Topic: Growth Stocks

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, January 13, 2012

Article Excerpt

PLEASE NOTE: Next week, Stock Pickers Digest, our newsletter for aggressive investors, will reveal its #1 pick for 2012. ALCOA INC., $9.80, New York symbol AA, plans to cut its aluminum production by 12% in 2012. The move is in response to falling aluminum prices, which are down 27% from their 2011 peak. As part of this plan, the company will permanently close its smelter in Tennessee and shut down part of a smelter in Texas. It will also cut production at high-cost smelters in Italy and Spain. If you exclude costs related to these closures, Alcoa would have earned $812 million in 2011. That’s up 45.3% from $559 million in 2010. Earnings per share rose 33.3%, to $0.72 from $0.54, on more shares outstanding. That fell short of the consensus estimate of $0.75 a share. Sales rose 18.7%, to $25.0 billion from $21.0 billion in 2010. Aluminum production rose 5.3%. Even with the recent weakness in aluminum prices, Alcoa’s average selling price rose…