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Bay area companies swept up in Wall Street's plunge

By Jeff Harrington, Times staff writer
In print: Wednesday, October 8, 2008

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For the second day in a row, the bloodletting on Wall Street trickled down to the Tampa Bay area, with damage recorded from heavyweight stocks like Walter Industries and Jabil Circuit to smaller firms like GeoPharma Inc.

• Hardest hit was GeoPharma, the Largo maker of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, which posted the sixth-biggest percentage drop on Nasdaq. It fell 30 percent to 95 cents a share.

• Clearwater-based boat retailer MarineMax lost 88 cents, or 14 percent, to close at $5.49. A year ago, it was a $16 stock.

• Jabil, the St. Petersburg electronics manufacturer that has shed more than $3-billion in value this year, saw its shares slip 7 percent to $7.73 a share, a level last seen before the 1999-2000 tech boom.

• Walter Industries closed down 10 percent to $32.78, continuing its reversal of fortunes. For much of this year the Tampa company was enjoying a runup in coal prices, and its stock was over the $100 mark as recently as July.

• Another double-digit drop was notched by Technology Research Corp. The Clearwater maker of electrical safety products closed at $1.80, down 12 percent.

• Tampa staffing company Kforce tumbled 8 percent to close at $9.04.

• Aerosonic Corp. on Monday was the bay area's hardest-hit stock, falling 25 percent. And Tuesday wasn't much better as the Clearwater maker of aircraft instrumentation ended up down 5 percent at $2.13.

• Among big area employers based out of state, count Bank of America in the list of biggest losers, with its shares plummeting 26 percent to close at $23.77. The slide came after the Charlotte, N.C., megabank told investors it was slashing its quarterly dividend, posted a lower profit and warned of "recessionary conditions.''

• On the upside, Tampa operating room supplier SRI/Surgical Express more than rebounded from a 21 percent drop Monday to post a 35 percent gain on very light trading volume. It closed at $3.25.