T. Rowe Price Associates Inc.'s stock dipped yesterday after the Baltimore-based mutual fund firm announced that its 1994 earnings would fall below analysts' expectations.
The stock's 5 percent slide, to $28.50 per share on trading of 93,700 shares, came after the company released projected 1994 earnings of $2 per share. Analysts from both Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. had expected T. Rowe Price's earnings to be above that figure.
Official T. Rowe Price 1994 earnings are expected next week.
The company's stock, which is down roughly 25 percent from March 1994, has been adversely affected by the Federal Reserve Board's decision to raise interest rates seven times in the past year to combat expected inflation.
But in the first nine months of 1994, T. Rowe Price's earnings were well above its comparable performance in the previous year. The company reported net income of $45.1 million, $1.47 per share, compared to earnings of $33.8 million, $1.10 per share, in the same period in 1993.