Alcoa said its loss narrowed in the latest quarter, but that its results continued to be pressured by lower aluminum prices.
The Pittsburgh-based aluminum producer on Wednesday said it had a third-quarter loss of $168 million, or 94 cents a share, compared with a loss of $746 million, or $4.17 a share, for the same period a year earlier.
Stripping out one-time items, the loss per share came in at $1.14. Analysts polled by FactSet had forecast a lower adjusted loss of $1.06.
Alcoa said a decline in raw material and production costs wasn’t enough to offset lower average realized pricing for alumina and aluminum, as well as a negative currency impact of $83 million.
Total revenue dropped 8.7% to $2.6 billion, slightly beating analysts expectations of $2.59 billion.
“Moving forward, we are laser-focused on improvement, and we’re working across our global system to increase margins through operational productivity,” Chief Executive William Oplinger said.