By: Mark Fitzgerald Lee Enterprises stock price slid dramatically on sharply higher trading volume for no readily apparent reason Thursday.
At the 4 p.m. EST, Lee (NYSE: LEE) closed at $11.78, down $2.69, or 18.59%. It set a new low in its 52-week trading range, which had been $13.60 to $35.65.
Lee made no announcements during the day, and there were no other apparent market-moving events. An analyst who follows Lee closely said the big fallout and huge volume were a mystery.
Lee's vice president of communications, Dan Hayes, told E&P: "We know of no news that would trigger this."
Lee's trading volume for the day was 2,196,601 -- more than four times its three-month average volume of 486,152.
In Lee's last public communication on New Year's Eve, Chairman and CEO Mary Junck wrote in her annual
letter to shareholders that the Street was not properly valuing the stock of Lee, which she said had outperformed industry peers.
Like many newspaper companies, Lee stock was hammered by Wall Street in the past year. In calendar 2007, its stock lost 52.8% of its value.
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