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M&S chief executive Steve Rowe says the retailer is "a self-help story at the moment".

In the past, M&S said it wants to show sustainable profit growth in three to five years time. Whether this means poor profits in the intervening period, Mr Rowe is refusing to say.

In a call with reporters, Mr Rowe says M&S is looking "at the long-term business" but admits "we have to make substantial changes".

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ZPG, the owner of online property portals Zoopla and Prime Location, as well as price comparison website Uswitch, has reported a 31% rise in pre-tax profits to £29.5m for the six-month period to March 31, while sales for the same period rose 33% to £156.9m.

Zoopla saw almost 350 million visits to its websites, and the bad winter weather prompted more consumers to use Uswitch to select a new energy provider.

ZPG is in the process of being bought by US private equity firm Silver Lake Management for £2.2bn. The deal is still subject to shareholder approval.

"Our property division performed well across each vertical, helped by demand for additional products, cross-sell and new contract wins, including the continued return of agents to our portals," said ZPG's founder and chief executive Alex Chesterman.

"Our comparison division also performed well with leads up across each vertical. Energy had an exceptionally strong first half as a result of ongoing optimisation of the consumer journey and extreme weather during the period, prompting increased switching levels."

As with other retailers, M&S has also had to contend with higher business rates which chief executive Steve Rowe says has affected the profitability of some of its stores.

He adds: "We have other challenging taxes whether it be the apprenticeship tax or the legislation around minimum wages. We make sure we do the right thing for our shareholders and how we react to that."

Would Mr Rowe consider following Next's example of asking for rent cuts , externalwhen neighbouring retailers get discounts as part of a company voluntary arrangement (CVA)?

He says M&S is not doing that: "But we are working closely with landlords to make sure the rents we pay are appropriate to the business going forward and that's a negotiation that is standard within the retail trade."

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M&S recognises it has a problem in its food business, not least that it's not attracting enough customers to do their everyday, standard shops.

In its results statement it says its focus in the year ahead is on "repositioning the business to be more relevant, more often to our customers, to drive sustainable sales growth".

It says its changing its approach to product development "to ensure we shift back to our strength in key shopping missions with new lines which have a broad appeal to family age customers and everyday occasions".

The changes will mean M&S has go to invest more, it says, but it reckons this will be offset by things like cost cutting, removing excessive packaging costs and improving stock availability and cutting down on waste.

The retailer also repeated it plans to limit the Simpy Food opening programme to the "highest returning locations".

Following those results from M&S, shares in the company have risen by nearly 5% to 306p.

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Commenting on the problems facing UK retailers in general, M&S's chief executive Steve Rowe says: "We're very concerned with the High Street, we look very carefully at what is going on.

However he says: "This is not just about High Streets, this is about the right locations in the right towns. But clearly there is a trend sometimes for customers to shop out-of-town where parking is free and readily available and is accessible and that's something we have to react to."

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A common complaint about M&S is that people don't like the clothes it is selling in stores.

Its chief executive Steve Rowe says: "We've spent an awful lot of time working on making sure that we've got great wardrobe essentials, focusing on contemporary, wearable, stylish clothes. We've changed the fits on a number of different garments to make sure they're contemporary and we're seeing customers overall react well to that."

He tells Today: "I think the key thing is in womenswear is that for the first time is seven years we've actually gained customers and this a good thing but we've got to make sure that the offer is right.

"Again part of this modernisation programme of the stores is to close out some of the small stores where we can't give the full offer and show customers in our better stores, our bigger stores the full range of what M&S does."

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Commenting on the M&S results, retail analyst Bryan Roberts, global insights director at TCC global, said:“It’s worrying to see that M&S’s slowdown in food has continued.

"A like for like decline of 0.6% in the fourth quarter Q4 reflects a deepening trend since Christmas: its rivals have closed the quality gap, but the price gap has remained the same.

