Good morning, welcome to the Marks & Spencer 2022, 2023 full year results analyst Q&A. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad at this time. Once again, press star one to ask a question. I hand the call over to Archie Norman for any opening remarks before we begin the Q&A. Archie, please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. It's Archie here. I'm not really going to make any opening remarks except to say the sun is shining, and hopefully it's shining on M&S. We've got here Stuart, Katie, and Jeremy to answer the questions and. Before we start, Stuart just wanted to make a few, hopefully brief, opening remarks. Brief because you'll be staring at me.
Good morning, everyone. We've just finished the media call. I thought just before we take questions, I'll lay out a few things on my mind and how I see the results and where I think we are as an organization as I look at this year and beyond. Obviously, you've read everything. You've seen all the presentations. You'll be across all of the detail. The results were pretty good and probably a bit better than was expected at the half year. At the interims, the consumer backdrop was unknown. We very much focused on implementing our strategies.
We've sustained momentum, as you've seen in the second half, because like we said at the Capital Markets Day, we very much focused on what's been in our control, whether that's product or whether it's value or cost reduction or where we invest for growth.
I'm pretty pleased with our progress over the last 12 months, but I think it's only right that I do reinforce that we know we have still lots to do. I think it's my job as chief executive to always set that bar a bit higher, and to, for us as an organization, probably set a bar where people probably don't think it is achievable, but to take the organization beyond where people think possible. What is on my mind is the word transformation.
I still quite like that word because our plan is to reshape M&S for growth. It is a transformation plan because Katie, Jeremy, and myself are very conscious that we do have quite a lot to do in these next 12, 18 plus months.
I do think Richard and the team have done a really good job on clothing, and you can see that in the presentation, whether it's the numbers or the maintaining the quality and value perception, but also that move to style, moving up to places. There's some good work going on in clothing. Alex, our new food MD, has been here 6 months now. He's finding his feet and he's got a clear plan, and he's ambitious for our food business.
Between us as a leadership team, we're quietly confident in clothing and home, the future, and the opportunities in these next few years on our omni-channel clothing and home strategy.
Likewise, our ambition is still to redouble the size of the food business that we actually set out a few years ago. I think for me, it's to say that we're still positive about the results, but positively dissatisfied because that's the way we work. We've made progress, but we're relentless in our determination to make M&S a much bigger, better business over time. I just wanted to say that.
Before I hand to Archie on the Q&A, I'm really pleased that Jeremy, as our CFO, who's been a brilliant support to me personally over the last 6 months, a wise counsel as our Chief Financial Officer, someone very calm, organized, disciplined, experienced, Jeremy is going to stay with us for another 2 years. I'm very pleased with that. I'll hand over to Archie, and we'll do Q&A.
Thank you, Stuart. Good opening. Now look, we've got a flurry of hands up, we'll try and get through the questions and we'll treat it as a conversation. Do by all means introduce yourself. If we can, we take one question at a time because otherwise we won't remember what you asked. Maybe we can keep ourselves to two in total. That would be good. I know some people have a lot of things they want to discuss. Let's start with Isabelle, Izabela Tomic, Morgan Stanley. You were first up, why don't you open the bowling?
Hello, good morning, and congratulations on your results. I had 2 questions. The first one is just around your outlook around price investments for the next 12 months and how you see yourself on that journey on investing in value. Should we expect that the bulk of the investments are now behind us, or would you expect a similar pace of investments for the year ahead? My second question was on the food market share.
Okay.
Yeah.
Isabelle, let's take one at a time. We'll come back to the second one.
I'll kick off on that, Isabelle. Thank you. Outlook's a slightly tricky one because as I said in the statement, there is still some uncertainty. The uncertainty, of course, is around the consumer and it's around inflation, and that's our COGS inflation because our energy prices, wages, price increases is what our suppliers are going through as well. It is slightly unknown. There's a couple of things.
The first is we're confident we can grow revenue. That's our plan. The second thing is, in our control, we know we have a cost reduction program. I'd go a bit stronger on that because we want to restructure our costs to be a lower cost business. Therefore, we did this well last year and we want to do again.
