FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Disappointing quarterly figures put an abrupt end to the sluggish recovery of Compugroup shares on Wednesday. The shares of the software provider specializing in medical practices and hospitals fell by 14.6 percent to 34.16 euros by midday. The gains since the beginning of the year were thus gone.

With the mid-week price slide, Compugroup was also the clear laggard in the SDax. The second-line index fell by 0.7 percent.

In the final quarter, Compugroup suffered a severe setback in its day-to-day business and at the bottom line. Sales fell more sharply in the last three months than experts had already expected due to high comparative figures in the same period of the previous year. The Group also slipped into the red due to restructuring costs and a significant increase in personnel expenses.

Last year, the software group benefited from a high order backlog in the hospital business. Revenue in the hospital division grew at a double-digit rate. However, business in the largest division, medical practices, was not as buoyant and grew only slightly. In the practice software and health data divisions, the company fell short of the growth targets set for the segments.

According to expert Andreas Wolf from analyst firm Warburg Research, the software provider's profitability was lower than expected. The reasons for this were the restructuring costs for personnel expenses and other one-off effects recorded in the final quarter.

Against this backdrop, analyst Knut Woller from Baader Bank continues to believe that the previously announced margin target of 27% in 2025 is unlikely to be achieved. Nevertheless, Compugroup's forecasts for 2024 are in line with market expectations overall.

All in all, the last few months have been disappointing for the software group's shareholders. While the SDax had started to recover at the end of October 2023 and has risen by almost 15 percent since then, Compugroup shares have lost around 6 percent in this period.

In addition, the chart picture darkened considerably in the middle of the week. The shares fell below the 21-day and 50-day moving averages, which describe the short and medium-term trends respectively./la/men/mis