Fashion and home furnishings retailer Next has reported a growth in second quarter sales with improvements in both online and instore.

According to its Q2 trading update for the 13 weeks ended 29 July 2023, full price sales rose 6.9% on last year, while half year sales were also up 3.2%.

Q2 online sales rose 10%, with instore sales up 2.2%. For the half year, online sales rose 4.1% with instore sales increasing 0.9%.

Next said: “On 19 June we issued an unscheduled Trading Statement after a period of much better than expected full price sales, mainly driven by exceptionally warm weather. Since then, full price sales have been up +3.7% on last year. This was ahead of our guidance of +0.5%.

“The end-of-season Sale has gone well and clearance rates were ahead of our expectations. We are increasing our full year guidance for Group profit before tax by £10m to £845m.

“We are maintaining our forecast for full price sales to be up +0.5% versus last year in the second half, which implies full price sales for the full year will be up +1.8% (£4.6bn).”