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Asbestos fears hit 3M again
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January 17, 2002: 11:19 a.m. ET
Shares fall for second straight day on worries about exposure in 20,000 suits.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Shares of Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. fell for the second straight day Thursday on investor fears about the company's exposure to asbestos lawsuits.
3M shares fell nearly 3 percent on Thursday after plunging $6.00 a share, or 5.5 percent, to $103.50 on Wednesday, weighing on other components of the Dow Jones industrial average.
The stock was hurt by news that the St. Paul, Minn.-based manufacturer had revealed it was the defendant in about 20,000 asbestos-related lawsuits by about 85,000 plaintiffs. The company, in a 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, also said it had recently been ordered by a Mississippi jury to pay $22.5 million to four plaintiffs.
3M said it had "successfully defended and resolved" about 200,000 of these suits in the past 20 years, paying less than $1,000, on average, for the suits it settled. Investors were not impressed.
"Anybody with any hint of asbestos exposure is getting taken down. It's a witch hunt," ABN AMRO analyst David Begleiter told Reuters Wednesday.
A number of U.S. companies have suffered recently from worries about their exposure to asbestos lawsuits, including Dow Chemical Co. (DOW: up $0.10 to $24.65, Research, Estimates), PPG Industries Inc. (PPG: down $2.01 to $44.58, Research, Estimates), and Halliburton Co. (HAL: down $0.09 to $10.16, Research, Estimates).
In an apparent effort to combat the bad press, 3M late Wednesday said it planned to release its fourth-quarter earnings report five days early, on Jan. 18 instead of Jan. 23. 3M also scheduled a conference call for Jan. 18, at which executives plan to discuss the volatility of its stock.
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3M also said it expected its fourth-quarter earnings to "slightly exceed" Wall Street analysts' consensus estimate of 97 cents per share, as compiled by earnings tracker First Call. In October, it warned it would miss the consensus estimate at the time of $1.05 a share.
The news could not pull 3M (MMM: down $0.12 to $103.35, Research, Estimates) stock out of the red, however, and it continued to fall in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. 
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