VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [122]
Her bedroom filled with the light of the TV, and onto the screen came a talking head with a headline caption stating: “Winner Misses Big!”
Amy groaned.
“Our top story,” said the head, “Winner Corporation reports earnings for the quarter and the year that miss analyst estimates by a mile – seven cents below consensus for the quarter and a huge fifteen cents a share below their own estimate for the year. On a year-over-year basis, Winner is actually flat with the previous year, contrary to Peter Winn’s pledge to investors at last year’s annual meeting that he would restart the growth engine that this venerable company once was. Already reflecting the news is the Winner stock price, plunging twenty percent in European trading, and almost certain to go lower.”
Amy scurried into her bathroom. By the time she got out of the shower and had wrapped herself in her robe, there were three commentators on screen – two guys in suits, and a woman with big, honey blond hair – all dissecting Winner’s performance.
“So is Winner turning into a loser? I mean, will they even hang on to the name?” one of them joked.
“The big question,” said the woman, “is what went wrong? How did this so-called growth company stumble so badly?”
“Well, the release that Winner put out lays most of the blame on the Hi-T Composites acquisition. Clearly, Winner overpaid for that business. But the Hi-T subsidiary has just been going nowhere for more than a year. Obviously, whoever is running Hi-T really dropped the ball.”
“You jerk!” Amy screamed. She threw her towel at the screen.
Her bedroom door flew open, and there stood her son, Ben, with his baseball bat, ready to take on the intruder he assumed had broken into the house. Behind him was Michelle.
“Mom? Are you all right?” she asked.
“No,” said Amy. “I mean, yes. I’m fine. Please, I need to listen to this.”
“But wait, guys,” the big-hair woman was saying, “if you look at the numbers, they’re lackluster almost across the board at Winner – the chemicals business, industrial equipment unit, the technology group – they’re all unimpressive. It’s not just the Hi-T subsidiary.”
“Yeah, I thought the whole idea of a conglomerate, which is what Winner is, was that if one business was down the others would be surging ahead. But you’re right; all of the Winner businesses are lackluster in performance.”
“With one exception,” said the woman, “that being the Winner financial services group. Between the mortgage-backed securities and the skyrocketing oil futures trading, they’re really raking it in.”
“But what’s puzzling is that this once was a company that beat the estimates with great regularity. And now they can’t even live up to their own guidance.”
“Well, I’m sure Mr. Winn is feeling the pain this morning. Let’s check the stock price again … Wow! Look at that! Down ten points in the premarket since yesterday’s close!”
Amy pressed the power button on the remote and the screen went dark. Her kids were huddled around her, hugging her.
“Mom, are you going to get fired?” asked Ben.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Don’t worry. We’ll be all right, one way or another. Go get ready for school.”
Every day leading up to the Crystal Ball had seemed to put another twisted knot of dread in Amy’s stomach. To her it was not a question of whether Nigel would seek to humiliate her in some fashion, but a question of how many times and in how many ways. Would he make her wear a pointy dunce cap? Would he insist that she sit in the corner with her face to the wall? How many snide remarks would he make? And how would she respond? How should she respond? That was the issue that above all invoked the most dread in her. Should she just take it? Should she fire back? Attempt to trade barbed witticisms with him? Should she just quit?
“I’m not quitting,” she told her mother as they got dinner ready the evening before she left for New York. “I will not resign. If Nigel wants me out, he’s