DORSET’S aerospace giant Cobham has spoken of an “incredibly turbulent and disappointing” 12 months as it issued its fifth profits warning in a little over a year.

The Wimborne-headquartered company revealed it would record a £574million write-down and take a £150m hit from a US military contract.

Cobham’s share price fell 20 per cent yesterday to 114.90p. It stood at more than £3 in early 2015.

The write-down includes costs linked to its acquisition of Aeroflex in 2014 and the group said delays and an “onerous commercial arrangement” for its KC-46 air-to-air refuelling tanker resulted in soaring costs for the project.

Cobham, founded as Flight Refuelling, employs around 1,200 locally, with facilities at Wimborne and Bournemouth Airport.

It expects full-year underlying trading profits to come in at £225m, down from the £245m it forecast in January.

CEO David Lockwood, who replaced Bob Murphy last August, said: “2016 was an incredibly turbulent and disappointing year for Cobham. Execution failure in many businesses led us to miss expectations badly and provides a poor entry point into 2017.

“The medium term provides significant opportunity with encouraging market dynamics and strong product and programme offerings. The route to realising this potential is strong operational performance and financial control, which will be the relentless focus through 2017. This has commenced and the potential to improve is clear.”

Last year, Cobham announced an emergency £506.7m rights issue to reduce its debt.

Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital, said: “We’re getting used to dire news from the group these days and today it was a £150m charge on the KC-46 Tanker programme with Boeing.

“Investors are ditching stock as it looks like the problems at Cobham go further than anyone realised when all this started.

“There is every reason to think that management’s review of the business may throw up further concerns and more write-downs. Chief executive David Lockwood has a bit more tidying up to do after the Bob Murphy years of acquisitions and diversification.”