LONDON-Spire Healthcare Group PLC (SPI.LN) Friday swung to a first half pretax profit, declared a maiden interim dividend, and said that it expects full year earnings to be impacted by the reduced flow of cases from the U.K.’s national health service.

The company said the suspension of penalties for lengthening waiting lists at the NHS – announced earlier this month – meant there was less urgency in outsourcing to the private sector.

Shares in a private healthcare company that was one of the top performing flotations past year have slumped after it warned of weakening NHS demand.

Profit for the period was 30.8 million pounds, compared to loss of 7.8 million pounds previous year .

As a result, the firm now expects NHS revenues to be flat in the second half of the year, rather than the single-digit growth it had previously predicted.

It said growth for the year was forecast to be 4% to 6%, compared to earlier predictions of mid to high single digit rises. Furthermore, our continuing focus on productivity and cost efficiency has enabled us to maintain an impressive Adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.5% and this, together with strong cash conversion of 80% (from Adjusted EBITDA), clearly demonstrates that Spire is itself in good health, both operationally and financially. Because of recent actions taken in response to the NHS trusts’ estimate of aggregate deficits for 2015-16, we recognise that there may be some near-term weakness in NHS demand over the remainder of this financial year.

“Longer-term, as waiting lists increase, we would see stronger growth in self-pay and PMI (private medical insurance patients)”.

Despite his upbeat assessment on the outlook, shares in Spire ended the day down 57.1p at 344.5p – a fall of 14.2 per cent.