The plan is GBP 150 million of cost reduction this year. That helps us offset that inflation. As you know, our inflation in wages is around GBP 100 million, and in energy, it's still gonna be GBP 50 million this year. Therefore, that makes it slightly hard to also work out where is our consumer. I see a similar trend, at least for the next few months, in how we've invested in value. It is important to note that especially in our food business, we did take some pain at gross margin.
You will understand this as well from the half-year results, and in a half year, we invested 107 basis points, and in the second half, 119 basis points at gross margin level, where we did not pass through the full rate of inflation. That has worked in our favor because it's grown our food business in value terms and volume terms and in market share terms.
I see a similar pattern. Of course, commodity prices will start to come off, we think. At the moment, there's some early signs, but we don't know when. As of today, we still see, you know, the cost of sugar is up 11% on last year, the cost of cacao up 25%, eggs, et cetera. That's what makes the outlook from a profit perspective slightly challenging to work out. Jeremy?
Yes. Stuart, not a lot more to add. Absolutely right. There will be further investment in the margins, gross margin in both food and clothing and home. Clothing and home, exacerbated by FX, and there's still some more of that to flow through in the current year. As Stuart said, we had some waste issues actually in the first quarter of last year, and that should help gross margin in food year-on-year. Otherwise, I would expect a fairly similar pattern, 2023, 2024 versus 2022, 2023.
Okay, thanks. Isabelle, you had another question.
Thank you. Yes. The second question was your market share in food, which we can see from the Kantar data is obviously trending very well. I was wondering, can you give us some color on how that market share is evolving by basket? I remember small was about 10%, but then large was about 1% market share the last time we gave the numbers.
Yes. It hasn't changed a lot, but overall market share, we are pretty pleased with. In fact, yesterday we got the 4-week data that showed we were the leading retailer on volume, which was also a bit of a standout.
We're encouraged, and I think that's testament to the work the team have done on balancing quality, maintaining that quality differential versus others, but also the investment and not passing through everything in price inflation. As you saw, the market value growth is the best it's been for our food business, but also the best it's been on volume as well. I think the fact we're now holding volumes flat is good.
What I would say is a slight-- it answers slightly your question. In our larger stores, we're very encouraged by the big basket movement. Where we've got our renewal stores, in particular in those 80 stores, there's some good news on bigger baskets and some good news on volume as well. The shape overall hasn't changed a big deal.
You can't read too much into it, Isabelle, because of the return to travel, you know, city centers. What's happening with transaction and basket size is as much a function of macro as micro. Okay, thanks, Isabelle. Shall we go to.
Thank you.
Thank you. Go to Jonathan Pritchard at Peel Hunt. Jonathan?
Thank you. Good morning. Just one from me, actually. It's on that comment you made on clothing and the style perception. Is that across the board or are there any sort of spikes in that from an age group or demographic perspective, or is everybody spotting that change in style?
I'll hand to Katie.
Morning. It's a measure that YouGov carry out. We've obviously improved our style perception by 2 points. This is a metric that's quite difficult to move. It takes quite a long time because you need customers to come back, reappraise you, reappraise you again, reappraise you again. It's common actually across all categories.
The 2 standout categories within there are womenswear, both formal and casual, and menswear, both formal and casual as well. We've still got, I think, a little bit of work to do on kidswear in terms of the non-school uniform range, and certainly Alex and the team are working very hard on that. Those would be the 2 standout categories, which is good because they're 2 of our biggest categories.
This is quite a move on, Jonathan, for Richard and the team, and I think it's encouraged them as well, Katie, hasn't it, on pushing the style credentials even further? As Katie said, we've noticed across all of the categories. You know, we think the team are doing a good job on this.
Okay.
Yeah. Cheers.
Okay. Anything else from you, Simon? Jonathan?
No, I'm all good. Thank you, actually. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks. We'll go to Simon Irwin at Credit Suisse, then Warwick.
Have a go. Yes, good morning.
You've still quite a long way to get to 180. Is this program kind of back-end weighted, or are you seeing kind of better opportunities out there in terms of rent renewals or kind of better performance of existing stores, or, you know, do you just think it will naturally accelerate over the next three years?
Yeah. Good question, Simon. It is a good question, Simon, because this plan was originally five years, therefore to your point, I sort of got quite uncomfortable when you said back-end loading because I'm sitting here thinking, "Well, it is a bit," because it's back-end loaded to my new challenge of three years.
