Next lifts guidance and unveils special dividend after strong Q1

High street retail giant Next has lifted its guidance for sales and profits this year after a strong performance in the first quarter.The company also announced that it would pay a special dividend and raise the limit of its share buyback.Next Brand sales for the first 13 weeks of the financial year were up 10.8%, with new space contributing 2.2% to growth. This is well ahead of the 4-8% full-year growth guidance the company gave in March.Meanwhile, Next Retail sales were up 8.8% during the period and Next Directory grew by 13.7%.The company has now raised its growth guidance for total Brand sales for the financial year ending January 2015 to 5.5-9.5%."This new guidance might look conservative in the light of the first quarter's performance. However, we always expected the first quarter to show above average sales growth as the comparative period last year suffered from a particularly cold spring and Easter Holiday period," Next said.Full-year profit before tax (PBT) is expected to total £750-790m, up 8-14% over the year, ahead of the previous target of £730-770m which would have represented 5-11% growth.In March, Next set out a share price limit of 6,245p which was the maximum price at which it would buy back shares. This was set using the mid-point of its previous guidance range for PBT.However, given the raised guidance and the fact that the shares have traded consistently above this level in the first quarter, the company has decided to return surplus capital to shareholders through a special dividend of 50p per share. The buyback price limit has also been raised to 6,400p.BC