(Adds shares, background)
LONDON, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Britain's Cobham missed aprofit target that had already been repeatedly lowered and tooka charge on a troubled contract with Boeing, capping "anincredibly turbulent and disappointing year" for the defence andaerospace group.
In a statement that sent its shares down 22 percent, thecompany said 2017 could be even worse, as it struggled to fixoperational problems in difficult markets. Its shares hadalready more than halved in the last 12 months.
Cobham on Thursday cut its readout for 2016 trading profitby another 20 million pounds, to 225 million pounds, slippingyet again just a month after its last downgrade.
The group, which scrapped its final dividend last month,said "undoubted" uncertainties in the market meant its abilityto forecast its performance was not as strong as it should be,and it was difficult to predict the year ahead.
In addition, it said it had to fix many operational issuesto get the business back on track, which would require morespending.
"The board considers that delivery of a similar performanceto that of 2016 in 2017 may be challenging," it said.
Chief Executive David Lockwood, who took over in December,said 2016 was an "incredibly turbulent and disappointing year".
"Execution failure in many businesses led us to missexpectations badly and provides a poor entry point into 2017,"he said.
As well as a 150 million pound charge on the Boeing KC-46tanker programme, Cobham took 574 million pounds of non-cashimpairments across its business units.($1 = 0.8019 pounds) (Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Kate Holton)
