MSA was a lone wolf yesterday, the only one of the 67 stocks in the PG/Bloomberg index of local stocks to advance on a day when Wall Street suffered its largest loss since the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago.

The O'Hara maker of safety and Homeland Security products, whose shares soared following the terrorist attacks, closed up $1.06, or 2.6 percent, at $41.25, driven by fourth-quarter results that, while down from a year ago, still beat estimates.

Earnings for all of 2006 also were sharply lower, as gains overseas failed to offset lower sales of fire service equipment and military helmets in the U.S. market.

Fourth-quarter profits fell 19 percent to $19.5 million or 53 cents per diluted share, despite a 6 percent increase in sales, which totaled a record $256.9 million.

North American sales fell 15 percent to $132.3 million, with much of the slide attributed to delays in awarding federal grants fire departments use to purchase breathing equipment, thermal imaging cameras and other gear. Most of the annual allotment of grants had been awarded in the second half of 2005 and prior years, but only about half of the money was disbursed in the second half of last year, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John T. Ryan III said.

The timing of when the remainder of last year's grants are issued and when this year's awards will be issued is "the major imponderable" in the company's outlook for the current year, Mr. Ryan told analysts in a conference call.

For all of 2006, MSA earned $63.9 million, or $1.73 per diluted share, down 22 percent from 2005 earnings of $81.8 million, or $2.19 per diluted share, in 2005. Sales were flat at $913.7 million, with acquisitions made last year accounting for about $28 million of sales.