Financial Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 3

Financial Analysis - Essay Example For this purpose, the performance of the company for the last few years has been taken into consideration. The results are compared with that of its competitors to determine the relative position of the company within the industry. Comparison will also be made with the industry standards to determine the effectiveness with which it manages its performance. Marks & Spencer (M&K) is a UK based retail company that offer products known for their high quality. The product portfolio of Marks & Spencer is highly diversified, comprising of food products, household related goods, apparel and many more. The company started as a single retail store in early 1884 and became an international retail chain in a matter of few years. Within a time span of 125 years, the company had diversified itself and entered more than 41 overseas territories. It boasts of 21 million footfalls per shop per week (M&S-a, 2010). To determine the short term performance of the company, its financial statements for the last three years will be taken into consideration. This time period will be stretched to 5 years to understand its long term trend. To determine the current position of the company, its present performance in 2009-2010 is compared with that of 2007-2008. Such comparison is initiated to understand the effect that economic recession had on the company. This will also help to analyse how the company managed to overcome the recessionary phase. Reports have revealed that recession had no major impact on the total revenue of the company. Only, a fall of 0.44 percent was registered in the total revenue. However, the operating profitability did suffer a fall of 28 percent. In the same way, the net profit (profit after tax) also reduced by 38 percent. As the operational cost increased, the management reduced its net debt by 19 percent. From the above fact and figures, it can be concluded that the revenue of M&S was affected marginally