This brought net income after the extraordinary gain to $78 million.

Setting aside the extraordinary gain, however, the company's income from continuing operations was still up 75 percent.

The earlier results included an extraordinary gain of $51.4 million from several sources.

Blacks have made extraordinary political gains in the last three decades (more than 7,000 black elected officials at the Federal, state, city and county levels).

The company said included in the year-ago fourth quarter is an extraordinary gain of $54,000.

That compared with 1989 earnings of $181 million, or $3.33 a share, excluding extraordinary gains.

Excluding the extraordinary gain and charge, the company's results met analysts' expectations.

The company did not immediately identify the nature or size of the extraordinary gain.

The decline was $13 million when extraordinary gains last year were eliminated from the comparison.

The profit included an extraordinary gain of 54.9 million rupees.