Juice Plus Manufacturer’s Stock Price Tumbles: NAI Among Thursday’s Leading Small-Cap Losers

After several weeks of sluggish trading, Natural Alternatives International (NAI) stock took a nosedive on Thursday April 3, dropping in value by more than 15%, and was among the day’s top percentage losers for small capitalization companies.[1] NAI’s stock, which trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol NAII, closed at $7.60 per share, down from the previous day's closing price of $9.00. NAI stock has been trading at an average daily volume of roughly 8,000 shares, but trading activity rose to 22,829 shares in the midst of Thursday’s sell off.

It is unclear what sparked the decline in NAI’s stock price; however, a complaint filed recently with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may have been the catalyst. On March 12, 2008, the Juice Plus Research Blog reported that the Center for Science in the Public Interest had petitioned the FDA to halt the marketing of Juice Plus because the products were adulterated, misbranded, and misleadingly promoted.[2] No shares of NAI stock were traded over the next two days, and during the following week the stock went 3 consecutive days without a single share traded. The last time NAI’s stock went 3 consecutive days with no trades was in January 2002, when it was valued at $2.02 per share.[3]

References

1. American Biltrite, X-Rite and IntriCon lead small-cap percentage losers. Yahoo Finance. April 3, 2008. http://biz.yahoo.com/smallcapinvestor/080403/8190.html?.v=1
2. FDA advised to halt marketing of Juice Plus. Juice Plus Research Blog; March 12, 2008. http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/fda-advised-to-put-end-to-juice-plus.htm
3. Historical Prices -- Natural Alternatives International Inc. (NAII). Yahoo Finance.
   http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=NAII&a=09&b=28&c=1993&d=03&e=5&f=2002&g=d