Let me just remind a couple of key points. I think the first is it is well documented. We're aiming for about 180, you know, full line stores. We keep using the words high productivity brand defining 'cause it forces us as a collective team to really focus on the right stores. We don't say yes easily in our property committees to signing off the money. We put the team through a lot of challenge, we're still aiming for that.
Look, I say 5 years into 3, I'm pretty confident it'll be about 3-ish years, some of that is back-end loaded. There is some good news. If you think about since the program started, in 2017, we've opened 16 full line stores. We've closed 75. We've actually reduced clothing space by 10% as you know, we're aiming for more than that.
It's a, I would say good progress, not exceptional, good. Last year we, in this financial year we're talking about, we opened 5 new stores. 3 of those were relocations as well, the relocation point, I think what's probably slowing us down a bit is we're really learning a lot on relocation and some of the new things we're doing.
We relocated Chesterfield, Colchester, and there was one other I forgot, Macclesfield. Also we're trialing some other things like our Purley Way format. In Purley Way, what we've worked out is with the food of around 15,000 and the clothing around 20,000, very, very different to what we've done before, this is looking very promising.
Therefore, as we trial these new things, it forces us to think differently as we think about these new stores or relocations. Last year we closed nine stores. This year, the good news is we've got 20 closures. 10 of those are relocations, so not real closures. We've got better sites. We're very encouraged by that. We've also got eight new full line store openings. I read some of these out earlier, so I know them.
Leeds White Rose is this week, which we think will be one of the best. Liverpool One, which I was just there recently. We have to take down this horrible art wall in front that's blocking our store. We don't know whose it is yet, but to get visibility, but that would be a good store. Thurrock, Purley Way, as I've said, Washington Galleries, Trafford Centre, Dundee. We've got some really good sites coming up this year.
My challenge to us as a team is they're the Debenhams sites in the main, and we're still out there looking for sites. In fact, recently we had a lot of landlords and people for one of our evening dinners in the office where we really explained our ambition on finding the best sites. It's going okay. It is a bit back-end loaded, and we need to go faster on rotation. Okay.
Brilliant, Simon. Thank you. I'm glad we didn't even get into Oxford Street planning. Could I just ask a quick follow-up on basket size? Just obviously lots of moving parts with convenience and stuff, but Can you X out at convenience and tell us kind of roughly what the move in basket size was and kind of how you think about it over the next couple of years?
I think that's pretty difficult. I'm only letting the team address. Because of the movement of convenience and travel and also inflation, you know, inflation's very forgiving, really. Makes everybody look cool, doesn't it, with the sales going up. When you distill it down to volume, it's a different story. Stuart?
Well, look, there's a couple of points on basket. I have to be honest, I don't focus enough on this. Based on the questions today, I think I'm gonna spend more time on drilling the baskets every week. Larger baskets were up. Now, I am quite obsessed with large baskets, especially renewal stores and our baskets therefore over GBP 30. We're around 5% up on last year. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that, by the way, I think I'm about right.
Our average basket was slightly down overall on last year. Actually, when you look at 1920, we were I think about 20% up overall. Overall, basket is up on the two-year period. Basket items on the two years on 1920 were up, but slightly down on last year. I think that what's difficult to read is the convenience is recovering, food on the move now is recovering.
Our food on the move sales were pretty strong. We're about 25% odd up on last year, and hospitality sales are up. Again, the minute you get food on the move added to the mix, that impacts the items in the basket. That's why we tend to really just focus on that big basket number. I think we're in okay shape and definitely on the 2-year period, we are.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Simon. Okay, we'll go to Warwick Okines, then the great Clive Black. Warwick.
Good morning. I'm Warwick Okines from BNP Paribas. Two questions on clothing and home, please. The first is on full price sales mix. You said you'd managed to hold the full price sales mix level year-on-year at a sort of historic high, I think. Is this now structurally higher because of the way that you buy and because of competitor withdrawals? Or do you think this goes backwards as industry supply chains more broadly normalize?
Good. Katie will chip in. Katie?
Yeah.
Short answer to that.
Yeah, short answer to that is, we held our target in terms of the mix of full price sales in the north of 80% bucket, which we expected. We've got much greater control over promotional mix now, and we're buying across our core lines more deeply. We've changed the way that we buy product to make sure that the lines that are in, for instance, the edit in women's wear, we don't mind selling out of those, that's okay.
