is surely off to the Lords if Cameron wins, while its hard to imagine that Bolland won’t implement some significant changes at M&S in due course.

That won’t happen overnight - as he did at Morrisons I’m sure he’ll take his time and treat Rose’s legacy with due reverance - but despite today’s good performance there remain the fundamental issues that the share price is still languishing below the magic 400p offered by Philip Green and this year’s profits of £620 to £630m will be little more than those achieved when Rose joined in 2005, despite all the spending on store refurbs and share buybacks.

Bolland has plenty of avenues he can take M&S down when he joins. What the strong trading performance revealed this morning does is buys him time to make the decisions over which ones he chooses. He won’t rush into anything dramatic.