The world, it seemed, had been thirsty.

More than $5.3 billion worth of Coca-Cola Co. products left the shelves during the third quarter, earning the company a $1.2 billion profit. In three months, Coke made its investors the equivalent of 47 cents for each share they own. Executives delivered the good news to Wall Street on Oct. 16.

Yet by the time traders turned out the lights that day, the stock market had pummeled Coca-Cola's shares for a staggering 10 percent loss.

Forty-seven cents was good, all agreed. But "the Street" wanted 48.

"It was a penny below what we were expecting - not something that warrants a 10 percent drop," said Ann H. Gurkin, an analyst who tracks Coca-Cola for Davenport & Co. in Richmond, Va. "You can say that the market overreacted."

Now Coca-Cola has reacted.

In part of a growing campaign among corporate America to stop playing the profit-and-loss game by Wall Street's rules, Coke announced last week that it will no longer provide detailed "guidance" about financial performance.

Analysts who want to predict the company's quarterly profit or loss will do so alone, without a company benchmark.

"I think it is a huge step in the right direction," said John C. Bogle, founder and former chief executive of the Vanguard Group, a Valley Forge, Pa.-based mutual fund company. "Somebody has got to have the guts to go out in front and say stop."

The goal, Coke officials said, is to focus attention more on the company's long-term strategy and less on the hit-or-miss guesswork of predicting financial results from one quarter to the next.

Some watchdogs worry that corporations such as Coke might start suppressing sensitive information rather than risk propelling their stocks into a bad news-induced dive. But most investor advocates - and even some Wall Street analysts - say they're happy to see companies worrying more about their bottom lines than their relationships with the Street's elite.

"I guess I am not too upset in what Coca-Cola is doing," said Kenneth S. Janke, chairman of the National Association of Investors Corp. in Madison Heights, Mich., which represents individual investors and investment clubs. "I think that management, in trying to meet quarterly expectations, could be making the wrong decision for the corporation. They ought to be making [decisions] for the long term."

Coca-Cola's move is part of a growing refusal among corporate officials to provide quarter-by-quarter financial projections to Wall Street analysts.

Gillette Co. stopped giving analysts projections in January 2001. Publishing firm R.R. Donnelley & Sons provides estimates of annual earnings but not quarter-to-quarter figures. USA Networks Inc. stopped quarterly estimates in October 2001.

Corporate executives have complained that analysts are short-sighted and care only about the upcoming quarter. But still executives have spoon-fed analysts details of their operations and estimates, or "whisper numbers," on what they might earn in a quarter.

"It had gotten to the point that it didn't matter as much what an analyst knew as who they knew - what kind of relationship they had with the company executives," said Peter Ricchiuti, a Tulane University finance professor who teaches students how to be stock analysts.

Ricchiuti said Coke's move could push analysts back to their "roots, where they act more as sleuths who investigate companies and make purely independent assessments."

If more companies follow in Coke's footsteps, it will make analysts' work harder.

"This is going to make my job infinitely more difficult, but I think they're doing the right thing," said Gurkin, the Davenport analyst. "They want to avoid those overreactions."

Even the people who are involved in analyzing companies say the craft has gotten too shallow.

"The problem is these companies who come out and say they're going to do $1.42 for the year, with 28 cents in the first quarter, 33 cents in the second quarter, and so on. That's just dumb," said Charles L. Hill, director of research for Thomson First Call, a company that tracks analyst estimates.

"The company doesn't know what it's going to do, so why put that kind of number out there? It turns the analysts into stenographers."

Ira H. Malis, research director at Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc., said he doesn't blame Coke for its decision.

"From our point of view, I think it is one of the best things that could happen," Malis said. "It really increases the value of the analyst to talk to customers, to talk to suppliers, to talk to competitors and really do research."

Some companies have little choice but to provide analysts with guidance.

Edward J. Kelly III, president and CEO of Baltimore-based Mercantile Bankshares Corp., said the bank doesn't release earnings projections or forecasts, but there are times when it has to give analysts direction.

"I am sympathetic to resisting the pressure of quarter-to-quarter projections or managing your company on a quarterly basis," he said, "but whatever you do, analysts impose estimates in any event. If the Street is out there with an estimate that is wildly misguided, it is difficult not to respond."

Some experts say Coke's decision will be better in the long run for individual investors.

"I don't view it is as real negative," said Brian C. Rogers, who oversees the $8.3 billion Equity Income Fund for T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. in Baltimore. "If you are a student of Coca-Cola, you will just have to work a little harder to try to come to an intelligent investment decision. In some respects, it is tough love for investors."

But tough love could lead to more volatility in the stocks of companies that don't give analysts guidance, experts said.

Janke, the chairman of the National Association of Investors, said analysts' estimates "could be way out of whack."

"You might see a 5-cent decline in earnings that could create more volatility than we are used to," he said.

But smart investors can benefit from the stock swings.

"If the individual investor can keep his head, he can take advantage of that volatility," Janke said. "It really opens the door to buy stocks at a bargain."

Bogle said he worries that investors have become traders of stocks and not owners of companies.

Warren Buffett, who is a large stockholder and a director of both Coke and Gillette, has long argued that investors should buy quality companies and hold onto them.

"There is no public good in a lot of trading," Bogle said. "Warren Buffett believes that all of this turnover is insane."