LONDON (Reuters) - Fashion and homewares retailer Next (NXT.L) on Thursday March 26 forecast sales would keep on falling in 2009 as it posted an expected 13.9 pct percent decline in 2008 profit.

Next - Summer 2009

The firm said it was budgeting for Next Retail's like-for-like sales to fall by between 6 and 9 percent in its first-half to end-July and for sales at the Next Directory catalogue and online business to be flat to down 2 percent.

The group also said it was budgeting for Next Retail's operating margins to fall by around 3 percent to about 10 percent, with Next Directory's operating margins remaining broadly flat at around 19 percent.

Next, the UK's second-largest clothing retailer by sales value, said it made a pretax profit of 428.8 million pounds for the year to end-January 2009.

This compares with analysts' consensus forecast of 430 million pounds, according to Reuters Estimates, and 498.1 million pounds in the previous year.

Revenue fell 1.7 percent to 3.27 billion pounds and the total dividend was maintained at 55 pence.

Net debt was reduced to 629 million pounds, with the group having debt facilities in excess of 1 billion pounds.

Shares in Next, which have lost 19 percent of their value over the last three months, closed Wednesday March 25 at 1294 pence, valuing the business at 2.55 billion pounds.

(Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Rhys Jones)