You know things are bad when the share price of Next, a company that has made an art of underpromising and overdelivering over the years, falls 13% in a day, even in a weak stock market. The odd part, though, was that half-year profits were solid and the cut in the full-year forecast represented the lightest of trims – from £860m to £840m.
So why the bout of nerves? The answer was that the chief executive, Simon Wolfson, walked investors through the mathematics of the pound’s devaluation and how it will prolong inflation in shops. It wasn’t cheery: he predicted a second cost of living crisis.
