Zara owner Inditex basks in a summer sales boom

Boost: Inditex chairman Marta Ortega (pictured), took over from her father Amancio Ortega just over a year ago

The owner of Zara is cashing in as shoppers refresh their wardrobes for summer. 

Inditex, the Spanish fashion giant which also owns Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius and Pull & Bear, said sales of its latest collections are up 16 per cent since the start of May.  That follows sales of £6.5billion in the three months to the end of April, up 13 per cent on the same period last year. 

‘Spring-summer collections continue to be very well received by our customers,’ it said. 

With profits quarter up 52 per cent to £1.3billion, shares rose to a six-year high, valuing it at around £90billion, more than 20 times that of Marks & Spencer. 

The figures are a boost for new chairman Marta Ortega, whose father Amancio Ortega opened the first Zara store in Spain in 1975 before establishing Inditex a decade later. 

And the results pile pressure on rival H&M which updates investors on June 15. 

Its last set of figures showed lacklustre trading in the three months to February 28, as cold weather hit demand.