Next (NXT)

In the Budget last week Chancellor Philip Hammond announced three measures to try to revive beleaguered UK high streets. The first is the creation of a £675m Future High Streets Fund to support and finance local areas’ plans to re-invigorate their high streets and town centres making them ‘fit for the future’. The second is a one-third cut in business rates for companies with a ...

High street fashion-to-homewares giant Next (NXT) cheapens 3.2% to £51.34, despite maintaining the full year sales and profit guidance given alongside half year results five weeks ago (25 Sep). Investors are fretting over a slowing of online sales and a slump in sales from brick and mortar stores in the third quarter to 27 October, with rival Marks & Spencer (MKS) marked down 1.1% to ...

For investors feeling a little jaded after a trying year for UK equities, Mark Barnett provides some welcome optimism for value hunters. The Invesco fund manager who runs both Perpetual Income & Growth Investment Trust (PLI) and Edinburgh Investment Trust (EDIN) sees plenty of opportunity in the UK stock market across both the large cap universe and their mid-cap peers. ‘It’s got to ...

Shares in QUIZ (QUIZ:AIM) have collapsed following a profit warning (5 Oct) that triggered sizeable earnings downgrades. Slipped out at 2.38 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, the fast fashion brand warned of a £1.5m first half EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) shortfall and materially downgraded full year sales and profit expectations. Glasgow-based QUIZ’s ...

Investors who have made a mint from Fundsmith Equity (B41YBW7) are now deciding whether to back a new fund from the same asset manager, to be called Smithson Investment Trust. The prospectus has shed some more light on the strategy and potential investments, meaning we now have a much better idea of the possible shape of the trust’s portfolio. Our conclusion from these bits of information ...

Shares in clothing-to-homewares colossus Next (NXT) rally 8.2% to £55.46 as the company raises its full year profit before tax (PBT) guidance by £10m to £727m. Last month, the high street stalwart left its year-to-January 2019 guidance unchanged, warning there was a risk sales banked in July could be pulled forward sales, boosted by the UK’s prolonged summer heatwave. This hasn’t proved ...

UK fashion retailer Next (NXT) has lifted its full year profit forecast by £10m to £727m after it saying that trading in August was better than expected. Shares in the FTSE 100 high street operator shot to the top of the FTSE 100 leader board in early trade on Tuesday after the company revealed ‘we did not experience any material loss of sales in August or early September.’ The shares ...

Firms operating in different industries have their own yardsticks for performance, beyond the usual metrics like pre-tax profit, revenue and cash flow. These key performance indicators or KPIs for short can help you spot positive or negative trends before they show up in the P&L or balance sheet. And having a handle on the key KPIs for specific sectors can help you decipher updates from ...

Clothing-to-homewares retail giant Next (NXT) reports a pleasing 2.8% rise in full price sales for the second quarter, takings boosted by the UK’s blistering (and prolonged) summer heatwave. However, shares in the retail bellwether reverse 5.8% to £55.94 as Next leaves year-to-January 2019 guidance unchanged, cautioning sales of summer ranges have been pulled forward from August, implying ...

The FTSE 100 is in negative territory, down 45 points to 7,703 despite a strong a performance on Wall Street overnight. This follows reports the Trump administration will ramp up the pressure in its mounting trade war with China. FTSE 100 bank Lloyds (LLOY) gains 2.3% to 63.83p on reporting a 23% increase in statutory pre-tax profits to £3.1bn for the first half to 30 June compared to the ...

Fashion chain Superdry (SDRY) on Thursday posted double-digit growth in full year revenue and underlying pre-tax profit, helped by its wholesale segment, sending its share price racing to the top of the FTSE All-Share in early trade. The company has also declared a special dividend worth 25p per share. Reported pre-tax profit fell to £65.3m, from £84.8m in the previous year due to currency ...

Keystone Investment Trust (KIT) controls assets worth around £273m yet its market value stands at a fraction off £235m. That’s a 13.9% discount, apparently the widest the trust’s gap between its share price (up 10p today at £17.45) and net asset value (NAV) has been for 10 years, according to City analysts. A quick glance at Keystone’s performance tells you why this is. The trust has ...

The main UK stock market indices have struggled this year and many of the biggest investors rank UK stocks as the most unpopular asset class. Is now the time to go against the grain and increase exposure, buying when others are uninterested? We believe it is. A survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch of 235 fund managers overseeing $684bn of assets of under management found that institutional ...

Packaging company DS Smith (SMDS) has reported a 21% jump in full year adjusted pre-tax profit to £473m with the figures bolstered by acquisitions and recovering paper prices. These figures do however strip out a slew of implied one-off costs relating to acquisitions and restructuring. It also adds back £93m of amortisation non-cash charges. Including all of these costs puts pre-tax ...

Growth-focused investors should keep the faith with fast-fashion brand Quiz (QUIZ:AIM) and buy at 173.5p. Broker Panmure Gordon reckons you could make just over 25% profit in the next 12 months with a 219p price target. In a generally gloomy retail sector, we see scope for upgrades at the rapidly expanding occasion-to-dressy casual wear purveyor, whose brand benefits from celebrity ...

Shares in packaging firm DS Smith (SMDS) shot to the top of the FTSE 100 leader board in early trade on Monday 4 June after unveiling a bold agreement to buy peer Europac. The share price is currently more than 3% higher at 580p, the highest they’ve been in 30 years on the stock market. You might not have heard of DS Smith but you will certainly know its customers, which include Amazon, ASOS ...

Though net asset value (NAV) came under pressure in the half year to 31 March, Keystone Investment Trust’s (KIT) manager James Goldstone (pictured below) insists his portfolio is ‘positioned for the anticipated recovery in value stocks, especially in UK domestic cyclicals'. Furthermore, the fund is ‘well placed to navigate what lies ahead’, confident comments that help the shares 12.5p ...

High street retailer Next (NXT) is back in fashion with investors after upgrading full year sales and profit guidance following a shoot-the-lights-out first quarter (Q1) sales performance. Shares in the Leicester-headquartered high street bellwether skip 6.2% higher to £55.70 on news recent ‘unusually warm weather’ boosted sales. Yet it should be noted Q1 takings were always likely to look ...

Banking group Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has agreed to pay a $4.9bn fine to resolve a US probe into its past sale of mortgage-backed securities. This is a far smaller penalty than many investors feared the bank would have to pay, with some estimates predicting up to $12bn in fines. This sends shares in RBS jumping more than 5% to 290.6p in early trade on Thursday, one of the FTSE 100’s ...

Having bought back a record $23.5bn of its own stock in the first three months of the year, US consumer electronics giant Apple has announced plans to extend its buyback programme by a further $100bn. On this side of the Atlantic several high-profile buybacks have been unveiled recently including HSBC’s (HSBA) pledge to buy $2bn worth of its own stock, Aviva (AV.) launching its biggest ...