British utility company Telecom Plus said it would write down about 11 million pounds of unrecoverable bills at its gas unit and that it expected its full-year pretax profit to be “significantly below market expectations”.
Shares in the company fell as much as 26 percent to their lowest in about three years, making the stock the biggest loser on the FTSE-250 Midcap Index.
Telecom Plus said it expects an adjusted pretax profit of 52 million pounds to 53 million pounds ($77 million-$79 million) for the year ended March 31, after taking into account an about 6 million pound impact from higher-than-anticipated leakage and theft of gas.
“Excluding this impact, the outcome will be below the level we were expecting to achieve,” the company said in a statement.
The provider of landline, broadband, mobile, gas and electricity