While Mears continues to make progress with revitalising its troubled home-care business, the turnaround is proving more painful and long-winded than expected.
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Having cut underperforming contracts equivalent to 10 per cent of revenue, the outsourcer has said it now expects its care operations, which account for about 17 per cent of group sales, to make a first-half loss before turning a profit in the second half. Over at the social housing division, trading was in line with expectations.
A round of forecast downgrades greeted the news, with broker Investec slicing 2017 EPS forecasts from 36.7p to 33.5p and 2018's from 42.4p to 40.2p. The 2017 forecast dividend is down from 13.5p to 12p.
