A Sudden Turn of Events
On March 19, 1998, Sunbeam announced that its first-quarter results might fall below Wall Street expectations because retailers were curtailing their inventories more than anticipated. That day, the company's stock price dropped 9.4 percent, to about $45. Then on Friday, April 3, the company announced that it would report a loss for the first quarter, citing a decline in sales from a year earlier and charges related to its three acquisitions. It also said that sales would be about 5 percent lower than the $253 mil¬lion recorded in the first quarter of 1997. The price of Sunbeam's shares plunged to $34 down $11 Vi6 on the day's trading. In subsequent days, the stock price dropped further, to around $30 per share.