NEXT plc (NXGPY) Q2 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

NEXT plc ( NXGPY ) Q2 2027 Earnings Call September 16, 2026 8:00 PM EDT Company Participants Michael Roney Simon Wolfson - CEO & Executive Director Conference Call Participants Anne Critchlow - Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, Research Division Frederick Wild - Jefferies LLC, Research Division Matthew Clements - Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division Richard Chamberlain - RBC Capital Markets, Research Division Richard Trainor - Bernstein Institutional Services LLC, Research Division Sreedhar Mahamkali - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division Alexander Richard Okines - BNP Paribas, Research Division Monique Pollard - Citigroup Inc., Research Division David Hughes - Shore Capital Group Ltd., Research Division Anubhav Malhotra - Panmure Liberum Limited, Research Division Presentation Michael Roney Good morning to everybody, and welcome to the half year results. Thank you for being here, and a special welcome to anybody who's here for the first time. It's certainly a pleasure for me to kick off the proceedings given that the NEXT results continue to be very positive. The first half has been a strong period for the company with continued sales and profit growth, especially in the International area. Now this performance doesn't come by accident, and it certainly reflects the hard work and courageous decision-making of all our employees worldwide. And I want to thank them. And I'm going to leave all the details of what has happened in the first half to our Chief Executive. So over to Simon. Simon Wolfson CEO & Executive Director Right. Thank you, Chairman. Good morning, everybody. Total group sales up 9%. Full price sales up 7.7%. The difference is not the subsidiary companies growing much faster. It's all about markdown. Last year, we had a very small end-of-season sale because we exceeded our targets by a significant amount. This year, sale stock returned to more normal levels. In terms of our expectations, we thought we were going to be up 4%. You can see that we exceeded those expectations in