Topic: Growth Stocks

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, April 15, 2011

Article Excerpt

PLEASE NOTE: Our next Hotline will go out on Thursday, April 21, 2011. ALCOA INC., $16.52, New York symbol AA, fell 8% this week after the aluminum maker reported lower-than-expected sales in the first quarter of 2011. In the three months ended March 31, 2011, Alcoa’s sales rose 21.9 %, to $6.0 billion from $4.9 billion a year earlier. Even so, the latest sales fell short of the consensus estimate of $6.1 billion. Alcoa earned $309 million, or $0.27 a share. If you exclude unusual items, such as costs to integrate firms Alcoa recently bought, it would have earned $0.28 a share. On that basis, the latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $0.27 a share. A year earlier, Alcoa lost $194 million, or $0.19 a share. Higher aluminum prices (up 15.1%) and production (up 1.7%) were the main reasons for the gains. That helped offset higher costs for energy and raw materials, and costs to settle a labour dispute in Australia. Aluminum demand…