The City says profit warnings come in threes. We tested it on every profit warning we could find from UK-listed companies between January 2023 and September 2025: 505 warnings from 330 companies.
The saying is half right. Two years after a first warning, 57% of companies had not warned again, 25% had warned once more and 18% had reached three or more. Threes happen, but they are the exception. What the saying gets right is that warnings cluster. A company that has warned in the past year has a 28% chance of warning in the next twelve months, against 9% for one that hasn't.
Two findings matter more for anyone holding shares. After a second warning the chance of a third rises to nearly two in five, and it doesn't fall back after the third, so a run of warnings is no sign the bad news is over. And when a company that has warned before says trading is "in line with expectations", a warning follows within six months two to three times as often as when a company with a clean record says the same thing.
How we counted
Ticker reads results announcements, trading updates and AGM statements from London-listed companies and records each forward-looking statement: the metric, the comparison and the direction.
We counted a profit warning when a company cut its guidance for revenue, profit, EBITDA, earnings or margin, or said results would come in below market, board or company expectations. We left out:
- cuts to capex, costs or production targets, which are often good news;
- statements that only repeat an earlier warning ("as previously announced");
- warnings from investment trusts, VCTs and ETFs, which usually describe a holding's problem rather than their own.
Warnings from the same company within 30 days count as one.
We don't catch everything. EY-Parthenon, EY's strategy consultancy, has counted UK profit warnings every quarter for over 25 years. Over the same 11 quarters it counted 753 warnings, and we found 505, about two thirds of its total. Our records are extracted from announcements by a language model, and our definition is strict.
To measure how good the count is, we read 1,533 announcements by hand without seeing what the model had found. 84% of the warnings we count are clear profit warnings; the rest are mostly borderline, such as "at the lower end of the range". We catch a little over half of all profit warnings, and most of the misses happen when the model fails to pick out the warning sentence in the first place.
Missing warnings makes one-offs look more common than they are, so the repeat rates below are understated. Correcting for the warnings we miss, the hand check puts the true figures at roughly 33% for companies that have warned in the past year against 13% for those that haven't. The gap is smaller than in our raw count, but still large.
Half of first warnings are the last
We took the 231 first warnings issued between January 2023 and October 2024 and followed each company for two years. "First" here means no warning in the previous twelve months.
| In the next two years | Share of first warnings |
|---|---|
| No further warning | 57% |
| One more warning | 25% |
| Two or more further warnings (three or more in total) | 18% |
Some of the companies that never warned again were no longer around to do so. 66 of the 231 left the market within two years. A check of the names suggests most were taken over, and a handful only changed their name and ticker. Of those that never warned again, 18 went into administration or cancelled their listing. If we count those 18 as bad news rather than a clean recovery, the share of true one-offs falls to 49%. If we look only at the 165 companies that stayed listed throughout, it is 55%. Either way, about half.
A warning roughly triples the chance of another
The 28% against 9% comparison above takes a snapshot of every company each quarter and asks whether it warned in the next twelve months. It is the most useful single number here, and it holds if warnings up to 60 days apart are merged instead of 30.
The second warning rarely comes straight away. After a first warning, 8% of companies warned again within three months, 16% within six and 28% within twelve. The typical gap was about five months, which is one reporting cycle. A trading update warns, and the next one finds the problem hasn't gone away.
The extra risk fades, but slowly:
| Time since the company's last warning | Warned in the next 12 months |
|---|---|
| Under 6 months | 31% |
| 6 to 12 months | 24% |
| 12 to 18 months | 16% |
| 18 to 24 months | 13% |
| No warning for two years | 8% |
A company is still more likely than average to warn two years after its last warning.
A second warning raises the stakes
If warnings really came in threes, the risk would fall away after the third. It doesn't. It rises after the second and stays there.
| Warning number (within twelve months) | Warnings | Companies | Another within 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | 346 | 313 | 28% |
| Second | 123 | 104 | 38% |
| Third or later | 36 | 27 | 39% |
The 346 here is larger than the 231 above because it includes first warnings up to September 2025, which haven't yet had two years of follow-up. The third row is based on 27 companies, so read it as "no lower than after a second warning" rather than as a precise figure. Merging warnings up to 60 days apart gives the same shape: 25%, 36% and 32%.
This isn't an AIM problem. After a first warning, 28% of AIM companies (224 warnings) and 26% of Main Market companies (122 warnings) warned again within a year. That gap is within the noise, so a Main Market company that has warned is just as likely to warn again as an AIM one.
"In line with expectations" is worth less after a warning
We took every statement in which a company said trading was in line with expectations, or reiterated its guidance, and checked whether a profit warning followed within six months.
| Company's record in the previous two years | Reassuring statements | Warning within six months |
|---|---|---|
| No warnings | 4,572 | 5.9% |
| One warning | 1,040 | 13.3% |
| Two or more warnings | 440 | 19.3% |
The words are the same in each row. What changes is the record behind them.
We also asked whether a reassurance lowers the risk after a warning. Of companies with one warning in the past year, those that had since said they were on track warned again within six months 20% of the time. Those that hadn't said so warned 11% of the time. Part of that gap is that companies which say more give us more chances to spot a warning. Even so, a reassurance after a warning did not bring the risk down.
What this means for investors
A first profit warning is not proof of a broken business. Half the time it is the only one. But it changes the odds, and the change lasts well over a year. When a company you follow warns, these are the things worth checking:
- How many warnings in the past two years. After one, the odds of another within a year are a little over one in four. After two, they are nearly two in five.
- How long since the last one. The risk is highest in the first six months and is still above average two years on.
- Whether a reassurance comes from a company with a record. "In line with expectations" from a repeat warner has been followed by a warning about one time in five within six months.
- The next trading update. That is when a second warning usually arrives.
What we haven't tested yet is whether the share price already reflects a company's record. If it does, a second warning should move the price less than the first. That is the next piece of work, and we will publish it whichever way it comes out.
We are adding this record to Ticker's company pages as a guidance track record: how often each company has warned, how often its reassurances held, and how long since its last warning.
Sources and data
- Data: Ticker's records of forward-looking statements in RNS results announcements, trading updates and AGM statements from London-listed companies, January 2022 to October 2026, excluding investment trusts, VCTs and ETFs. Data as at 16 October 2026.
- Definition of a profit warning:
- A cut to guidance for revenue, profit, EBITDA, earnings or margin, or a statement that results will be below market, board or company expectations.
- Repeats of an earlier warning are excluded.
- Business-segment and quarterly statements are excluded, as are FX, order and price metrics.
- Warnings from the same company within 30 days are merged. With a 60-day window the main results barely move: 60% of first warnings are one-offs, and the chance of another warning after one is unchanged at 28%.
- Coverage:
- We found 505 warnings against EY-Parthenon's 753 over January 2023 to September 2025.
- In each calendar year, 11% to 13% of the companies we track warned at least once. EY-Parthenon's figure is 18% to 19% of UK-listed companies.
- A blind hand check of 1,533 announcements (two readers agreed on 97% of calls) found 84% of the warnings we count are clear profit warnings, and that we catch a little over half of all warnings.
- Companies that left the market: those no longer admitted to trading whose last statement fell within the follow-up period. Administration is taken from company announcements. A few companies that changed their ticker are counted as having left.
- External sources: EY-Parthenon UK profit warnings releases:
This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Ticker does not recommend any security. Do your own research or speak to a regulated adviser.
