Sales in the UK’s retail sector improved greatly between January and February, but there are two retailers reporting a significant rise in profits for last year, during which the world was suffering a recession. Next, the second-biggest fashion retailer in the UK, has reported an 18% increase in profit, while B&Q owner Kingfisher, the largest European home improvement chain, has reported a 50% rise.

Next says that pretax profits increased £505.3 million, while sales totaled £3,406 million, for 2009. The company says that the cutback in consumer spending during the recession wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be.

Next chairman John Barton said that they faced an unstable economy at the beginning of the year, with falling sales and the weakness of the pound against the euro and US dollar. Despite this, consumers continued to spend on the High Street, the company continued. The fashion chain also said that like-for-like sales increased for the first time in 5 years. However, this year’s outlook is still uncertain, depending on government policy, they added.

Kingfisher, however, reported much better results, with profits reaching £566 million, which is up £547 million (excluding one-off gains). This is almost a 50% increase from a year ago. The company’s UK businesses, which include Screwfix and B&Q, had 64.5% increases in profits. They also own businesses in Poland, France and China.

Kingfisher chief executive Ian Cheshire said that business showed a strong performance improvement with most of the business resulting in profitable growth. He added that they remain cautious about consumer demand across Europe, but are confident that growth will continued.

Tags: b&q, kingfisher, next