Feb. 27--Acco Brands Corp.'s difficulties deepened in the fourth quarter, as profits remained under pressure and sales declined significantly, the struggling Lincolnshire office-products maker disclosed Friday.

"The global economic slowdown continued to negatively affect sales across all of our business and geographies," the cmpany noted. Even excluding the drag of a $249 million non-cash charge the company recorded to write down the carrying value of goodwill and related intangible assets, earnings were down sharply, Acco noted.

Acco drew headlines recently when it announced an unusual and somewhat controversial plan to temporarily cut salaried workers' pay by nearly half, as a way of reducing costs without firing staff.

In the latest quarter, Acco's sales dropped 30 percent to $353.4 million from $506.9 million.

Including the big but operationally meaningless goodwill-accounting charge, the Linconlshire company had a net loss of $258 million, or $4.76 a share, compared with a net loss in the year-ago quarter of $14.3 million, or 26 cents a share.

Stripping out special items in both quarters, Acco noted, earnings were down by 50 percent at $18 million, or 33 cents a share, from the year-ago period's adjusted $36.2 million, or 66 cents.

Although Acco's adjusted results were largely in line with analyst expectations, the company's battered shares moved up 11 cents, or 16 percent, to 78 cents in early-Friday Nasdaq trading after the company reported its results.

Known years ago as American Clip Co., Acco was a unit of Fortune Brands Inc. until the conglomerate spun it off as a separate company in the summer of 2005.

As recently as June, the company's shares were trading at $14.75, but even with this morning's run-up the stock is still down by 95 percent from its level of last summer.

jpmiller@tribune.com

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