Mitie has moved on, and so has the price

Shortly after the sale was announced, the support services provider completed an accounting review that identified a raft of historic errors, including under-accrual of costs and overstatements of intangible assets. Prior periods had to be adjusted by £34.5m, including £20.9m in FY2016. As a result of these mistakes and the costs of sorting them out, Mitie delivered a pre-tax operating loss of £42.9m in the reported period, from a profit of £107.6m the year before. The group also faced challenges across its cleaning, engineering and property management businesses, but at least the core facilities management segment pushed revenues up by 3 per cent. Still, the order book was largely flat at £6.5bn, and the sales pipeline (which includes anticipated but unsecured work) grew 10 per cent to £8.7bn.

Mitie has overhauled its management team: Ruby McGregor-Smith stepped down as chief executive in October last year. Her replacement, Phil Bentley, was followed by the appointment of Sandip Mahajan as finance director in February. Derek Mapp will be joining as chairman of the board in July this year.

Management is now focusing on improving the underlying business, which it plans to do with the introduction of its "Beyond FM... to the connected workspace" strategy, which centres on investing in technology to improve efficiency and increasing cross-selling among existing clients. The group has also launched a cost-cutting strategy entitled "Project Helix", through which it plans to generate £45m in efficiencies. As the company is in recovery, management has scrapped the final dividend for the year to strengthen the balance sheet.

Analysts at UBS are forecasting adjusted operating profits of £94m, giving adjusted EPS of 16.7p in the year to March 2018, rising to £100m and 18.2p in 2019.