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LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Next, Britain's secondbiggest retailer by sales, said on Thursday it will pay anotherspecial dividend, totalling 90 million pounds ($137 million),and flagged the prospect of three more similar payouts.
The group, which has outperformed rivals for a decade due toa strong online offer, new store openings and diversificationinto new product areas, said it would pay a special dividend of60 pence a share on May 1 to investors on its register on April10.
Next has a well established policy of returning surplus cashto shareholders through share buybacks or special dividends. Itslast special dividend, one of 50p a share, was announced inDecember.
The retailer forecast that at the lower end of its profitguidance for the 2015-16 year it will generate around 360million pounds of surplus cash.
Next said that if its share price remained above 67 pounds,its self imposed limit for doing share buy backs, it wouldreturn this cash in four quarterly special dividends ofapproximately 90 million pounds each, or 60p per share, perquarter. The first of these was announced on Thursday.
Despite the new increased payout and the prospect of more,Next said it remained cautious for the year ahead and was notchanging its 2015-16 profit guidance.
In December the firm forecast full price sales growth in the2015-16 year of 2.5-7.5 percent, with profits expected to growin line with sales.
Next will report results for the year to Jan. 2015 on March19. It has forecast a pretax profit of 775 million pounds.
Shares in the firm, up 18.4 percent over the last year, wereflat at 7,110 pence at 1138 GMT, valuing the business at 10.9billion pounds. ($1 = 0.6559 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Neil Maidment)
Next (NXT)
