Sonic Healthcare shares sink as FY25 result misses estimates
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More news: Sonic Healthcare shares slumped in morning trade after the pathology provider reported lower-than-expected revenue, earnings and profit for the 2025 financial year.
Shares were down 11.1% to $25.54 at midday AEST, taking losses to 7.9% over the last 12 months.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Craig Wong-Pan said the result was "disappointing", even though consensus forecasts were above the top end of Sonic's guidance range.
He noted that FY26 guidance for EBITDA to be between $1.87 billion and $1.95 billion falls below average estimates of $1.98 billion. It also implies net profit after tax of $583 million, which would represent 13% growth year on year but a 9% downgrade to market estimates.
Sonic Healthcare posts 7% profit lift, guides 19% earnings growth in FY26
The news: Sonic Healthcare has reported a 7% rise in full-year profit to $514 million as the pathology services provider targets increased earnings growth in FY26 driven by its LADR acquisition that completed last month.
The numbers: The result was up from the $511.1 million figure posted in FY24 but below the market consensus estimate of $530.1 million.
Group EBITDA was up 8% to $1.73 billion. The figure was $1.63 billion in FY24 while the market consensus estimate was $1.76 billion.
Sonic declared a full-year dividend of $1.07 per share, better than the $1.06 declared in FY24 and but below the expected $1.09.
The company has guided for growth in earnings per share of up to 19% in FY26.
The context: Sonic's chief executive Colin Goldschmidt flagged that the group achieved 5% organic revenue growth during the year, and delivered 40 basis points of margin expansion on a normalised basis.
He said that having achieved their earnings guidance range for the 2025 financial year, the company's management teams are now "acutely focussed" on meeting expectations for 2026.
Goldschmidt said the company is progressing several workstreams to realise synergies expected from recent acquisitions of the Dr Risch laboratory group, LADR in Germany and Cairo Diagnostics in the US.
The sources: ASX, RBC Capital Markets research
