Classify the given a piece of financial news into three classes: positive, negative, and neutral. Output must be 'positive', 'negative', or 'neutral'.
Q: - The Group 's sales during the period were EUR 37.5 million ( EUR 48.2 million , 1-9/2008 ) and result before taxes was a loss of EUR -3.5 ( +1.2 ) million .
A:
negative