By Adam Whittaker
Smiths Group shares fell despite a plan to return an extra 1.5 billion pounds ($2.01 billion) to shareholders as its full-year outlook came in slightly lighter than expected.
In morning trade its shares were the biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 index and were down 5.9% to 2,212 pence.
The fall came even as the U.K. engineering company on Friday said it would return some of the cash from the sale of its Smiths Detection unit to shareholders via a tender offer or special dividend. It expects the sale to close in the second half of its financial year. The planned returns are in addition to a current 1-billion-pound buyback that is underway.
The company issued a slightly light outlook, RBC Capital Markets' Mark Fielding wrote in a note.
To account for the sale of Smiths Detection, the company said it expects organic revenue growth of 3% to 4% over the full year. RBC had expected guidance of 4.2% growth. It sees stronger momentum in the second half, with growth meeting its medium-term 5% to 7% target range, the company said.
The company said it expects its headline operating margin to be 20% over the year. This compares with RBC's expectation of 20.7%, Fielding said.
The guidance and returns announcement came alongside its half-year results for the six months ended Jan. 31, where Smiths Group said it would increase its dividend by 5.4% to 15 pence a share.
For the period, the group reported a pretax profit of 126 million pounds compared with 152 million pounds in the same period a year earlier. This was on group revenue that fell 1% to 915 million pounds.
The company said it was monitoring developments in the Middle East and said its guidance doesn't account for potential impacts on performance. It said the Middle East region contributed around 7% of revenue over the half-year.
Write to Adam Whittaker at adam.whittaker@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 20, 2026 05:53 ET (09:53 GMT)
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