Capita shares fall on declining bid pipeline
LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in British outsourcing group Capita fell more than 5 percent in early trading on Wednesday after it failed to reassure the market over its recent contract losses and declining bid pipeline.
Capita, which runs services from the Ministry of Defence pension scheme to police radio systems, said it had secured 1.63 billion pounds of new contracts in the year to date, falling short of the 2.9 billion pounds in the same period last year.
It recently failed to win any of its bids for the Ministry of Justice's criminal probation service contracts, worth a total of about 450 million pounds a year, to companies including Interserve, Sodexo and GEO Group.
Capita's bid pipeline fell to 4.1 billion pounds from 5.7 billion pounds in July, but it said that it planned to replenish that with bids worth 1.2 billion pounds.
Shares in the company fell 5.4 percent to 10.60 pounds by 0845 GMT, making it biggest faller on the FTSE 100 index.
The company said it remains on track to achieve at least 8 percent organic growth for the full year and that it expects its underlying group operating margin to be in the range of 12.5 percent to 13.5 percent for the foreseeable future.
In a separate announcement, Capita said that Group Finance Director Gordon Hurst would retire at the end of February after 27 years with the company.
Nick Greatorex, currently executive director of Capita's Insurance & Benefits Services division, will succeed Hurst.
(Reporting by Li-mei Hoang; Editing by David Goodman)
