FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Stratec shares fell significantly on Thursday following a surprisingly gloomy outlook. In early trading, they fell to their lowest level since the beginning of December and were still down 9.1 percent at 38.55 euros in the late morning. This made the shares of the diagnostics specialist one of the weakest stocks in the SDax index of smaller stocks, which lost around 0.7 percent.

In 2023, currency-adjusted sales fell by 3.8 percent and the operating margin fell from 16.4 percent to 10.3 percent, which was at the lower end of management's expectations. At the bottom line, profit even fell by more than half. In addition, the Management Board expects business momentum to be very subdued in the first quarter of 2024, but that business will pick up from the second quarter onwards. Business development is expected to be at least stable for the year as a whole.

The company's key figures were unexpectedly weak, Berenberg analyst Odysseas Manesiotis said in an initial reaction. The outlook for 2024 was also disappointing. However, like the Management Board, the expert was confident that business would recover over the course of the year.

Driven by strong demand for Covid tests, the Stratec share had risen rapidly since spring 2020. After a weak phase in the first half of 2021, the share price climbed to a record high in September of the same year. Since then, the value has quadrupled. So far this year, the share price has fallen by almost 15 percent./edh/ajx/mis