Contender and chet15, don't get me wrong - what I know of Sanetti is all very positive and I too stand by him and am sad to see him leave. I was only pointing out the reaction of the stock on the day the announcement was made. I don't think his departure is a good thing for those of us who care about the company, it's products, and the preservation of it's roots. I only note the stock pop as an indication of what the big investors may be thinking: out with the old, in with the new, focus on profits and earnings. Cheaper production methods, volume sales, reduced inventory, better forecasting, bottom line growth.
RGR is a small-cap stock that is thinly traded and large percentage moves up or down don't take much volume. The stock was beaten down when WBR Jr. and Carolyn Vogel sold off millions of shares that were difficult for the market to absorb so the price could only go down. It started to recover and made it up into the $20's before the unexpected low earnings drove it back down. It is 70% institutionally owned and those big players are pretty fickle. It doesn't take much disapointment to drive them from a holding mood to a selling mood, and so it is a fairly risky stock for us little guys to be very heavily invested in.
Be passionate about the guns and the heritage, be sad to see that all change, but be emotionally detached if investing.
Myself, I have a small amount of stock and am not selling. I believe in the turnaround story from a business perspective and I understand that the Lean process implementation never starts off smoothly, there are always glitches and Ruger will work through those. Or, it will be taken over by another company. Either way, I personally don't see a lot of downside risk at the current valuation. That doesn't mean I like all the changes that are being made (internal locks, dropping the "S" in the logo - boy does that ever piss me off, whatever happened that made Sanetti leave, etc). And it doesn't mean I'm going to put my retirement savings into the stock. I just dabble in it.
And while we're at it, some of the changes have been good, like moving the Warning rollmark to the bottom of the barrel, coming out with the 50 year flattops and Bearcats that are truer to their roots than the 50 year Single Six ever was. The SR9 and the LCP both look very promising. And I actually bought a Charger.