Satellite broadcaster BSkyB is currently down 10p at 555p on talk that the company is guiding the City's forecasts down ahead of its third-quarter results on April 30.
BSkyB refused to comment, but traders believe there is probably no more to it than normal dialogue between the company and analysts.
More concretely however, Morgan Stanley - one of the company's joint brokers - has today trimmed its full year forecasts, which may be where the tale came from. It now expects 2008 pre-tax profits of £654m, compared to £679m, mainly due to increased interest charges.
The bank said: "As is always the case when doing quarterly forecasting, we had made a myriad of very small changes to our estimates. The net result at the operating level is very small. Despite this small cut to estimates, we continue to believe that BSkyB's medium term valuation is attractive."
At the same time it has reduced its target price from 715p to 705p. It made the move after the recent decline in the share price of ITV, where BSkyB has a 17.9% stake which it has been told by regulators to reduce.
