Lucent falls to $1 Shares of Lucent trade for the price of a phone call, capping three-year slide.
September 17, 2002: 4:11 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Shares of Lucent Technologies tumbled to a new all-time low of $1 Tuesday as the maker of telecommunications equipment, whose stock once fetched $100, continued a nearly three-year slide.

Lucent stock fell as low as 97 cents before closing at $1, down seven cents on the day. The company continues to suffer from slumping demand for its products. It joins rival Nortel Networks (NT: Research, Estimates), mobile phone maker Ericsson (ERICY: Research, Estimates), and Kmart (KM: Research, Estimates), the bankrupt retailer, among companies that now trade for pennies.

"It has never closed below a buck," Bill Price, a Lucent spokesman, said.

Just last week, Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent (LU: Research, Estimates) forecast that it would lose 45 cents per share in its fourth quarter, much wider than the 16-cents-per-share loss forecast by analysts. The company, spun off from AT&T in 1996, has been shedding jobs to try to save money.

Some industry analysts are expecting that Lucent will end up with between 30,000 and 35,000 employees after the next round of job cuts. In 2001, Lucent employed 106,000.

After hitting $103.68 in late 1999, Lucent shares have been tumbling. The company has suffered along with rivals as its mostly corporate customers at phone companies, Internet service providers and corporate IT departments have delayed new spending.