Going back 3 or 4 years ago, we would have carried that stock and then marked it down or had to promote it. We are very happy to sell through that, but keeping in stock of our core lines and our never out of stock lines. Our intention is to hold that mix and hold that shape for the foreseeable.
Yeah. I, we hope it is structurally lower, but, you know, you hesitate to say because, of course, if we have one disappointing season, then the clearance will go up. We're not doing all those friends and family. You know, the team have fundamentally changed the way we price and promote.
Understood. Thank you.
That's great.
My second question on is on Clothing & Home profitability. I think at the interims you talked before about a 4 or 5-point gap in profitability between online and offline. Do you think you make much progress in closing that gap this year? What are the levers to do that?
A very good question. We have a plan to start to reduce that gap this year. There are a number of contributing factors to that gap. I'll just call out a couple. One of those is making sure that we further reduce and improve our returns rate to make sure that when we sell a product, we keep it sold.
That will help us contribute to the profitability of M&S.com. The second and most significant, though, is actually our supply chain costs and the way that we fulfill our deliveries to customers, both through our store network, but also direct to consumer. That's both the mix of products that we put through the delivery network, but how we use our couriers and structure our couriers on our overall supply chain costs.
You know, strategically, that we're looking at sorting out our supply chain and our network, and we think there's substantial upside in there. The team have got a very clear target in the three-year plan to get to around our M&S.com margin.
I mean, just to add to that, Warwick, to Katie's point, FX had an impact on our online margins. Of course, Katie and the team are doing a lot of work on digital investment, and that's why you see that impact on the online margin. Our overall belief is we can get to a much better margin position over time. I think we would expect the online margin to end up at least as high, if not higher than the store margin.
Okay, great. Thanks very much.
But by the way, calculating the margin online and the stores is not a complete science. The contribution margin is online is pretty good. Anyway.
Yeah, got it. Thank you.
Thank you, Warwick. Clive.
Thank you, Archie. I share the applause of others for the outcome of last year. A couple of questions, if I may. You've spoken for some time about improving the end-to-end position of M&S's Clothing & Home operations. I just wonder in 2024, what sort of progress you anticipate making on that whole supply chain through to store journey, which has been.
Yeah.
-a big, challenge and opportunity for you.
Yeah. Massive question.
Yeah.
Who's going to do that?
Katie, we'll do Katie first.
I'll attempt to summarize it, Clive, in, you know, 30-second, hopefully soundbites. This is extremely difficult for us to sort out and has been a historic challenge for us. I'm going to split it into 3 things to keep it super simple. The first is where and how we source product.
Making sure that we rationalize our supply base, that we manage which markets and geographies our product comes from, and the way that we build those longer term relationships, look at payment terms, et cetera, with those suppliers is kind of block number 1.
We have somebody leading that for us. Monique is leading that for us from a sourcing perspective. The second area is how we move stuff around simply, which is effectively from factory to floor or from factory to consumer.
There are a series of opportunities for us within the supply chain, hanging to box to store ready ratio packs, would be a great example of that. Also the flow of product, where we hold it, where we move it, and how we move it around the network is very important for us. We think there is quite a lot of opportunity there to rationalize and simplify it.
We call that effectively our supply chain transformation program, and that's under Mark Lemming's leadership in terms of the Clothing & Home business. The third area actually is very, very important and that is the systems and processes that we use to create the demand, manage the orders, manage the fulfillment process, manage the forecasting process.
We have signed off stage 1 of that in terms of our systems development and currently are working through how those processes work currently and the to-be processes we would like to put in place. We see substantial upside there for us in the future in terms of availability, in terms of the right product in the right store at the right time, and frankly, in terms of the administrative burden that we have to carry currently in the Clothing & Home business, being able to loosen some of that administrative burden for the teams in a systematic way.
Those are the three things that we're working on. You'll see some changes in sourcing this year, Clive. You'll see some changes in the supply chain, and you'll see the early work on the Clothing & Home systems this year. I wouldn't expect major systems changes until the following year.
Okay. two, three years out, we should note a very different, Clothing & Home business.
I would hope so.
