After boosting summer clothes sales, warm spring weather has enabled retailer NEXT to improve its full-year outlook once more. For the 13 weeks ending 26th April, the group’s full-price sales increased by 11.4 per cent, bringing its quarterly sales total to US $ 73 million higher than anticipated.
It increased its projection for pre-tax earnings by US $ 19 million to US $ 1.43 billion, which would represent a 6.8 per cent increase over the previous year, and added that full-year results were expected to be better than anticipated because of the first quarter outperformance.
Additionally, full-year sales, which were originally projected to reach US $ 7.03 billion, are now anticipated to increase by 6 per cent to US $ 7.16 billion.
The group included a warning since it was likely that some customers would have carried over summer purchases that would normally have been made in its second quarter.
Additionally, it still maintains that the impact of the national insurance increase will start to affect the broader economy, which might put pressure on sales in the second half.
