LONDON (Reuters) - Retailer Marks & Spencer Group <MKS.L> posted an expected 40 percent fall in full-year profit and cut its final dividend by 33 percent to conserve cash, just 12 months after hiking it.
The 125-year-old group, which is the country's biggest clothing retailer, also said trading for the first seven weeks of the year was broadly in line with trends seen in the fourth quarter.
It said it remained cautious about the outlook for the remainder of the year.
M&S said it made an underlying pretax profit of 604.4 million pounds for the year to March 28.
This compares with analysts' consensus forecast of 603 million pounds, according to a company poll of 34 analysts, and 1.0 billion pounds made in the previous year.
The final dividend was cut to 9.5 pence and M&S said the 2009/10 interim dividend would be cut to 5.5 pence.
Shares in M&S have lost 18 percent of their value over the last year but have risen 23 percent over the last three months on recovery hopes, outperforming the DJ Stoxx European retail index <.SXRP> by 15 percent.
(Reporting by James Davey, editing by Kate Holton)