I think, Clive, just to add, I mean, we have a lot to do on this. It's gonna take a lot of our attention in the next 12 months. It's, you know, supply chain, omni-channel are the, you know, the two big things on our mind. Don't forget, now we've got Gist. The team have done some good work on combined transport as well between food and clothing home. We're quite encouraged by some of the integration of Gist already, so. There's lots to do, and this is a multi-year plan.
Also Well, I was allowed a briefing with Richard Price last week on this and so
Allowed one.
Allowed one.
Someone make a note of that. Who let that happen?
Yeah, he didn't know about it. No, look, I think we're. It's not been a historic strength for the business, and it's taken a while to get to grips. This year there's going to be some real progress, and there's a lot of money in this.
Yes.
It's really, really important.
Well, there's a lot of money going into it and a lot of money we need out of it.
Yeah.
Thank you. Just a follow-up question really to Simon's that I guess where is M&S on its trolley versus basket journey in food?
What?
The reason I ask that is that you have put a lot of emphasis on trying to attract a family and younger shopper. You know, in that context in food, are you in the foothills of having more trolley shoppers or have you kind of reached where you want to be?
Sorry, Clive, the line wasn't very good. You're asking about the journey towards larger baskets and trolley shoppers?
Yeah.
Family shoppers, was that it?
Yeah.
Yeah, in food in particular.
Yeah.
Food. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
I think to your last point, of course, this is a journey. We only started four years ago to think about different store formats. The first thing to say is we are very encouraged by the basket size and the more family shop in our larger stores. You've only got to shop them, and you see families, kids with the kids' trolleys, you see bigger trolley shops and a full weekly shop as well.
No doubt people will top up if they want brands outside, and that's okay. Hopefully, we want to get those people shopping on Ocado for their brands. I think we've got a lot of opportunity, especially in these newer, bigger stores that I called out earlier to the previous question. Not forgetting, we still over-index on those smaller top-up stores.
We have a convenience format of 4,000 sq ft, which includes our franchise partners. We have a top-up store at 7,000 sq ft and what we call a full shop store between 15 and 20. Therefore, it's those larger stores we're seeing a bigger trolley shop and a bigger basket, and a very different perception as well of M&S in those stores, and there's 80 of them so far.
It's a journey, but people are reappraising us. I think that's why the value perception. I actually didn't think this would happen, by the way. The team have taken quite delight in messaging me every day. The fact that we've moved our value perception so significantly this year, where everyone else has gone back, is testament to people reappraising the quality but also the price.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Clive. Now, Tony Shiret. I'm always very relieved to see Tony's name on the team sheet because he's the only person who's been around nearly as long as me. Tony.
Archie, I could sue you for that comment, but I won't. Right.
It was a compliment, Tony.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
We veteran have to stick together.
I remember you when you were a finance director in short trousers. Yeah, just a couple of things for me. I just thought I'd play Jeremy into the game here. Just surprised that the working capital is neutral effectively across the year. I, given that the inventories are up, I thought that you were trying to move the clothing payable days back down towards sort of 90 days. I just wondered what the clothing payable days are and how they've moved year-on-year. Secondly, just reverting back to-
Tony, let's take that.
Yeah, sure.
I'm really glad you asked that question because the chairman was surprised as well. Jeremy.
Yeah. Hi, Tony. Yes, you're right. The guidance at the half year was GBP 100 million
Working capital outflow, the year end has been stronger than that. Some of that is phasing and some of that is around the payables. We are moving back towards 75 days. Some of that's happened in 2022, 2023. There's more to come in 2023, 2024. We've guided to about a GBP 50 million outflow in 2023, 2024, which reflects some of that. There's some phasing, there's some movement, we are moving to 75 days over time, that will be landed in the next year with.
What is it now?
We're moving from 90 to 75.
90 to 75.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's 90 now, yeah?
Yes. It's running at 90.
Well, it's running down.
It's running down.
We're on the journey, put it that way.
Yeah, we're on a journey. Exactly.
Okay. Talking about journeys, Katie has just outlined the latest supply chain revamp update program lasting for many years. I just wondered, I mean, obviously, having sort of seen you for quite a long time, I've been witness to a number of these, none of which has seemed to have worked.
