Next Q1 Trading Better Than Expected

Next plc has published a trading update for the first quarter of 2025. 

Headlines

• The first quarter has been better than expected.  In the thirteen weeks to 26 April, NEXT full price sales were up +11.4% versus last year.  This was +£55m ahead of our forecast for the period, which was to be up +6.5%.
  
  
• 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. 2
  
  
• Accounting for the £55m of additional sales in Q1, we are increasing our guidance for NEXT Group profit before tax for the full year by +£14m to £1,080m.   

FULL PRICE SALES PERFORMANCE BY BUSINESS DIVISION 

Our performance in both the UK and overseas was better than we had anticipated.  Sales in our Retail shops have been much stronger than we expected but, 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. 

GUIDANCE FOR SALES, PROFIT AND EARNINGS PER SHARE (EPS)

Our revised guidance for the full year is summarised below, along with our previous guidance which is shown in grey. 

Sales Guidance for Q2 and the second half

Our sales guidance for the rest of the year is summarised below.  We have increased our full year guidance by the overachievement in full price sales to date.  We have not revised our expectations for the rest of the year, because we think some of the overachievement in Q1 will have pulled forward sales of summer-weight products from Q2. 

As we mentioned in our March guidance, we are more cautious about sales in the second half 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.  For completeness, we have shown the two year growth (versus 2023/24) in the right hand column in grey.  

NEXT TRADING STATEMENT

Our next sales update will cover the first 26 weeks of the year to 26 July 2025 and is scheduled for Thursday 31 July 2025.  

1) NEXT full price sales include items sold in Retail and Online plus NEXT Finance interest income, but excludes Sale events, Clearance, Total Platform commission and the sales from subsidiaries.   

2) NEXT Group profit before tax excludes: (1) the cost of brand amortisation, (2) the profit attributable to shares that we do not own in subsidiary companies.  In the prior year an exceptional, non-cash, loss relating to the closure of our defined benefit pension scheme was also excluded.  No exceptional items are anticipated in the current year. 

Source : Next plc

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