Price Pinch Zaps Zimmer

After years of pleasing spoiled investors, Zimmer (ZMH Quote) now finds itself battling just to relieve its followers instead.

Suddenly, just beating profit expectations is no longer enough. After all, Zimmer did just that late Wednesday and still saw its shares slip Thursday, continuing a slide that began in early September. That's around the time when Zimmer CEO Ray Elliott started spooking investors with candid discussions about price cuts for orthopedic implants. Since then, Wall Street has focused on very little else.

True, some investors rushed to celebrate Zimmer's latest profit growth -- which came in 4.5% higher than Wall Street expectations -- by purchasing the stock on an upswing during after-hours trading on Wednesday. But the stock's gains proved to be short-lived. The stock fell 2.6% to $62.10 by the time the market closed on Thursday, when investors had better digested Zimmer's quarterly results and found little to comfort them in the company's follow-up conference call. ...