Next upgrades profit outlook again as it benefits from summer spending
Next has upgraded its profit outlook for the third time this year, forecasting a pre‑tax profit of £1.2bn, slightly above its previous estimate. The retailer reported a 9% rise in full‑price sales in the second quarter, driven by summer weather and demand in the Middle East and northern Europe. Its shares jumped nearly 7% to a record high, contrasting with other UK retailers facing tougher trading conditions.
- ▪Next raised its pre‑tax profit guidance to £1.2bn, about £25m higher than previously forecast.
- ▪Full‑price sales grew 9% in the second quarter, more than double the initial 4% estimate.
- ▪The company's shares rose almost 7% to a fresh record high after the announcement.
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| Original publisher | The Guardian — UK |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/05/next-upgrades-profit-outlook-again-benefits-from-summer-spending |
| Publication time | Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:30:34 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-05T08:45:41.875Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-05T08:45:41.875Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | sex5poqa3oXE · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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Next has a long history of pushing expectations higher and then beating them. Photograph: Robert Chlopas/AlamyView image in fullscreenNext has a long history of pushing expectations higher and then beating them. Photograph: Robert Chlopas/AlamyNextNext upgrades profit outlook again as it benefits from summer spendingRetailer expects to end year with pre-tax profit of £1.2bn, about £25m higher than forecast previouslyLauren AlmeidaWed 5 Aug 2026 04.30 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleNext has raised hopes that UK shoppers are still willing to spend despite pressures on household budgets, as it upgraded its profit guidance for the third time this year.The clothing and homeware retailer said it benefited from sunny weather and the release of some “pent-up demand” in the Middle East and…
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