BTG shares slide as healthcare group's growth outlook disappoints

LONDON, May 16 (Reuters) - British healthcare group BTG disappointed investors on Tuesday with a slower-than-expected forecast for growth in its interventional medicine business, sending the shares 8 percent lower in early trade.

Despite reporting full-year sales that were slightly ahead of forecasts, helped by strong demand for digoxin overdose antidote DigiFab, prospects were weighed down by the cautious outlook for 2017/18, which analysts said put estimates at risk.

BTG - previously best known for drugs to treat overdoses and rattlesnake bites - has been reinventing itself in recent years by focusing on interventional medicine, in which image-guided devices are used to treat a range of diseases.

For the current year, BTG (Frankfurt: 908827 - news) said interventional medicine would deliver mid-to-high teens percentage sales growth, at constant exchange rates (CER), well below the 26 percent that analysts at Jefferies said they had been forecasting.

Adjusted operating profit in the year to end-March was up 13 percent at CER at 129.6 million pounds ($168 million).

($1 = 0.7735 pounds) (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Jason Neely)