By Li-mei Hoang LONDON (Reuters) - British outsourcer Mitie sank to a statutory first-half loss on Monday after it booked higher than expected costs to exit its engineering and asset management businesses, dragging its shares more than 5 percent lower in early trade.
Mitie, which runs services ranging from maintenance and cleaning to baggage screening at London's Heathrow airport, said two years ago it planned to focus on its core businesses of facilities management, property management and healthcare.
The group has now completed its exit from loss-making businesses and said on Monday it would take no further charges.
But the exceptional costs of 58.3 million pounds dragged it into the red in the six month period, to an unexpected statutory pre-tax loss of 1.3 million pounds. Excluding the one-off costs, profit rose 3 percent.
Shares in the company were 4.4 percent lower at 278 pence by 0903 GMT, after falling more than 5 percent earlier, making it one of the biggest fallers on the FTSE 250 index.
"Investors should not like the look of the Mitie numbers today ... The 'other items' in the last three accounting periods have been 52.3, 44.9 and in the current one the number will be 58.3 million," said Whitman Howard analyst Stephen Rawlinson.
"We have no doubt that Mitie does good work and has some good contracts but the disjoint between actual financial performance and the real performance needs to be better reflected in the numbers," he added.
Chief Executive Ruby McGregor-Smith said she remained confident of achieving growth in the mid-single digit range in the medium term and expected the outlook for outsourcing market to improve in the next few years.
"In terms of the outlook, I am feeling really positive about the underlying business," she told Reuters.
"No doubt the economy is a tough place, I think that more and more clients are going to need outsource more over the next few years," she added.
Mitie raised its interim dividend by 6.1 percent to 5.2 pence.
(Editing by Clara Ferreira Marques)