Marks and Spencer set to announce MORE store closures – is YOUR local M&S shutting?

Last year, M&S announced it would be closing 30 stores as part of a brand overhaul designed to decrease the amount of shop floor space devoted to clothing by 10 per cent.

However industry sources have suggested Steve Rowe, M&S’s chief executive, is planning a bolder restructuring of the company with new chairman, Archie Norman.

The high street giant will release a first-half trading update on Wednesday.

Rowe took over the top job at M&S last year, and is hoping to revive the 133-year-old retailer amid struggling fortunes. Profits have nosedived in recent years.

Analysts expect pretax profits to have fallen by more than 10 per cent to £201m in the six months to the end of September, in stark contrast to a decade ago, when the retailer made a full-year profit of more than £1bn in 2008.

Last November, Rowe set out a five-year turnaround plan for the business, and said 30 of their more than 300 “full-line” stores – which sell clothing, homewares and food – would close down. A further 45 would be downsized or converted into food-only stores.

Investec analyst Kate Calvert expects M&S to report a 12 per cent drop in pretax profits to £203m thanks to poor sales and the weakness of sterling affecting its profitability, according to The Guardian.

Calvert told the Guardian it was “still early days” in Rowe’s turnaround plan, and said: “M&S is playing catch up in a difficult mid-market position.”

Analysts predict like-for-like clothing and home sales will be down 1.4 per cent this half and underlying food sales will be down 0.3 per cent.

Whitman Howard analyst Tony Shiret said the UK closure plan was “nowhere near aggressive enough” taking into account the scale of the five year decline in its store sales.

He said: “The space reduction in clothing and home looks too little.

“Meanwhile, food is being pushed out aggressively which is at odds with the general space dynamic among food retailers.”

Express.co.uk contacted Marks and Spencer, and they declined to comment.

Earlier this week another high street stalwart, Next, reported poor sales.

The company saw shares slump eight per cent after it reported sales had crawled up 1.3 per cent during the three months to October 29, far lower than the 2.9 per cent expected by the City.

Lord Simon Wolfson, chief executive of Next, warned “sales performance has remained extremely volatile and is highly dependent on the seasonality of the weather”.

September had been a strong month for Next, thanks, the company said, to cooler temperatures seeing winter clothes selling at a higher than expected rate. This was not repeated in October as the weather was warmer.

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