Commodities & Metals
Alcoa Needs to Lose Earnings Season Indicator Status
April 9, 2013 9:25 am
Last Updated: March 26, 2020 5:31 pm
Alcoa Inc. (NYSE: AA) is an overrated stock, and even the company itself might admit that its global importance is perhaps a bit of a stretch. Wall St. tries each quarter to use the company as a barometer for earnings season because it is the first Dow Jones Industrial Average component to report earnings. This comparison is one that needs to stop.Source: Thinkstock
Alcoa beat earnings but was light on revenue. The company tried to maintain again that there would be 7% growth this year. The good news is that things actually are improving at the aluminum giant. The bad news is that this remains a restructuring story. Another reason we think that this company is overrated is because other companies have unseated its dominance.
Having a market cap of almost $9 billion hardly seems worthy of being one of 30 members of the DJIA. And with a share price less than $9, it is also a weakling on the DJIA, as the key investor index is price-weighted rather than market cap-weighted like the S&P 500.
Alcoa shares are down 1.4% at $8.27, but frankly the report seemed like one that, with the stock down about 5% so far in 2013, should have been good enough. That being said, Alcoa is no harbinger of earnings season, or when it is, then it is a coincidental reading rather than a leading indicator.
If you want companies that will beat earnings, Merrill Lynch offered a fresh list of eight large companies that it feels should beat earnings expectations during this earnings season.
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