The company's already watery share price ran like cheap mascara in a rainstorm last Friday, plunging 37 per cent to $1.91 (U.S.) on the New York Stock Exchange, when it announced the latest in a series of underachievements.

The bad news was that its top and bottom lines could look even saggier this year than last because two major new product initiatives, Vital Radiance and Almay, have not lived up to expectations. What's more, Revlon said it will not reach a 12-per-cent operating margin by 2008 as it had expected, and has delayed both a planned $75-million stock sale and a proposed refinancing of its current credit line.

That's a far cry from the glory days of April, 1998, when, two years after the now 64-year-old company went public for the second time, its shares hit a record high of $52.75.

Revlon was founded in 1932 by brothers Charles and Joseph Revson, along with chemist Charles Lachman, whose surname provided the "l" in the company's name. Mr. Perelman's MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. bought and privatized Revlon in 1985, taking it public again 11 years later.

It has produced a sea of red ink in recent years, most recently reporting a first-quarter loss of $58.2-million or 15 cents a share on revenue of $325.5-million, compared with a loss of $46.8-million or 13 cents on revenue of $301-million a year earlier.

Ms. Maneaty slashed her rating on the stock to "neutral weight" from "overweight" -- that is, to "hold" from "buy" in more common parlance -- and her 12-month price target to $2.25 a share from $5.

William Chappell at Sun Trust Robinson Humphrey, who is now the only one of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News that still rates Revlon a "buy," all but admitted that you could have wrinkles on your wrinkles before an investment in the company will pay off.

"We were extremely disappointed by this news," he said in a note to clients issued Monday, as he cut his 12-month target price to $3 a share from $4.50. "Despite our disappointment, we do not view the announcement as a death knell for the company.

Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and as far as analyst Ivan Feinseth at Matrix USA is concerned, the latest chapter from Revlon was just further reason why it will not win any beauty contest he is judging. Indeed, he said this week that although Matrix has not been shorting Revlon shares "proprietarily," it has been recommending that clients do so for some time in the belief the stock would fall.

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