French group Sodexo's H1 core profits fall, keeps toned-down guidance

PARIS, April 12 (Reuters) - French food services and facilities management group Sodexo on Thursday reported a well-flagged fall in first-half core operating profit and kept its recently reduced targets for sales growth and margins for the 2017/18 full year.

Sodexo, which is the world's second-biggest catering company after Compass Group (Other OTC: CMPGF - news) , nevertheless said its board had approved a 300 million euros ($371 million) share buy-back programme, reflecting confidence in its future prospects.

First (Other OTC: FSTC - news) -half underlying operating profit declined 7.4 percent percent from a year earlier to 627 million euros, amid weakness at the company's north American business (Other OTC: ARBU - news) .

Sodexo reiterated its earlier March 29 forecast that it expected to deliver organic revenue growth of between 1-1.5 percent for the 2018 fiscal year, and an underlying profit margin of around 5.7 percent.

It had issued that warning after giving an estimate of its first-half results, which missed expectations.

In January, Sodexo had previously forecast revenue growth of between 2-4 percent and a flat operating margin at 6.5 percent of sales for the full year ending August 31, 2018, excluding the impact of acquisitions and currency movements.

($1 = 0.8093 euros) (Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)