EMAIL DETAILS

Alcoa Profit Tops Analyst Estimates as Aluminum Price Gains (1)
Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A
By Colin McClelland

April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Alcoa Inc., the largest U.S. aluminum
producer, reported first-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates
after prices rose for the lightweight metal.

Net income of $308 million, or 27 cents a share, compares with a loss
of $201 million, or 20 cents, a year earlier, New York-based Alcoa
said today in a statement. Earnings excluding restructuring costs and
other one-time items were 28 cents a share, topping the 27-cent
average estimate of 14 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Sales increased
22 percent to $5.96 billion.

The adjusted profit is the biggest since the company earned 37 cents a
share in the third quarter of 2008, when commodity prices tumbled amid
the global financial crisis. Aluminum prices have advanced in the past
year in London because of improving demand for the metal, which is
used in construction, autos and beverage cans.

“The commodity price has done better than I think most assumed,” Lloyd
O’Carroll, a Richmond, Virginia-based analyst at Davenport & Co., said
in a telephone interview before the earnings were released.

Aluminum on the LME averaged $2,531 a metric ton in the first quarter,
15 percent more than a year earlier and the most since the third
period of 2008.

Alcoa, traditionally the first company in the Dow Jones Industrial
Average to report quarterly earnings, posted first- quarter sales of
$4.89 billion a year earlier.

To contact the reporter on this story: Colin McClelland in Toronto atcmcclelland1@bloomberg.net
.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Simon Casey atscasey4@bloomberg.net
.

Last Updated: April 11, 2011 16:07 EDT