High street sales drop as Next struggles

Enderby-based retail giant Next has taken a big hit to its high street sales performance for the half-year to 29 July.

The firm’s retail sales figures dropped by 7.4% over the period. However, they were helped by a rise of 11.4% from its Directory business.

Sales across the firm increased by 0.7% over the six months, but remain 1.2% down on year to date.

The firm says it expects to make between £680m and £740m profit for the year to January 2018, which could be a drop of as much as 14% on the previous year.

A statement from the firm read: “In the current consumer environment we remain cautious and are budgeting for second half full price sales to be down -1.2%, which is in line with our performance in the first half.”