Alcoa Reports 16% Drop in Profit

Alcoa Inc. reported a 16% decline in its fourth-quarter profit Monday, missing Wall Street projections as the huge aluminum producer was hurt by hurricane-related refinery slowdowns and restructuring costs.

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

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

The strong price of aluminum drove revenue to $6.67 billion from $5.98 billion a year ago. 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 a share, from its earnings. Among those 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 93 cents in after-hours trading after the release of the report. In regular trading, the shares closed up 36 cents at $30.57.