Next
£341m returned as special dividends
There are excuses, and there are reasons. Many will take Next’s decision to blame the bad weather for underperformance in the run-up to Christmas as an excuse. Yet the weather truly was out of the ordinary and didn’t favour anyone selling heavy overcoats.
A reason, then. Next did freely admit that some of that underperformance was because management got Next Directory wrong. This is a fast-maturing business, three decades old now, once the market leader but now just another online retailer. Sales undershot because of poor stock availability in the autumn, with 2 per cent growth as opposed to expectations of four times that.
I rather doubt that Christmas 2015’s main reported figure of a 0.5 per cent fall