The price of shares in FTSE 100 clothing retailer Next (LON:NXT) climbed by 3.24% to 6,370p (as of 11:35 BST) despite the firm reporting a 33% drop in revenues for the half year ended July. There has been some recovery in sales more recently with the last seven weeks up by 4% relative to the same period of the prior year. Management upped their guidance on full-year pre-tax profits to £300 million.
Sales held up through the lockdown better than had been anticipated, in part due to the scale of NEXT’s online operations before the start of the pandemic and the group’s stores outside of town centres.