As we noted in our weekly preview, Alcoa Inc. (AA), kicked off the current earnings season this afternoon when it reported its third quarter earnings, and the company surprised the market by posting its first quarterly profit in a year.
Over the past year, the company has put a lot of focus on cost cutting, and that strategy has definitely paid off. Going into this afternoon’s earnings report analysts had been expecting to see the company show a loss of 9 cents per share, but the largest U.S. aluminum producer shattered that estimate by showing an actual 4 cents per share earnings on $77 million profit.
This is still well below the profit that the company had last year during the third period when it showed earnings of 37 cents per share, but at least it is indicating that better times are ahead for the company, which expects that aluminum demand is going to rise by 11% during the latter half of 2009.
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