High street retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has reported a growth in half year sales and profit.

According to its latest trading update for the 26 weeks ended 28 September 2024, total sales rose 5.7% to £6.4bn from £6.1bn in 2023.

Pre-tax tax profit before adjusting items rose 17.2% to £407.8m from £348.1m year-on-year.

M&S said that food sales were up 8.1% to £4.1bn, while Clothing & Home revenues rose 4.7% to £2bn, with like-for-like sales up 5.3%.

Within the category, online sales were up 11.3% and store sale rose 1.7%, while adding that the exit of bulky furniture completed in August, freed “resources and space to focus on growth in core Home”.

Stuart Machin, Chief Executive said: “Executing our strategy to ‘Reshape M&S for Growth’ has again delivered an increase in customers, sales value and volume, market share, profit and returns. Both Food and Clothing have now delivered market share growth for four consecutive years.

“Central to our strategy is our vision to be the most trusted retailer, with quality products at the heart of everything we do. This is not something we take lightly, and our relentlessness in delivering customers the best quality, innovation, service and value only available at M&S underpins our trading momentum.

“Across Clothing & Home online, we need to accelerate our transformation and reimagine our proposition. Under new leadership, we’ve now got a grip on our digital and technology infrastructure, as progress to date has been slower than we would have liked, so we must accelerate delivery.

“We are resetting priorities in International to drive future growth, as well as acting now to improve short-term performance. We have fresh impetus in our store rotation plan with the acquisition of ten major new sites in high quality, high growth locations, but we want to go faster so every store is a store we’re proud of.”