Year ended January | 2013 | 2012 | Group revenue | £3.5 billion | £3.4 billion | Group profit before tax | £622 billion | £570 billion | Total employees | 54,507 | 52,569 | Total full time equivalents | 28,301 | 28,685 | UK&Eire NEXT stores-number | 540 | 536 | UK&Eire NEXT stores-sq. footage | 6.7 million | 6.5 million | Average active directory customers | 3.3 million | 3.0 million | Annual total of directory pages | 4,204 | 4,180 | Share buybacks – number of shares | 7.5 million | 12.5 million | Share buybacks – value | £241 million | £290 million |
Ventura, the Group's customer service management business, was sold for £65m in July 2011. The figures above relate to continuing operations and Ventura is therefore excluded from both years. All figures from January 2013 Annual Report & Accounts.
NEXT has made good progress in the first half. Sales were 2.2% ahead of last year, driven by a combination of additional NEXT Retail selling space and increased online sales through the NEXT Directory. Operating profits were at the top end of our expectations, up 7.2%. Strong cash generation enabled us to buy back a further £170m of our shares which, together with a lower tax rate, resulted in EPS growing much faster than profits. Currently, the company’s principal activity is investment management, with its major transactions being the payment of dividends to Next shareholders and receipt of dividends from its subsidiary company, Next Group Plc. In addition, during the year to 31 January 2012, the company issued a £570 m 5.25% 10 year bond, which has been used, inter alia, to finance the group’s trading operations, as well as enabling further repurchases of shares for cancellation. In 2012/13, 12.5m shares were bought back at a total cost of £290m and cancelled.
Financial highlights are as follows: * Sales up 2.2% at £1,677m *