Alcoa Inc opened the earnings season with a narrower first-quarter loss as demand for some aluminum products picked up from a year ago and prices rose.
For the quarter that ended on March 31, Alcoa on Monday reported a net loss of US$201 million or US$0.20 per share.
That compared with a net loss of US$497 million, or US$0.61 a share, a year ago, when the company struggled with weak demand in the depths of the recession.
Alcoa’s first-quarter results include US$295 million, or US$0.29 a share, in one-time charges related to the health care reform law and the closing of two smelters.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters forecast, on average, earnings of US$0.10 a share. They typically exclude one-time items.
Revenue rose nearly 20 percent to US$4.9 billion. That missed Wall Street’s estimate of US$5.24 billion.
“2010 will clearly be better than 2009, but it’s going to be below historic norms in many of the markets,” president and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld told analysts in a conference call.
Kleinfeld expects Alcoa to benefit from a rebound in global automotive production this year, while the company’s packaging business for cans and other containers remains flat.
Kleinfeld says aluminum consumption worldwide should grow by 10 percent this year, driven strongly by demand from China and improving demand in the US and Europe.
Argus Research analyst Bill Selesky described the quarter as lackluster.
“All the year-over-year numbers look very good. However, the sequential results are somewhat lagging. Sales from the fourth quarter to the first quarter, the overall demand is down 11 percent,” he said.
Alcoa, based in Pittsburgh, is the first company in the Dow Jones Industrial average to issue earnings results, and investors will be eyeing earnings results this week from Intel, Google, General Electric, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.
In New York yesterday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 11,000 for the first time in a year and a half.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
STILL ON THE TABLE: The government is not precluding advanced nuclear power generation if it is proven safer and the nuclear waste issue is solved, the premier said Taiwan is willing to be in step with the world by considering new methods of nuclear energy generation and to discuss alternative approaches to provide more stable power generation and help support industries, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. The government would continue to develop diverse and green energy solutions, which include considering advances in nuclear energy generation, he added. Cho’s remarks echoed President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments in an interview last month, saying the government is not precluding “advanced and newer nuclear power generation” if it is proven to be safer and the issue of nuclear waste is resolved. Lai’s comment had
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare
RSS