{"id":521722,"date":"2010-04-09T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T12:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"e2249889-c78b-43e3-9643-b1d7d4aa587b:420971"},"modified":"2010-04-09T08:29:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T12:29:00","slug":"mixed-forecasts-for-alcoa-and-aluminum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/521722","title":{"rendered":"Mixed forecasts for Alcoa and aluminum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.financialpost.com\/markets\/company\/index.html?symbol=AA&amp;id=252524\" >Alcoa Inc.<\/a> was downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at J.P. Morgan due to its revised aluminum price forecast of 92\u00a2 per pound in 2011. The firm also removed the stock from its Focus List and trimmed its year-end price target to US$16.50 from US$21.50.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough Alcoa has taken significant costs out of its business by closing high cost operations and through additional procurement and productivity savings, we think it will still struggle to generate attractive returns at our strategist\u2019s 2011 aluminum price forecast of $0.92\/lb,\u201d analyst Michael Gambardella told clients.<\/p>\n<p>LME aluminum currently sits around US$1.04 and the average price for the forward curve in 2011 is roughly US$1.11. However, Mr. Gambardella expects weak first quarter results and relatively poor fundamentals for the aluminum market compared to other metals will encourage investors to seek out companies that have more earnings leverage to their respective metal prices.<\/p>\n<p>Alcoa is scheduled to report results after the market close on Monday, April 12. Desjardins Securities analyst John Redstone expects the company to report a Q1 net profit of US15\u00a2 per share, exceeding the consensus estimate of US10\u00a2.<\/p>\n<p>Driven by a strengthening aluminium market, which comes as a result of rising input costs and an improvement in supply-demand dynamics, Mr. Redstone expects the average aluminium price will climb to US$1.25 and US$1.40 in 2010 and 2011, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFurther signs of improving demand, such as tightening scrap supply and higher prices for semi-fabricated goods, should provide \u2018floors\u2019 for the primary aluminium price,\u201d he said in a note.<\/p>\n<p>Desjardins rates Alcoa a Buy with a US$26.40 one-year price target. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"mailto:jratner@nationalpost.com\">Jonathan Ratner<\/a> <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/network.nationalpost.com\/NP\/aggbug.aspx?PostID=420971\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alcoa Inc. was downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at J.P. Morgan due to its revised aluminum price forecast of 92\u00a2 per pound in 2011. The firm also removed the stock from its Focus List and trimmed its year-end price target to US$16.50 from US$21.50. \u201cAlthough Alcoa has taken significant costs out of its business by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4059,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4059"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}