"As retailers across the industry have invested more heavily in their premium and private label offerings, M&S’s pricing has looked increasingly over-the-top. An over-reliance on complicated multi-buys is unlikely to help—shoppers will rarely want to buy three of an item to find value."

M&S is pretty upfront in its results statement.

On food sales it says its "performance in key events was strong".

However it adds "everyday performance was poor, with intense competition and reflecting a progressive decline in competitiveness in the core ranges".

Its market share remained level but the fall in profit margin year-on-year was more than it had expected. The retailer said it had "continued to absorb input cost inflation".

"In the year ahead, our focus is on repositioning the business to be more relevant, more often to our customers, to drive sustainable sales growth."

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M&S boss Steve Rowe admits that the company's Castle Donington e-fulfilment centre - which struggles to cope with peak demand and uses some of "dated" systems - "is a difficult thing for us at the moment".

He says: "Frankly, it's failed on the customer proposition. That's not good enough at a time when customers want more merchandise delivered quicker and quicker. We have to make sure that we can respond to that demand.

"What we're saying is we have put in plans to improve that over the next year or so, to make sure we can improve the proposition but importantly as we move forward we'll look for a new solution for our ecommerce distribution."

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Japan's Softbank has confirmed it will sell its approximately 20% stake in India's Flipkart to global retail giant Walmart.

Earlier this month, in the world's largest ever e-commerce buy-up, Walmart paid $16bn (£11.8bn) for a 77% stake in Flipkart - India's biggest online retailer.

There had been some doubt over what Softbank would do with its Flipkart stake, which it acquired through its tech-focused Vision Fund for $2.5bn in August last year.

Softbank did not disclose any further details about its deal with Walmart, but the Japanese giant had said earlier its Flipkart stake was now worth about $4bn.

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More on the M&S Food results - and the retailer says while sales increased 3.9% as we opened 62 new Simply Food stores, like-for-like revenue, which strips out new capacity, was actually down 0.3%.

Drilling down into those M&S figures shows that food sales revenue was up by 3.9% in the year to the end of March, while clothing and home sales were down by 1.4%.

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M&S chief executive Steve Rowe explains to Today why the retailer is shutting down some 100 stores.

"For some time everyone has been aware that there's been a change in customers' buying habits. We've seen a shift from High Streets to out-of-town and importantly a shift to online trading.

"I said last year that we would expect Marks & Spencer to have about a third of its business online in the next five years and what we need to do is modernise our estate and make sure we've got exciting, appropriate places for our customers to shop and this is really about making sure we respond to customers and where they're shopping in the future."

Marks and Spencer says it also has work to do on the online front.

"Although our online sales are growing, our online capability is behind the best of our competitors and our website is too slow.

"Our fulfilment centre at Castle Donington has struggled to cope with peak demand and some of our systems are dated. In both businesses we need to revitalise our ranges and reassert our reputation for value for money."

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M&S says in its results statement that it's "facing facts"

"The continued migration of clothing and home online, the development of global competition, the growth of home delivery in food and the march of the discounters all amount to threats to our business and market position.

"These, together with a challenging UK consumer market, mean that we have to modernise our business to ensure we are competitive and reignite our culture. Accelerated change is the only option."

That's why its stepping up its store closure programme "renewing and closing stores more quickly".

But that's not all, it says. "Our supply chains in both clothing and home and in food require significant upgrades, so that we can be faster to market, reduce high stock levels in clothing, and improve availability and waste in food," it adds.

M&S said its international business saw profits before adjusting items more than double to £135.2m, as a result of the "successful exit of loss-making owned markets and favourable currency effects".

Marks and Spencer said the the profit before tax and adjusting items, which was down by 5.4%, had been hit by the fall in food profit margins.

The "adjusting items" totalled of £514.1m including £321.1m for the M&S UK store estate closure programme.

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Marks and Spencer said revenues rose by 0.7% to £10.69bn up from £10,62bn.