Embattled contractor’s shares fall to 55p, as market continues to digest Monday’s £845m provision announcement

Shares in Carillion have sunk still further, following the revelation earlier this week that it would take an £845m hit on a number of contracts.

The embattled contractor’s shares dipped 3% in early morning trading today to 55p, and have now fallen 71% since Monday, when the group announced the contract provision – which will devastate its profitability – and the departure of chief executive Richard Howson.

Yesterday construction analyst Kevin Cammack said that at 78p Carillion’s shares were as low as they had been since 1999, “and it would be a brave investor that called the bottom even now”.

But in a note today, Cammack went further: “It is beginning to feel like [the company] wouldn’t pass a health check in a morgue.”

The group’s value has now slumped to £246m, “barely half the consensus view of the new equity requirement,” he added.

In recent years Carillion’s shares peaked at 379p, back in February 2014. Since then they have steadily declined; in the last six months its stock slipped from 238p to last Friday’s 192p, before Monday’s announcement.

Analysts have said they were not surprised that something bad was in the pipeline but admitted it was the scale of the hit to Carillion’s numbers that shocked them.

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