I wondered, you know, if you could commit to actually giving us some sort of targets and some KPIs and to actually show your progress against those at future future presentations, because, you know, it's could be just all talk. I'm sure it's not, but it'd be nice to see something a bit more solid. Sorry if this seems cynical.
I'm glad you qualified your remark, Tony.
Tony,
Yeah, go on.
We will commit to doing something at the next Capital Markets Day. You've challenged us before. You're right to be slightly skeptical. We will share with, at the Capital Markets Day, some of the KPIs that we're aiming to deliver through this.
This is a multi-year plan. I should also just add, we're quite encouraged, Tony, by GIST. The KPIs we set, and we did announce a GBP 50 million target at the Capital Markets Day for GIST. We're going to be realizing that in line with how we laid that out. Across both businesses, it is one of the biggest priorities for us as a leadership team.
Okay. Thank you very much. Well done.
Okay. Yeah, Tony, there is substance to it. You're right. We should, as Stuart says, we should elaborate and spell it out. Okay. Richard Chamberlain. Richard, I see this morning you described our valuation as moderate. I don't know whether that's a good thing or not. As a man of moderation, I suppose we should be pleased by it.
Neither do I. Sounds like a sort of holding statement, doesn't it? Before I've read the results properly.
Far away.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I've got 2, actually. Could you just talk about the first up, the potential recovery of Brexit related costs over the over the coming year? You know, that's been an issue, hasn't it, in recent years, getting product into Ireland, their admin costs and so on. That's the first one.
Yeah, it's a move, Stuart can respond, but it's a moving piece still because the implementation of the Windsor agreement and the implementation of the new operating procedure for customs, inward, inbound customs, is due to be implemented in October. I was actually talking to people yesterday about it.
I talked to people in government about it. It's looking at the moment as if the Windsor agreements and the labeling requirement is going to be more onerous than initially thought. I won't detain the meek, but it's quite technical. It looks as they're going to be more onerous, but we don't yet know that. We think we're pretty on top of it. Stuart.
Yes. Look, it's sort of top of my mind. There's a couple of things. Firstly, we did commit to the importance of Ireland on the island of Ireland. One, because in clothing and home, we're very strong in the Republic of Ireland. In Northern Ireland, we're very strong in food and clothing and home, I should add. We knew the best thing was to face right into this at the time and try and make a success of it. In terms of cost recovery, that's quite hard to actually lay out as of now because of what Archie says.
We were quite encouraged by the, you know, after two years of limbo, the fact that literally not knowing what was going to happen, the Windsor Framework is a step forward and fundamentally good news for the people of Northern Ireland and the UK businesses serving them.
We, we think that's positive, but there's so many unanswered questions, and we do not know the costs, to Archie's point, the labeling, etc. We can't really answer that now, but we're doing quite a lot of good work. Just for example, we now have a local sourcing team in the Republic of Ireland, Eddie Murphy, actually. He's done some really good work with local sourcing, whether that's fresh, whether that's ambient, whether it's local Irish product. That is going very well.
We're also trialing other things like our partnership with Applegreen in the Republic of Ireland. We're looking to do something similar in Northern Ireland. Why that's important is we're putting more M&S food on forecourts with Applegreen, but that's also helping with our volumes or will do when we expand this.
It's helping with things like distribution because we're going to trial other things in our supply chain with Applegreen. There's a lot going on and the signs are encouraging. In fact, our performance in Applegreen is way above expectations. We can't quite answer the cost, the cost we put in and when we're going to get that out in more profitable sales and lower cost business. We are doing quite a lot when it comes to supply chain volume and local sourcing. I think this is gonna be a couple of years, to be honest, until we come out of this.
Really what we're saying is it is forcing us to reconfigure the business in Ireland. It's worth just reminding everybody that the regulatory cost has been a big drag on this business for the last four years.
Yeah.
The Irish food business really, depending how you look at it, has been reduced to roughly break even. That's the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland margins have been reduced, supply chain costs increased. We've got the labeling to come in. We've got the inbound. you know, French artisan cheese producers are now going to have to get VETs approval and other authorization documentation to be able to send their cheese to the UK, incidentally, they're going to have to label it not for the EU-
Not for the EU.
Even though it comes from the EU. There's lots of, you know, almost comic things still to come, and it has been a drag. Did you want to come back on that, Richard?
