Gentrack shares dropped to a three-year low after UK electricity retailer E.ON suspended its planned deployment of the Kiwi firm's billing platform, adding another headwind to an already tough market.
The shares plunged 22.8 per cent to $3.04 when trading opened, the lowest since February 2017.
The NZX-listed utilities software developer said it will update its earnings outlook for the year ending Sept. 30 over the next week, once it has worked out how much worse the market conditions have been relative to expectations and what the E.ON decision means for its business.
Gentrack reported a net loss of $3.3 million in the September 2019 year due to impairment charges on an acquisition that didn't perform as expected, and the underlying result wasn't much better as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation dropped 19.8 per cent to $24.8m.
The company downgraded the 2019 guidance three times before reporting in late November. Gentrack's outlook for 2020 was for a broadly flat result due to uncertainty in the British market.