Next CEO says trading remains 'very volatile'

LONDON (Reuters) - Fashion retailer Next's Chief Executive Simon Wolfson said on Wednesday trading remained "very volatile".

"We've seen increasing volatility over the last six months to a year. The good weeks are very good and the bad weeks are very bad," he told Reuters in an interview after the retailer posted a 12.4 percent fall in pretax profit for the first-half to end-July and reiterated its cautious outlook.

Next, the country's second-largest clothing retailer by sales, did not publish a formal current trading statement.

However, asked about trading in August, Wolfson said: "On the whole poor weather at the time of launching Autumn/Winter ranges is a good thing."

The retailer does not anticipate any recovery in UK consumer spending during the next six months but still expects to meet analysts' full-year to end-Jan 2009 pretax profit forecasts of 400 million pounds to 440 million pounds.

"I don't think they (trading conditions) are necessarily going to get worse, I can't see any immediate improvement," Wolfson said.

At 07:17 a.m. shares in Next were down 39 pence, or 3.4 percent, at 1104 pence, valuing the business at 2.45 billion pounds.

The group's shares have halved in value over the last year, underperforming the DJ Stoxx European retail index .SXRP by 24 percent.