Saturday 7 April 2012

AA - ready to start earnings season

Alcoa will post earnings at the close this coming Monday.  AA has a forward PE of just 10, the market is no fan of this company right now. If earnings come in weak, we could easily see 10% knocked off the price. AA does have a dividend of around 1%, but like a fair few other companies I've been looking at lately, its profit margins are too thin at around 2.5%. That is simply no good, considering that the wider economy has supposedly been in a 'growth phase'. Can you imagine how AA is going to do if the wider world economy does slip into a 6-12 month second-wave recession?

Key Stats: see, http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AA+Key+Statistics


AA, daily


AA, from a chart perspective is a real tricky one to project. It could just as easily keep sliding - even accelerate in a decline to re-test last Decembers low of $8.50. Conversely, we might see it snap up - to confirm what might be a bull flag, to around the $11 level (interestingly, where the 200 day MA is).

With commodities under pressure these past few weeks, AA will be a real pointer for how the rest of the heavy industrials might report this quarter.

Certainly, AA is one to watch in after hours trading this Monday.