No, that's very helpful color. No, thank you, guys. Just one more though, if that's all right. A slightly different topic, which is Gist. I just wonder what your plans are for the additional spend on that, you know, in terms of sort of automating DCs and so on. What are the plans there, particularly in the next year or two? Thanks.
I think the good news, to start with Richard, is now it's fully in our control. We're not rushing at this because we're looking at the overall supply chain, clothing, home, and food. As you know, we've done some work in Donington and Bradford. I think the first thing is the efficiencies are coming through.
There's some big cost headwinds, which we would have paid for, by the way, even when we didn't own Gist. It's just now we can face into those headwinds and plan for them earlier. At the moment, it's all about efficiency. It's about making sure our sites are the best they can be at the moment. We're just at the, at this precise next few weeks, going through the future network plan on our leadership away day, and that's clothing, home, and food.
It's a bit early days to really lay out the capital plan and the transformation plan when it comes to site by site.
Okay. All right. Thanks very much.
There'll be more to come on that, I'm sure. We'll go to Ann Critchlow and then Adam Cochrane, and we'll see where we've got to on timing. Anne?
Thanks. Good morning. It's Anne Critchlow from Société Générale. I have got two questions, please. The first one's on Sparks Pay. Just wondering what sort of impact you've seen on sales growth from Sparks Pay, and if you could remind us, you know, sort of what level of risk you perceive in this. Thank you.
Thanks. Kate, take it, yeah.
We launched Sparks Pay last year, Anne. We currently got 5,800 customers using Sparks Pay, in a bank book of 2.5 million customers. It's a very small part of our business. The risk is pretty low. We have a series of clearly approval processes that customers go through, which are obviously backed and underwritten by HSBC, who's our partner in M&S Bank.
Initially, we had some challenges actually with approval rate, which we've been working on quite hard. What's been very interesting and encouraging is when we couple our detailed Sparks data with the bank's data, the approval rate becomes very strong, and we've had no issue in terms of any risk of customers not paying. We've had very little risk in that at all. It's GBP 500 up front, and what we see is those customers are using that and are spending, so we're quite encouraged by how customers are behaving, but it's very, very early days.
Okay, great. Thank you. Just a second one on product mix, if you could talk a little bit about what's selling well now compared to before the pandemic. Basically, are we back in a more normal market in terms of product mix in clothing and home? Thank you.
Of course. It's been very interesting actually. Last summer, post-pandemic, as you know, was the surge of formal and occasion wear. This summer, there were a couple of things I think it's worth calling out. First of all, we've seen a little bit more normality in terms of mix of products that customers are buying.
To be honest with you, it's been a little bit difficult to read because up until today, when it's gloriously sunny, and this week when it's been gloriously sunny, actually, we had some pretty poor weather in April and the beginning of May versus perhaps last year where it was slightly warmer. What we're seeing is slightly more of a return to normality. A couple of call-out categories I'd sort of mention, denim and casual trousers in women, very, very strong.
Lots of women still wearing denim and casual trousers to work. We see that continuing. In menswear as well, actually, casual wear has been trading very strongly, casual lightweight knits, men's casual trousers We are seeing quite a big uptick actually in our summer shop.
Linen, swimsuits, kids' casual summer wear, quite strong performance there, which I think it is twofold in this. One is the weather improving here and people sort of feeling positive about going out, being out about in the garden. Secondly, we see quite a strong uptick in our credit card book on the number of customers that have been booking holidays.
Yeah.
People are being very planful about holidays. They're thinking about going away. We see that in our travel money as well. Quite a strong performance in there. Not a massive swing for the post-pandemic. The only category that has been slightly softer for us, which is worth calling out, I think, is our furniture business.
There's a couple of reasons for that. One, I think customers who spent an awful lot of time at home during the pandemic have done everything they wanted to do to their homes over the short term. Secondly, actually, it is a considered purchase for customers. They're thinking probably quite carefully about where they spend their money, and I'd expect that to continue for a little while, and we've built that into our budget expectations. Hope that helps.
It does. Really interesting. Thank you.
Okay, thanks, Anne. We're running out of time, so we can keep it snappy. That would help. Let's go to Adam, and then we'll try and take at least one other. Adam, fire away.
