I am sure many of you have shopped at a Next (NXT) store, from one of its catalogues or online over the years. Next may not be super-fashionable or super-cheap but it is super solid, hence why over the last five years the shares have not embarrassed themselves like M&S (MKS), boohoo (BOO) or Debenhams have. But I need to have a think about Next shares because since I last wrote about the company in early January the stock is down over 20%. So whilst I did title my article ten weeks ago “Good job Next, but your positive Christmas trading is factored in”, is the share price now cheap?
It was not a big Christmas shocker for Next (NXT) to declare this morning that ‘in the eight weeks to 25 December full price sales were up +20.0% versus two years ago…This was £70 million ahead of our previous guidance for the period’. That is far from a disaster, even if Next shares have fallen below the 80 quid level.
Back in July I observed that Next plc (NXT) ‘shares might not be cheap but they are quality’. Since then the stock has traded either side of an £80 share price, including being up 2% today after the publication of H1 numbers. With all the challenges for the clothes sector, you have had plenty of opportunities to buy Next shares over the last five years at a 40 quid or below share price. The share price this year though has been nicely above the previous all-time highs in late 2015 when the world was a different place for all of the biggest clothing names. Whatever happened to most of them?! Next has always been a bit different.
