M&S: Its star print dress might have lit up the sky but the rain is falling on the food business

A bet on M&S Food was Steve Rowe's big idea for turning the business around. It's not looking clever. Nor is the Christmas ad featuring Paddington, with viewers claiming to have heard a rude word

Paddington: The movie is out at the weekend and he also features in M&S's Christmas ad

Think of a song with rain in it. There are plenty. Right now I have competing and contrasting earworms. There’s The Cult’s “Rain” and Steve Earle’s “The Rain Came Down”.

Both of them would work well as themes for M&S boss Steve Rowe’s results presentation. But I’m sure your choice would be equally apposite.

M&S, as a business, has been under a cloud of semi-permanent drizzle since, well, does anyone remember when it was last appropriate to look at one of its trading reports and say “not bad!”? And I mean “not bad” having factored in the group’s expectations management, which usually amounts to bosses talking about tough headwinds so the City is primed for a fall.

The trouble for the business and boss Steve Rowe – how long before financial scribes start using words like ‘embattled’ or ‘beleaguered’ when writing about him – is that the outlook feels really soggy. At M&S it’s quite literally, if you’ll forgive the expression, pissing it down.

When Mr Rowe rocked up he did something radical. M&S always used to be judged by its womenswear. No longer, declared the incoming CEO. It’s food that I fancy.

It was always a risky strategy. It is possible to revive clothing businesses. Produce stuff that people want to wear and they will come.

M&S has occasionally pulled off the trick, most recently with a £45 star print dress, which created a bit of a froth and quickly disappeared from the shelves. The trouble is it hasn’t done it with sufficient consistency to keep the numbers up.

Food, by contrast, used to be a banker for the business. Every time it trotted out another set of disappointing numbers there was M&S Food to keep shareholders smiling. So, said Mr Rowe, we’re going to close a load of our traditional stores, and take on Tesco and the other grocers by expanding our food outlets. The trouble is those grocers can be very tough competitors, and troubled rivals such as the aforementioned Tesco, and Morrisons, have revived themselves. They've been growing sales.

At M&S, excluding new store openings, they were, by contrast, down 0.1 per cent in the first quarter, and 0.1 per cent in the second. Mr Rowe is talking of headwinds and rivals putting their tanks on his lawn (they've worked out convenience is a winner).

So he’s opening less stores (80 this year and next year, down from 90). And the traditional M&S stores are going to close at a faster rate.

Analysts noted that the company made a bit more money than they’d expected, but that hardly counts as a plus point given how low their expectations were. Oh and finance chief Helen Weir is off to pursue a portfolio career. With chairman Archie Norman’s knife in her back? The company said it was her decision, but they always do.

Mr Rowe will be feeling the heat soon if M&S doesn’t start to show better results. He says he’s got a lot of work to do to sort the business out but he’s confident that he can do the job of “making M&S special again”. Stop me if you’ve heard that before.

Paddington Bear features in the Christmas ad, as the movie prepares to delight the nations children. It ought to help. But even that’s causing problems, with viewers claiming they’ve heard him saying a very rude word. There’s a word you could use about these results. It’s not the one Paddington is supposed to have said, or the one I used earlier. But it’s still rude.