Commenting on the results, Norman E. Wells Jr., Sovereign's CEO, said, "Sovereign had a solid year despite the fact that we continued to experience challenging specialty-chemical industry conditions, with end-market demand down in several of the markets served through our commercial segment. In addition, while we maintained top-line growth in both the commercial and construction segments in 2002, our financial performance fell short of management's expectations. As a result, we took aggressive action in a number of areas to enhance overall productivity and efficiency, including facility and product-line rationalizations and lean-manufacturing initiatives at many of our plants."

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