Cobham shares plummet after fifth profit warning in less than two years

The company said that its ability to make forecasts ‘is not as strong as it should be’

Shares in UK engineering and defence company fell 22 per cent on Thursday to their lowest point in over a decade

Shares in UK engineering and defence company Cobham plummeted 22 per cent on Thursday to their lowest in over a decade, after the company cut its forecast for the fifth time in less than two years.

The group said that it now sees trading profit for 2016 coming in at £225m, after deducting £20m of year-end adjustments from the forecast issued only last month.

The company said that “whilst market uncertainties undoubtedly exist, the ability of the group to forecast performance is also not as strong as it should be”.

“2016 was an incredibly turbulent and disappointing year for Cobham,” said chief executive David Lockwood.

“Execution failure in many businesses led us to miss expectations badly and provides a poor entry point into 2017.”

Shares slumped to the bottom of the FTSE 250 index of UK small cap stocks and to the bottom of the Stoxx Europe 600 benchmark of the region’s biggest companies.

They were recently trading at their lowest level in over 10 years having already suffered a tumble of a similar magnitude when Cobham issued its last profit warning in January.

“Investors are ditching the stock as it looks like the problems at Cobham go further than anyone realised when all this started,” said Neil Wilson, a market analyst at ETX Capital.

One major drag on Cobham has been its work on Boeing's KC-46 tanker programme. On Thursday it said it would take a £150m charge on the plan.

Cobham, whose origins date back to the 1930s, specialises in defence systems, aerospace and surveillance.