If we check the Marks and Spencer Group (LSE: MKS) share price over the past five years, it looks like a growth stock that we might have missed. It’s up 269% in that time. And stocks with a record like that are often running out of steam.
But taken another way, it can appear very different. The price might seem high now. But it’s still less than half where it was in 2007. And it was even higher as long ago as 1997. Thinking like that, maybe it’s really a recovery stock that could have further to go.
The M&S share price has had a weak year so far in 2025, down 5% year to date. But I don’t think that means it’s hit the end of the run.
The damage was done by April’s cyber attack. The company thinks it’s likely to knock £300m off this year’s operating profit. But we’ll have to wait until March 2026 to be sure of the outcome.
Marks is now back to business as usual, though it took until August to get its click-and-collect service back up and running. And we’re told there’s some nifty new security in place to help ward off anything similar.
But this is the kind of knock that can turn sentiment against a stock. And keep it that way for some time.
Bullish outlook
City analysts, however, have a healthy Buy consensus on the stock.
Their average target for the Marks and Spencer share price is 19% ahead of today, 421p. The top of the range is at 462p for a 30% gain. And the low end is at 342p, only 3% down. Even then, not a single broker I can see has M&S as a Sell.
What effect did the online attack have on recommendations? All that seems to have happened is the analysts have paused their habit of regularly lifting their targets on the company — targets they’d kept pushing up over the previous two years.
So, we could be looking at a share price around the mid-400p level in the relatively short term. And it does appear things could recover reasonably quickly from the pain of the cyber hit.
Earnings forecasts
Forecasts suggest earnings per share of around 36p by 2027. At today’s price, that would mean a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 9.8. For a company that’s been bouncing back so well, I reckon that looks way too cheap.
How about a valuation closer to the long-term FTSE 100 average? To reach a P/E of 15, we’d need be looking at an M&S share price of around 540p. That would be a gain of 53% over two and a half years.
As predictions go, this is far from a concrete one — more like an informed guess. M&S still faces retail pressure. And we could still get a shock when we see the damage in the 2025/26 results.
But I think this is one very British stock that investors should consider buying for the long term.
