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LONDON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - British fashion retailer Next
said its sales in the nine weeks to 26 December were
much better than it had expected, although an additional
property provision resulted in it nudging down its pretax profit
forecast for the year.
Next, the first major UK listed non-food retailer to update
on Christmas trading, said full-price sales fell -1.1% on last
year, beating its central guidance of -8% given in October.
That came despite the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on
trading in stores and constraints on online capacity.
.
The sales performance would have boosted full-year pretax
profit to 370 million pounds, which would have been its fourth
upgrade in five months, but it said two exceptionals had
resulted in new guidance of 342 million pounds ($464.8 million)
for the year to end-January.
It said it anticipated a 14% loss of full-price retail sales
in January due to the lockdown closure of 90% of its stores and
it would also incur costs clearing more of its retail
end-of-season sale stock online.
($1 = 0.7358 pounds)
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Kate Holton)
Next (NXT)
