Cobham tumbles as it swings to full year loss

Cobham shares slid on Thursday after the aerospace and defence group said it swung to a loss in 2015 and sounded a cautious note on the current year.

For the year to the end of December, Cobham posted a pre-tax loss of £40m compared with a £24m in 2014, despite revenue rising to £2.07bn from £1.85bn.

Cobham said some of its commercial markets are currently experiencing headwinds, driven primarily by slowing economic growth in Asia-Pacific and weakness in oil, gas and other natural resource markets.

Chief executive Bob Murphy said: "We have delivered a robust performance in 2015 in challenging conditions with increased headwinds in some of our commercial markets towards the end of the year which had an adverse impact on earnings and cash generation.

“We have continued to deliver on our strategic objectives and made excellent progress with the integration of the Aeroflex business. In addition, we have enhanced our focus by divesting a number of businesses in certain markets and with technologies which did not fit our growth strategy, although this will have a dilutive impact on earnings this year.”

The company said it expects trading in its defence and security portfolio to be stable this year, as overall trends in global spending remain the same.

It said demand conditions in some of its commercial markets were still subdued and, with the current macroeconomic uncertainty, it does not expect to see any underlying improvement in these markets.

At 1110 GMT, Cobham shares were down 8.2% to 237.90p.