5 August 2026
If you are covering Next's latest financial results, please find below a comment from Mamta Valechha, consumer discretionary analyst at Quilter Cheviot:
"Next continued to deliver on its strong momentum with its second quarter trading statement comfortably beating expectations and guidance being raised. Now Next has always guided conservatively, which sets them up well for a beat, but nonetheless, these results underscore how few high-quality retailers there are in the market like Next.
"Full price sales were up 9.2%, materially ahead of the company own guidance of 4% and investor expectations. The key driver of the outperformance was the Overseas business with sales up a remarkable 37%, well ahead of guidance, and driven by the release of some pent-up demand in the Middle East and Northern Europe, and more effective marketing.
"To a lesser extent, outperformance was also driven by the UK, helped by the warm weather with sales up 2.8%. This modest growth has however been achieved despite the tough comparison with last year, where Next was taking advantage of M&S's woes from its cyber-attack. This growth in the UK has also predominantly come from non-Next brands, so will be lower margin too.
"To reflect the better-than-expected sales in Q2, Next has increased their sales growth guidance for the full year to 6.3% (from 5%) and profit guidance by 2%. Now this does reflect a moderation in the second half of the year for the international business as it laps the period last year when Next switched distribution services to Zeos, which increased stock availability, and therefore sales.
"Nonetheless, shares have rerated of late and are above recent averages, although as these results show this is well justified. With shares offering shareholder returns of 10% via a combination of earnings per share growth, dividends and share buybacks, Next is giving investors reason to cheer this summer."
