The retailer gave a resilient trading outlook, saying sales in the first weeks of its fiscal third quarter were up 9 percent when stripping out currency fluctuation, the same growth rate as in the first half. Inditex’s much smaller U.K. rival, Next PLC, which launched online sales in 1998, meanwhile, posted a 6.9 percent increase in first-half net profit. Cost savings helped push net profit up to £131.8 million ($217.5 million) from £123.3 mil- lion a year earlier, as revenue inched up to £1.51 billion from £1.5 billion.