After first-quarter sales results fell short of estimates, shares of America’s largest aluminum producer, Alcoa Inc., dropped by 3.5 percent. The $.62 cent reduction in share price left the company at $17.15 per share and the close of trading today.
While they were short of analyst predctions of $6.06 billion, Alcoa did increase their sales by 22 percent over last year with a total of $5.96 billion. First-quarter 2011 net income was $308 million (27 cents a share).The company cited the weaker U.S. dollar, and higher energy and raw-material costs for the short-fall.
Alcoa, which operates in 31 countries world-wide, still anticipates that global aluminum demand will grow by 12 percent this year. “Our outlook for the rest of 2011 and beyond remains very positive,” Chief Executive Officer Klaus Kleinfeld said in the statement.