JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s second-largest private hospital firm Netcare missed estimates with a 10 percent increase in full-year profit on Monday as weaker demand in the United Kingdom offset a strong showing at home.

Netcare, which runs Britain’s largest private hospital network, BMI Healthcare, said diluted headline EPS totalled 170 cents in the year to the end of September, below a 190 cent-estimate in a Reuters poll of 10 analysts.

While demand for private healthcare is increasing in South Africa thanks to a fast-growing middle class, tentative economic growth in the United Kingdom has led to a drop in the number of Britons with private medical insurance.

Netcare said sales rose 6.1 percent to 33.7 billion rand ($2.41 billion).

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Sunil Nair, Reuters)