Next on track but warns of tough year ahead

For 2007 pre-tax profits were £498m, an increase of 4.1%, compared with forecasts of about £497m. Sales rose by 1.4% to £3.33bn, though Next Directory continued to perform better than the high street stores.

The retail chain ended the year with sales up by 0.1% and like-for-like sales down -3.2%.

Directory sales increased by 3.3%. Sales growth was driven by a 1.2% increase in the average number of active customers and a 16.5% increase in pages. The internet continued to be very important to the development of the Directory accounting for almost 60 per cent of orders.