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LONDON, United Kingdom — Next Plc, the U.K.'s second-largest clothing retailer, reported first-quarter sales that beat estimates, a performance boosted by an earlier release of the company's summer brochure and a spell of warm weather.
Sales under the Next brand rose 3.2 percent in the 13 weeks through April 25, with new space contributing 1.9 percentage points of the growth, the Leicester, England-based company said in a statement Wednesday. The median of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg was for a 2 percent increase.
The retailer maintained full-year forecasts for sales growth of 1.5 percent to 5.5 percent and pretax profit of 785 million pounds ($1.2 billion) to 835 million pounds. Next lowered the sales forecast last month, saying some collections weren’t doing as well as they were a year ago.
Sales at the retailer’s shops advanced 0.5 percent in the quarter, while revenue at its home-shopping business, Next Directory, rose 7 percent.
By Katarina Gustafsson; editors: Matthew Boyle, Paul Jarvis.
