Archie Norman

Hello, and welcome to the Marks & Spencer 2026 Annual Results. Stuart Machin, our Chief Executive, is going to introduce the results. Alison Dolan, our Finance Director, will take you through the financial detail, and Stuart will then talk about the future. Obviously, last year's figures were heavily colored by the incident that occurred in the early part of the year. And although it actually happened in April, the impact on our trading performance rolled on through much of the year, tapering towards the end and particularly affected Fashion, Home and Beauty.

So there's a limit to what you can read into the figures. The results are what they are. But adversity can make you stronger. And I feel that we came together through the year with common purpose that actually we continued the reshaping of the business, the investment, particularly in new stores and renewal stores. And we ended the year with a very strong balance sheet. Our conviction is this business has not really delivered its potential for decades. So we're not really here to massage the status quo or worry about one year at a time.

We're here to build a growth business for decades to come. And therefore, we're very happy to be moving now into a stage where we can accelerate the pace of investment. It's a new phase for M&S, and we already have some very exciting commitments to automation of the supply chain, to technology, some of it fashionably AI and also to a very solid pipeline of new stores and renewal stores where we're investing increasingly in larger, high-intensity, high sales per foot stores