NEXT is a UK based retailer offering exciting, beautifully designed, excellent quality

fashion and accessories for men, women and children together with a full range of

homewares# NEXT distributes through three main channels:


■NEXT Retail, a chain of more than 500 stores in the UK and Eire;
■NEXT Directory, a home shopping catalogue and website with around 3 million active customers and international websites serving approximately 50 countries; and
■NEXT International, with almost 200 mainly franchised stores around the world#
Other businesses in the NEXT group include:■NEXT Sourcing, which designs, sources and buys NEXT branded products;
■Lipsy, which designs and sells its own branded younger women's fashion products through retail, internet and wholesale channels; and
The parent company, NEXT plc, is listed on the London Stock Exchange #LSE: NXT#L# and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index# Total revenues for the year ended January 2012 were £3#5 billion with underlying pre-tax profits of £570 million# NEXT's head office is located in Enderby on the outskirts of Leicester, England

http://www.next.co.uk/

04 Jan Peel Hunt Hold 4,248.00 5,000.00 4,200.00 Retains
04 Jan Shore Capital Sell 4,248.00 - - Reiterates
04 Jan Cantor Fitzgerald Hold 4,248.00 5,200.00 4,600.00 Retains

A slice taken off. Too much?

04 Jan Investec Sell 4,284.00 4,580.00 3,900.00 Reiterates
04 Jan Haitong Securities Buy 4,284.00 - - Reiterates

14% down!!!

£80 just over a year ago.

Is it that bad for Retailers per se?

5 Jan
Shore Capital
N/A
Sell
5 Jan
Citigroup
4,180.00
Neutral
5 Jan
Numis
4,500.00
Hold
5 Jan
Beaufort...
4,300.00
Hold
5 Jan
Deutsche Bank
4,900.00
Hold
5 Jan
Goldman Sachs
4,500.00
Neutral
5 Jan
HSBC
3,530.00
Reduce
5 Jan
JP Morgan...
4,580.00
Neutral
5 Jan
Macquarie
4,200.00
Neutral
5 Jan
Berenberg
4,000.00
Hold

On 6 January 2017, Steve Barber acquired 2,500 Shares in the Company at £41.01 per Share.

Market Buzz
Director dealings: Second Next NXD makes small purchase
Mon, 09 January 2017
Article viewed 44 times


(ShareCast News) - A second Next director has bought a handful of shares in the retailer as the prince wallowed around four year lows.


Senior independent director Francis Salway, the former Land Securities chief who joined the board in 2010, spent just over £50,000 on shares at a price of just over £40.

Last week, fellow non-executive Steve Barber bought 2,500 at £41 not long after Next's gloomy trading update sent the shares tumbling from the near-£50 at which they began the year and set a negative tone for UK non-food retail sector.

Full price sales were much weaker than the market was expecting and the company issued a cautious outlook for the coming year, leading to widespread downgraded forecasts for this year and beyond.



Top Director Buys

Next (NXT)
Director name: Salway,Francis
Amount purchased: 1,250 @ 4,050.00p

NEXT has suddenly become unfashionable ..... with sentiment playing an important role in sp performance, i'ld (sadly) recommend to stay away

The likes of ASOS, Boohoo perhaps playing a big part in shoppers turning their backs.

Not good timing and does not show future confidence only holding 1750 shares

Director Deals - Next PLC (NXT)

BFN

Jonathan Bewes, Non Executive Director, sold 1,750 shares in the company on the 26th January 2017 at a price of 3832.00p. The Director now holds 1,750 shares representing 0.00% of the shares in issue.

Story provided by StockMarketWire.com
Director deals data provided by www.directorsholdings.com

9 Mar
Berenberg
4,000.00
Hold

Clothing giant Next poised to report fall in full-year profits for first time since 2009
By City & Finance Reporter for the Daily Mail
Published: 21:50, 19 March 2017 | Updated: 21:50, 19 March 2017


Next is poised to report a fall in full-year profits for the first time since 2009.
It is expected to post a 4 per cent slump in profit on Thursday to £792m in the year to January 31, down from £821.3m last year.
It follows a ‘disastrous’ trading update at the start of the year in which chief executive Lord Wolfson pointed towards a slowdown on spending on clothes as shoppers chose to eat out and go to the cinema.

 Lord Wolfson has warned that 2018’s profits could tumble to between £680m and £780m
He warned that 2017 would be even tougher, with 2018’s profits likely to tumble to between £680m and £780m.
This sent shares tumbling more than 14 per cent, wiping £948m off the firm’s value.
Shares were trading even lower at 3,877p at end of play on Friday – marking a 41 per cent drop since this time last year.

Wolfson, 49, who has been at the helm for 15 years, warned prices would rise by as much as 5 per cent to compensate for the increase in imports due to the fall in the pound.
The pro-Brexit boss said fears over the country’s negotiations to leave the EU would put pressure on the retail sector. 
Next has been battling to keep up with online rivals such as Missguided, Boohoo and Asos, which can respond to trends more quickly and have fewer overheads

Results for the year ending January 2017

CHAIRMAN'S STATEMENT

As anticipated, the year to January 2017 was a challenging year for NEXT, despite this Earnings per share1 declined by only ‑0.3% to 441.3p. We propose to maintain our total full year ordinary dividend flat at 158p.

Whilst total sales2 for NEXT Retail declined by -2.9%, sales for NEXT Directory increased by +4.2%. Total Group sales were broadly flat at £4.1bn for the year.

Cash flow remained strong and we returned £502m to shareholders through a combination of ordinary dividends (£226m), special dividends (£88m) and share buybacks (£188m).

