British retail giant Next has reported a halving in annual pretax profit to £342 million pounds last year.
With most of Next's stores closed for a significant portion of the year, group sales fell by 17% to £3.6 billion.
Yet Next has shown resilience during the crisis, benefiting from its long-established online operation.
Rivals with weaker or no online business, notably Primark, have seen far larger falls in sales.
Others, such as Topshop-owner Arcadia, and Debenhams have collapsed.
In the first eight weeks of the current financial year, Next said online sales had been stronger than expected and up more than 60% on two years ago.
The group raised its central guidance for profit before tax for 2021-22 to £700 million from £670 million.
It maintained its forecast for flat full price sales versus 2019-20 - a two-year comparison.
Shares in Next, up 11% in 2021, closed on Wednesday at 7,866 pence, valuing the business at 10.4 billion pounds.
Meanwhile, Next has ceased placing new production orders in Myanmar in the wake of February's military coup, its CEO said.
"We're not placing any more orders at the moment, that is a big step," CEO Simon Wolfson said.
"Most of the stock that we were sourcing from Myanmar...we have alternatives in place already for that stock in other countries."
Wolfson said Myanmar provided less than 5% of Next's total stock.
