The Irish arm of retail giant Marks and Spencer (M&S) last year returned to profit to record pre-tax profits of €18.72m.
New accounts filed by Marks & Spencer (Ireland) Ltd show that the business returned to pre-tax profit as revenues increased by 0.16% from €371.66m to €372.26m in the 12 months to the end of March 2025.
The pre-tax profit of €18.7m followed a pre-tax loss of €8.8m in the prior year - a positive swing of €27.5m.
The business returned to profit after its exceptional charges reduced from €42.32m in fiscal 2024 to €9m last year.
The directors state that the exceptional charges of €9m "relate to redundancy cost provisions relating to certain roles which have been made redundant as part of our strategic transformation to create a sustainable business for our colleagues and customers".
The bulk of the exceptional charge for the prior year concerned a non-cash impairment charge of €35.8m relating to the company's investment in Marks and Spencer Turkey Clothing Textile LLC.
On the sales performance last year, the directors state that food sales grew by 5.8% from €161.4m to €170.73m "with sales growth coming from both our own stores and from the continued rollout of our food offer to more Applegreen stores".
They state that store sales of fashion, home and beauty declined by 5.8% from €156.47m to €147.47m "where the market was challenging, particularly during the Summer months".
The directors report that online sales of fashion, home and beauty grew by 0.5% from €53.77m to €54.05m.
The directors state that gross grofit was €134.7m, a reduction of €7.2m on the prior year.
They state that this was mainly driven by the year-on-year reduction in fashion, home and beauty sales in store, increased logistics costs and one-off benefits underpinning the gross profit performance last year.
The directors state that operating expenses decreased by €1m compared to the prior year, driven mainly by a decrease in staffing costs of €2.2m and store cost savings of €0.6m.
They state that "these savings, despite our continued investment in colleague pay and inflationary headwinds, reflect our continued focus on reducing costs and building a more simplified operating model".
They state that these savings were offset by increased depreciation and amortisation costs of €1.7m, partly reflecting our ongoing investment in its store estate.
Numbers employed by the retailer declined by 100 from 1,228 to 1,128 as staff costs decreased from €55.9m to €53.66m.
The profit takes account of non-cash depreciation costs of €11.98m. Pay to directors totalled €702,000 made up of €651,000 in emoluments and €51,000 in pension contributions.
Shareholder funds at the end of March 30th 2025 totalled €181.55m that included accumulated profits of €74.68m.
Cash funds decreased from €13.8m to €4.79m.
In a post balance sheet event, a note states that "in April 2025, Marks and Spencer Group plc announced that it had been managing a cyber incident".
The note states that "this significantly impacted the performance of the Ireland business in the first half of the 2026 financial year".
The note adds that "the temporary pause in our online operations during the Summer impacted online sales. Store sales in fashion, home and beauty were impacted by reduced availability."
"Our Food business was impacted by higher levels of waste caused by manual stock allocation," it added.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
