anything under 7 cheap cheap cheap. good div. just paid. chart looks sick

Credit Suisse Underperform 465.60 370.00 370.00 Reiterates

Shore Capital Buy 465.60 - - Reiterates

Espirito Santo Execution Noble Neutral 465.60 370.00 370.00 Reiterates

Investec Sell 465.60 - - Retains

N+1 Singer Hold 465.60 445.00 445.00 Retains

Morgan Stanley Overweight 465.60 440.00 440.00 Reiterates

Q1 Interim Management Statement

'Some progress in General Merchandise and an excellent performance in Food'

· Group sales +3.3% *
· Total UK sales +2.7%:Food +4.5%; GM +0.5%
· Like-for-like UK sales +0.3%:Food +1.8%; GM -1.6%
· International sales +8.7% *
· M&S.com sales +29.9%

Half Yearly Report

Half-year results:
• Group sales1 £4.9bn (last half year £4.7bn)
• Underlying profit before tax3 £261.6m (last half year £287.3m4)
• Underlying basic earnings per share3 13.5p (last half year 14.1p4)
• Interim dividend 6.2p per share (last half year 6.2p)
• Net debt £2,787.2m (last half year £2,629.7m)

Statutory results:
• Profit before tax £280.6m (last year £280.0m4)
• Basic earnings per share 15.5p (last year 13.8p4)

sp 437p falling like a stone.

UBS downgrade to neutral apparently Tp 475p - finger hovering!

Just had a dabble @437p

sp still falling where's the bottom, 400p?

Long March contract on spreads @ 442.0.

Stop to entry for risk free trade.

Out for +15p

Probably a wise move skinny :O)

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Deltastream

Have a limit buy to add waiting @ 452.7 not holding my breath, volume will need to jettison. If triggered looking for 460.0

MACD looks well set up Chris.

The $64,000 question is MKS going to do a DEB or a NXT?

debenhams ...... food side apart, which i think is badly o'priced anyway, the company is totally lost in the wilderness

MKS PER 15+ NXT PER 19+ ASC PER 120+.... no contest!

% of what?
what sp may or may not have done over the last year(??) is not strictly relevant
we all know "ordinary" high street trade has been dreadful and it is only the on-line and linked stuff that is performing well

yet again, NXT has beaten the odds and its forecasts and more importantly has, i think, the largest on-line uk fashion biz
NXT was also brave enough or strong enough to refuse to be drawn into dumping stock before christmas
NXT designs are now miles better than they ever were, and have strong management - even if they treat their design staff pretty appallingly

what does MKS offer?
as far as i can see, just a continuation of fashion sludge

The thing that struck me was that both DEB & MKS were discounting before Christmas.

So more likely to underperform?

opening more stores is not the way to go, online is the future, locking up cash in bricks and mortar is a recipe for cash flow problems in the future, even TSCO and SBRY have finally realised that.