Full Price Sales Up 21.3% At Next

Next PLC has issued a trading statement for Q1 2022.

Headlines:

• In the thirteen weeks to 30 April full price sales¹ were up +21.3% versus last year, in line with our guidance for this period.     
  
  
• We are maintaining our guidance for full year profit before tax at £850m, which would be up +3.3% versus last year.  Guidance for Earnings Per Share of 557.3p would be up +5.0% versus last year. 

¹ Full price sales are total sales excluding VAT, less items sold in our mid-season and end-of-season Sales events, our Clearance operations and sales through Total Platform.  These are not statutory sales. 

Full Price Sales Performance By Business Channel:

Full price sales versus last year are set out below.  Last year, most of our Retail stores were shut for the majority of the first quarter, which is why Retail growth is so strong at +285%.  Conversely, last year Online sales were boosted by Retail closures, which is why we planned Online sales to be down in the first quarter against last year.  Online sales against three years ago remained strong and were up +47% versus 2019/20.

The right hand column shows the three year growth versus 2019/20, which is the most recent year not disrupted by COVID.  The three year growth of +19.5% is the equivalent of a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of +6.1%. 

² In March, we closed our websites in Ukraine and Russia.  Excluding Ukraine and Russia, Overseas full price sales were down -7% versus last year and up +60% versus three years ago.  

Guidance For Full Price Sales, Profit and Earnings Per Share:

Our guidance for the full year is set out below.  The guidance for sales and profit before tax remains unchanged from that given in our Year End Results in March. 

For completeness, full price sales guidance against three years ago is shown below.  The table demonstrates that, on a three year basis, our central guidance for sales growth for the rest of the year is 1.5% lower than that experienced in the first quarter.

Cash Flow, Shareholder Distributions and Investments:

In our Year End Results in March we forecast that, at our central guidance, we would generate around £220m of surplus cash (after interest, tax, capital expenditure, investments or acquisitions and ordinary dividends), which we would either (1) return to shareholders (via share buybacks or special dividends) or (2) invest in equity stakes in potential Total Platform clients.  Since then, we have purchased £107.5m of shares and spent £20m acquiring minority stakes in a number of businesses, the lion's share of this investment being in JoJo Maman BéBé.  

Share Buybacks:

So far this year, we have purchased 1.6m shares at an average share price of £65.52, totalling £107.5m.  This has reduced the number of shares in issue by 1.2% since the January 2022 year end.  

Second Quarter Trading Statement:

Our next sales update will cover the first 26 weeks of the year to 30 July 2022 and is scheduled for Thursday 4 August 2022. 

Source : Next PLC

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