Thanks for the question. 2, if I may. Firstly, the risk of regulation with regards to the food business. Lots of chatter about whether companies might need to do something about food pricing, et cetera. More of a question for the larger supermarkets, potentially. Do you think this would have any impact on your relative pricing or is there anything that you sort of sell any government intervention on food pricing?
Look, very quickly, Adam. I hope not. You know, I think we're very responsible. The food industry in the U.K. is a responsible industry. I think everyone's working incredibly hard. If I think about M&S on what we've tried to do to manage pricing through our whole supply chain from farmer, manufacturer, through supply chain, through to our cost of goods. I honestly think the last thing we need is more government regulation.
We've gone through quite a lot, more than I've ever experienced. HFSS being the most recent one, the implications of Brexit, all the other ESG regulation that's coming down the track that governments are delaying. I hope not. I think we're all trying to do the right thing, and I think we've tried to do the right thing in how we've managed value for customers this year.
Secondly, we're including factory gate prices are coming down in Asia. Is there a risk that if the market starts to the wider market starts to lower prices to the consumer rather than rebuild margins, what would M&S' reaction be in that kind of market environment?
I think I couldn't quite hear you, but I've got a simple answer, which is, as prices come down and commodity prices come down, wholesale prices, energy prices and everything else, we would want to pass that through to our customers and keep our shape on value. You know, we're pretty clear where we are.
The good thing about us is it's very much in our control because we're an own label business, and that means we can control every one of our products, our technical specifications, all the way from sourcing to selling. That gives us the ability to absolutely make sure, you know, 'cause the P&L is in every product we sell, that helps us manage it. We will pass things through. We've done it already as best we can, and we will continue.
We have a very good commodity tracker. We're very clear where we are, whether it's oil or wheat or dairy, the minute prices decrease, we pass that on while obviously balancing our margin. I think the big picture, Adam, is, you know, price inflation is in some ways quite kind to food retailers.
It sort of masks what's going on. Obviously, if prices start to come down and costs continue to inflate, that would put a lot of pressure on the industry. What we can do is manage our own position. The good thing about the food business is it's growing market share, relative performance is strong, value position is strong. Whatever comes, we're in better health than we have been for a long time.
I think that's right.
Okay. Thanks very much for that. Now we'll just take, we'll see how we go, but we'll take one more anyway. James Grzinic , do you want to chip in?
Yes. Morning. Thank you, Archie. Good morning, everybody. I had 3. I'll ask just 1 in the interest of time.
Thank you.
Can you perhaps help us understand from a switching gains perspective, you know, where are you really making inroads, both on the food side of things and in C&H? Who are you taking from disproportionately? That'd be very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, good question.
It is a good question. I mean, in summary, there's always ups and downs. It's very easy to look at our value and volume gains in food and clothing. Of course, we do have switching data. It does move a bit. I think you can see in the competition numbers where the winners and somewhat the losers are, of course.
I think the first thing on food is our customers all do shop elsewhere, especially when they've only got a convenient small store in their local neighborhood. It's not surprising that those people who are at the top of the league of Kantar, people will be switching to those retailers. At the same time, we're getting gains as well, which is why, of course, we're growing our share in value and volume in our food business.
That does change a bit. It's not as straightforward as the same retailers. It just change month to month. We are attracting share from the full line supermarkets, which is pretty straightforward. In clothing, did you wanna comment on switching in clothing?
Yeah. It's slightly harder to read in clothing, but clearly we have a series of competitors that we look at within the Kantar share data, and we kind of track roughly neck and neck with Next in terms of growth, and our desire to try and outperform them in terms of value and quality and style, which we're working very hard to do. We see some growth come actually from some of the pure play retailers, particularly ASOS and others. We think we've shaken some share off them, and a little bit from John Lewis as well.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, James. Okay, I think we're out of time, really. I know the team have got ton of stuff to do today, as you can imagine. I'm going to call it all that. Apologies to those we didn't get to. We'll pick that phrase.
We'll make sure we pick you up later. Just to say thank you all for joining us. Look, I think I would say watch the trajectory, you know. It's not just the results, it's the sense of where the business is going. There's never been more momentum and energy. I would say never, not in recent times at M&S. You know, my role as chairman is a lot easier than it's been for quite a long time. Good results, good performance, and we're excited about the year ahead. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.