Alcoa Profit Falls in Fourth Quarter

NEW YORK – Alcoa Inc. reported a 16 percent decline in its fourth-quarter profit on Monday, missing Wall Street projections as the huge aluminum producer was racked by setbacks from hurricane-related refinery slowdowns to restructuring costs.

The company reported profit of $224 million, or 26 cents per share, for the October-December period compared with $268 million, or 30 cents per share, a year-earlier. Earnings from continuing operations were $210 million, or 24 cents per share.

This broadly missed Wall Street projections for earnings of 37 cents per share during the period, according to analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

The strong price of aluminum drove revenue to $6.67 billion from $5.98 billion reported during last year’s fourth quarter. Sales were slightly below Wall Street projections for $6.69 billion during the quarter.

Alcoa said its bottom line was slammed by a number of setbacks that shaved $93 million, or 11 cents per share, from its earnings. Chiefly among there were lowered production at refineries in Jamaica and Texas due to the Gulf Coast hurricanes, an unplanned outage in an Australian smelting plant, strikes at its Spanish operations, and restructuring costs.

Shares of the company fell $1.04, or 3.4 percent, to $29.53 in after hours trading on the INET electronic exchange. The report was released after the markets closed. Its shares closed at $30.57 on the New York Stock Exchange.