Next Share News (NXT)

UBS has nudged up its price target for Next after the fashion retailer's trading update on Wednesday.The broker has left unchanged its prediction of a 1% decline in like for like sales over the full year for the High Street operations but has revised its forecast for the online and catalogue business, Directory. UBS now thinks Directory's full year sales will grow 3%, having previously forecast 1% growth.The broker has raised its fiscal 2010/11 full year profit before tax forecast from £540m to £560m.Analyst Andrew Hughes notes that the stock trades on a discount to the retail sector of around 10%, "We think Next should trade in line with the peer group given recent market share gains, space expansion and cash generation," Hughes argues.Its discounted cash flow-based price target has been raised to 2500p from 2350p. The broker'ss "buy" recommendation has been maintained.Morrisons has been the star performer in the supermarket sector over the last few years but those days could be drawing to a close. Citigroup warns.The supermarket reported 0.8% like for like growth (excluding fuel and VAT) in the first quarter compared to the comparable period of 2009. The market was expecting growth of around 2%, Citi suggests, while the performance also compares unfavourably with the 4% gain in like for like (LFL) sales in the fourth quarter of 2009.Based on data from market research group TNS, Citi believes that both Sainsbury and Tesco LFL growth is running at around 1% at present and Asda's LFL growth might be flat to negative. "Morrison is no longer outperforming the sector to the degree we have become accustomed to over the last two years," Citi analyst Alastair Johnston said.JP Morgan Cazenove is raising its earnings forecasts for Tomkins on the back of the strong start to the year the engineer has made and the prospect of further progress to come.Cazenove has lifted its earnings per share (EPS) forecast for 2010 by 5.4% to 30.43 cents, while the 2011 forecast has been raised by 3.6% to 36.09 cents.Based on these revised forecasts the stock is trading at a discount to the sector of between 30% and 38%, depending on your preferred valuation method (enterprise value as a proportion of sales or earnings before interest and tax, or the price/earnings ratio), Cazenove maintains."We believe this scale of discount to be excessive given that margin of Tomkins is inline with average for our universe. Hence, we are maintaining our Overweight recommendation," the broker said.Citigroup has also been busy with its eraser and pencilling in new earnings forecasts for Tomkins. "We upgrade our Adjusted Operating Profit forecast by 9% from ?390m to ?425m and on the back of this our EPS rises by 11%. We raise 2011E EPS by 8%, 2012E by 5%," Citi analyst Mark Fielding said."After recent market-related weakness we see the IMS [interim management statement] as supportive of the share and would expect a positive reaction. In addition Tomkins' geographic skew away from Europe (18% of sales) towards the US (56%) and RoW (26%) makes it less exposed than average to the risks related to recent European growth concerns," the broker concluded.