Subject: Alcoa Profit Tops Analyst Estimates as Aluminum Price Gains (1)
From: "Michael Andrews" <[email-masked]>
To: "Thad Brown" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Ronnie Mainieri" <[email-masked]>, "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>, "Chris Heinz" <[email-masked]>, "Curt Hastings" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:30:04 -0400

Alcoa Profit Tops Analyst Estimates as Aluminum Price Gains (1)
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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 [email-masked] 
.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Simon Casey [email-masked] 
.

Last Updated: April 11, 2011 16:07 EDT