Next has increased its profit guidance by £15m to £995m for the full financial year, after it beat expectations in the first six weeks of its second half.

The retail firm saw its group sales increase by 8% to £2.94bn in the six months to July, while its profit before tax increased by 7.1%, reaching £452m.

Furthermore, Next’s statutory revenue jumped by 13.6% to £2.86bn.

The clothing and homeware store said that its performance in the overseas market was "exceptional" and said that its online fashion platform was "outstanding".

Despite the strong performance, Next saw its in-store revenue drop by 2.1% in the first half.

Equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, Aarin Chiekrie, said: "Next has been on a hot streak of delivering positive news lately, and today’s results didn’t disappoint investors. Just six weeks after its last upgrade, Next has issued yet another improved profit outlook as sales since the half-year mark landed higher than previously expected.

"Skyrocketing demand in its online channel remains a running theme. Despite already accounting for more than half of group sales, the online channel is still seen as the main growth driver. Expansion overseas is still in the early stages, and if Next can execute its strategy well, there’s a lot of room left to run."

Alongside these results for the first half of the year, the firm said that its sales in the first six weeks of the second half of the year were up 6.9%, exceeding expectations.

Second half full price sales are now also expected to reach 3.7% year-on-year, with previous guidance being set at 2.5%.

Next has also upped its pre-tax profit guidance to £995m, which if achieved, would be an annual increase of 8.4%.

Head of markets at interactive investor, Richard Hunter, added: "Next has increased its guidance for full-year pre-tax profit to £995m, having only increased the figure from £960m to £980m last month. Estimated full price and group sales have also been upgraded to grow by 4% and 6.6% respectively, while net debt is projected to reduce further by £75m to £625m. Of equal importance, however, are the prospects for the group over the longer term as it continues to innovate, consolidate and grow its offering within a notoriously competitive environment.

"In all, the warm share price reaction to the numbers comes as little surprise and adds to a gain of 46% over the last year, as compared to a rise of 7.8% for the wider FTSE100 and of 78% over the last two years. Even at these levels the company is not stretched on a historic valuation basis, with the only downside being that such share price recognition has not been echoed by a market consensus which has not moved from being a hold for some considerable time.

"Even so, Next continues to defy any lingering doubts and the strength of its trading performance should rightly grab the headlines from the naysayers who continue to search for chinks in the armour."

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