Alcoa posts quarterly loss on weaker aluminum demand

Alcoa Inc. reported its first quarterly loss in more than two years after prices tumbled for aluminum.

Its fourth-quarter net loss was $191 million, or 18 cents a share, compared with net income of $258 million, or 24 cents, a year earlier, the New York company said Monday. The loss excluding restructuring costs was 3 cents a share, matching the average projection in a Bloomberg survey. Sales rose 6% to $5.99 billion.

The adjusted loss is Alcoa’s first since the second quarter of 2009, when the company dealt with a slump in aluminum prices that followed the global financial crisis. Aluminum fell in 2011, with the benchmark three-month price in London averaging 11% lower in the fourth quarter than a year earlier, and Alcoa said last week that it would close 12% of its smelting capacity.

“Excess global capacity, surplus stocks and expected slowdown from [the European Union] continues to weigh on aluminum prices, pressuring smelting profitability,” Jorge Beristain, an analyst at Deutsche Bank who has a “hold” recommendation on Alcoa’s shares, said Monday in a note before the earnings were released.

Alcoa’s shares closed down 27 cents, or 2.9%, at $2.43 before the earnings announcement. Alcoa is the first company in the Dow Jones industrial average to report earnings for the quarter. The stock slumped 44% last year, the second-biggest decline in the Dow after Bank of America Corp.’s 58% drop.