The retailer Next has raised its profit outlook for the current year after earnings rose 10% in 2024/25 and topped one billion pounds for the first time.
The group said it made a pretax profit of 1.011 billion pounds in its year to January as Total group sales rose 8.2% to 6.32 billion.
However Next cautioned that “the UK economy is expected to remain challenging in the near term, with rising employer taxes following the October Budget expected to reduce consumer spending and impact the broader economy.”
The retailer forecasts a reduction in like-for-like sales in the coming year, with an expected decline of 2%, though new store openings are expected to partially offset this, adding around 1.7% to sales.
“For the year ahead, we are budgeting for retail full price sales, on a like-for-like basis, to be down -2.0%. The addition of new space is expected to add +1.7% to Retail sales, meaning that we expect Retail full price sales to be down -0.3% versus last year,” the company said in its statement.”
