Vans Stock Plunges; Recent Layoffs May Be Responsible : Shares: Price falls 22%, perhaps a ‘delayed reaction’ to decision earlier this month to let 380 employees go, analyst says.

Stock of shoemaker Vans Inc. fell 22% Friday, losing $1.375 a share to close at $4.75. Officials of the Orange-based company, which makes sneakers and other casual footwear, said late Friday that they knew of no reason for the stock’s plunge in heavy trading.

One analyst suggested that the price decline was “a delayed reaction” to Vans’ layoff earlier this month of 380 workers.

“That’s a lot of people to fire,” said Eric Appell, senior analyst with the brokerage Dabney Resnick Inc. in Beverly Hills. “The market is very nervous. Some investors panicked at what the layoffs might mean for the third-quarter earnings.”

The company is scheduled to issue its quarterly financial report Monday, the analyst said, and concern about what the figures will show may have triggered the stock selloff Friday.

“We have no idea why,” Craig Gosselin, Vans chief counsel, said of the falling stock price. “When analysts called us today to ask about it, they said there were no rumors in the market.” Gosselin said he could not discuss the forthcoming financial report.

After a similar stock price plunge March 7, Vans acknowledged that it had laid off the 380 workers at its two Southern California factories, in Orange and Vista, as it shifted production overseas.

The company has been profitable for several years, although its annual earnings have been declining. Its profit for fiscal 1994, which ended May 31, was $1.4 million, compared to earnings of more than four times that amount--$6.5 million--for fiscal 1992.

For the first half of its 1995 fiscal year, Vans reported a 5% increase in sales, to $41.7 million, and a 42% increase in profit, to $1.4 million. In Friday’s Nasdaq trading, a total of 371,200 shares of Vans common stock changed hands, or about 4% of the shares outstanding.

Times staff writer Debora Vrana contributed to this report.