Net income was $322 million, or 28 cents a share, compared with $136 million, or 13 cents, a year earlier, Alcoa reported after the markets closed. Sales gained 27 percent to $6.59 billion, exceeding the $6.31 billion average estimate of seven analysts in the Bloomberg survey.
Earnings, excluding $38 million in restructuring and debt tender offer costs and other one-time items, were $364 million, or 32 cents a share, missing the 33-cent average estimate of 14 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
“The market should be pleased that Alcoa is showing these strong year-over-year trends,” Jorge Beristain, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, said on Bloomberg TV. “They are managing to hold the line on costs.”
Alcoa’s chief executive, Klaus Kleinfeld, reiterated his forecast for global demand to increase by 12 percent in 2011 and double by the end of the decade as Asian countries build more offices and buy more aircraft, cars and trains.
“Although the economic recovery is uneven, the overall outlook for Alcoa — and for aluminum — remains positive,” Mr. Kleinfeld said in a statement. “Demand for aluminum continues to rise and so does growth in our major markets.”
Alcoa, traditionally the first company in the Dow Jones industrial average to report earnings, was little changed in after-hours trading.
Aluminum prices have advanced in the last year in London as demand soared from Chinese and American automotive and aerospace sectors. Aluminum spot prices on the London Metal Exchange averaged $2,600 a metric ton in the second quarter, 24 percent more than a year earlier.
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