Why would he be damned if he does? Because he knows things don't look good. In that case, it makes perfect sense that the stock drops like a rock. Am I missing something?
Then again if he played the game and played down expectations stock would drop just on that prediction and wall street's own made up numbers never adjusted to his predictions anyway.... so things would at best be flat.
Generally he was just tired of it all I belive. This was after the .com crash and they had weathered that really well compared to many companies but also this was the time when Wall Street was turning into "short term lots of growth only please" kinda folks and our company was plenty profitable but never going to grow massively.
- during earnings provide extremely positive guidance for next quarter. this will bump stock up
- as time goes by, slowly update your guidance downwards. if this process is slow, hopefully stock won't be very affected. repeat this until you're convinced that your public updated guidance is below your private earnings predictions.
- when earnings come, you'll over-shoot your depressed guidance. This will bump stock up. Again, provide extremely optimistic guidance for next quarter.