We have continued to invest in the business, spending £161m on new stores, warehousing and systems. Net debt increased to £861m, well within our bond and bank facilities of £1.4bn.

It has already been announced that I will retire from the Board on 1 August 2017. I have been at NEXT for fifteen years and have immensely enjoyed the experience. NEXT is an excellent company and working with the Board and executive team has been extremely stimulating and enjoyable.

I will be succeeded as Chairman by Michael Roney. The Board appointed Michael as a non-executive director, Deputy Chairman and Chairman Designate in February this year. Michael has extensive business experience and has had a long and distinguished career, including as Chief Executive of Bunzl plc. He also has all the qualities that are necessary in a good chairman and I am very confident that he will make an excellent transition into the role.

I am also pleased that Jonathan Bewes has joined us as a non-executive director during the year. Jonathan has a great deal of experience in investment banking, is a Chartered Accountant and is a very good addition to the Board.

Steve Barber, non-executive director and Chair of the Audit Committee, will step down from the Board at the 2017 AGM in May. Steve has made a much valued and active contribution to the Board and I would like to thank him for his service over the last ten years. Jonathan Bewes will take over from Steve as Chairman of the Audit Committee after the AGM.

The strength of the Group is built on the hard work and dedication of all the people who work for NEXT. I would like to thank them all for their contribution throughout the year. I have been Chairman of NEXT since May 2006. In 2008 our profits fell and our share price halved; by the following year our profits had started to grow again and our share price recovered strongly in the following years. Trading conditions in the year ahead will continue to be tough, however I believe that by focusing on our core strengths, as we did during 2008, we will see NEXT emerge from this period stronger than before.


John Barton
Chairman

more.....

23 Mar
Peel Hunt
4,200.00
Hold
23 Mar
Shore Capital
N/A
Sell
23 Mar
Cantor...
4,600.00
Hold
22 Mar
HSBC
3,530.00
Reduce

Proactive investor -Next was a small-cap once

13:58 24 Mar 2017

Investors have done very nicely out of the retailer, whose shares were 10p in the 1990s

This week on TipTV I interviewed a former broker friend of mine who I have known since the mid 1990s. I was reminded of two things. The first is why I am not a broker anymore. This is because my plaintiff advice to many a client just after the stock market opened would on many occasions be, “Don't do anything today, you might lose money.” This was of course very FCA-compliant, years before the rules tightened up on financial advice. But it was no way to earn commissions.
The other perhaps more salient point as far as this week's newsflow is that my old friend reminded me of how, while people were deciding on whether to buy the dip in shares of fashion retailer Next Plc (LON:NXT) at £40 a share (down from an £80 peak), the shares were freely available in the mid-1990's at 10p. Indeed, I have met more than a couple of people who confess to have bought the shares all those years ago at near to those levels.
While they may not have kept them all the way up to their peak of £80 a couple of years ago, they did very nicely thank you. For those involved in the shares now the conundrum has been whether to buy the stock just below £40 in the wake of the announcement of the first annual loss at the company since 2009. In fact, from a technical analysis perspective it did appear the aftermath of the results was the time to go long as quite an extended base towards £38 did look robust. It was also an example of investors having factored in the worst from this former stock market darling, and there was a decent near 10% rebound.
Further down the market cap scale and we go from a £6bn market cap company in the form of Next, down to a more niche player, Ted Baker (LON:TED). This has been one of the High Street's more successful stories of recent years, all the more impressive to have achieved its £1bn market cap in an era of decline for many leading players. But even though the group was able to boast full-year profits growth and sales, it was the outlook for the designer brand group was rather more clouded, and guarded. The shares are also well off their 2015 peak, but let us assume for now the uptrend is still intact.
Finishing off the trio of High Street picks in retail at the moment is my token small cap, Hotel Chocolat (LON:HOTC). Here the shares in the £3.85 chocolate bar retailer have not surprisingly doubled since their post IPO floor at 150p. They are perhaps the only retailer of the three picked out here which I actually shop at – once every couple of months, given the prices of course.
The market cap is £300m and while the group may not get to the dizzy heights of a Next or a Ted Baker, the premise is that a player which has managed to achieve pricing power in the present cut throat environment looks to be the horse to back in a sector where visibility on future winners is foggy to say the least.
Perhaps the only negative for Hotel Chocolat, apart from having to pay nearly 4 quid for one's cocoa bean fix is that one a p/e ratio of over 60, it really is not cheap. But then again at £2.88 a share, the shares are cheaper than the chocolate bar, for now.

30 Mar
Barclays...
3,900.00
Underweight
28 Mar
Cantor...
4,425.00
Hold
27 Mar
JP Morgan...
4,580.00
Neutral
24 Mar
Goldman Sachs
4,400.00
Neutral
24 Mar
JP Morgan...
4,580.00
Neutral
24 Mar
HSBC
3,530.00
Reduce
24 Mar
Deutsche Bank
4,750.00
Hold
23 Mar
Peel Hunt
4,200.00
Hold
23 Mar
Shore Capital
N/A
Sell
23 Mar
Cantor...
4,600.00
Hold

looks to be worth buying at 3800 or even a bit above that but at <4000

Yeah until the next profit warning and board coming out with the usual strategic review statement.

I still reckon it's too risky cynic but I'm often wrong except about Brexit :-)

NXT are historically very good with their announcements and are usually very conservative
however, i don't have much love for high street stocks in general

Broker Forecast - Credit Suisse issues a broker note on Next PLC
BFN
Credit Suisse today reaffirms its neutral investment rating on Next PLC (LON:NXT) and raised its price target to 4250p (from 4100p).