8th May 2025 08:40
(Alliance News) - Next PLC on Thursday nudged its annual profit outlook higher, for the second time this year, after a better-than-expected first quarter.
In response, shares in Next rose 1.2% to 12,440.00 pence each in London on Thursday. They had earlier hit an all-time high of 12,545.00p.
The Leicester-based retailer said full price sales jumped 11% year-on-year in the thirteen weeks to April 26, GBP55 million ahead of its forecast, which was to be up 6.5%.
Next said performance was helped by the warmer weather which saw "much stronger" than expected sales in its Retail shops.
"We believe much of the over-performance in the first quarter has been the result of warmer weather, which has benefited the sale of summer-weight clothing. It is likely that some of these sales have been pulled forward from Q2. So, despite the strength of Q1, we are not increasing our sales guidance for Q2, or the rest of the year," Next added.
"In our experience, shops benefit disproportionately from the favourable weather. So we are expecting our Retail sales to return to being broadly flat for the rest of the year," the firm observed.
Nonetheless, Next upped its pretax profit guide to GBP1.08 billion from GBP1.07 billion. In March, Next had raised annual profit guidance by GBP20 million.
The new guide would represent a 6.8% rise from the prior year. The previous guidance would have been a 5.4% on-year rise.
Next still expects total group sales of GBP6.6 billion for the year.
The retailer raised its full-year post-tax EPS projection to 698.1p from 690.7p, would be growth of 9.7% from 636.2p in the last financial year.
In the 13 week period, Online sales rose 8.9%, Retail sales increased 5.2% and Online International sales leapt 30%.
Next said it is "more cautious" about sales in the second half of the financial year because the comparative numbers (in autumn winter 2024) were much stronger.
"In addition, we believe that the full effects of this April's national insurance increases will begin to filter through to the wider economy in the second half," it said.
The firm will next update on sales on July 31. It will cover the 26 weeks to July 26.
By Jeremy Cutler, Alliance News reporter
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