LONDON (Reuters) - British hospital operator Spire Healthcare (L:SPI) cut its profit growth guidance on Friday, blaming a funding crisis in the government-funded National Health Service (NHS) for a drop in referrals to its services.
Chief Executive Rob Roger said deficits in some units of the state health provider would result in some near-term weakness in demand over the remainder of this financial year.
Shares in the group, which floated its shares 13 months ago at 210 pence and which climbed to a high of 403p on Thursday, plunged 13 percent on the statement.
They were trading at 350p at 1036 GMT, the biggest fallers in Britain's FTSE 250 index of mid-range stocks (FTMC).
Rogers said some clinical commissioning groups with which the company worked, particularly those aligned to trusts facing the worst financial positions, had been sending patients to NHS facilities rather than the private sector.
The possible removal of penalties if waiting lists lengthen also meant there was no urgent need to outsource to the private sector, he said in an interview. "If there's more central funding, as there was last year, towards waiting lists, you could see a short-term recovery. But we can't predict when that will be."
"Longer-term, as waiting lists increase, we would see stronger growth in self-pay and PMI (private medical insurance patients)."
About 30 percent of Spire's business comes from the NHS, he said, with the remainder being either patients who pay for their own treatment or are funded by insurers.
The company, which posted an 8 percent rise in adjusted core earnings for the six months to end-June to 83.4 million pounds($131 million), said growth on the same measure for the year would now be in the range 4 to 6 percent, having previously forecast growth of mid to high single-digits.