Still, the company's executives expect to continue surpassing their own goals for some time to come.

Across corporate America, the story is similar: by traditional standards, sales remain strong, but recently they have fallen more quickly than executives had expected.

And, many experts say, the more beds in a hospital, the better a chief executive can usually expect to be paid.

But industry analysts and executives expect that to change quickly.

Given modest growth of 2 to 3 percent, few executives expect to do much hiring.

And this year, after more than two decades in the business, executives at the society expect the television effort finally to break even.

But advertising industry analysts and executives expected the price to be close to $31.8 million.

Many executives expect the same thing to happen this summer.

These executives don't expect the next decade to be easy.

Industry analysts and executives expect car sales to drop by only 200,000 to 400,000 units this year from the record 13.4 million in 1989.