Alcoa down ahead of quarterly results

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of Alcoa Inc (AA.N) fell 2.4 percent in premarket trade on Tuesday, ahead of the release of the company's quarterly results. Wall Street expects the aluminum producer to report a second consecutive quarterly loss after the market closes, mostly because the metal's price has dropped 9 percent this year.

"The metal price is down, that's the key," said analyst Charles Bradford of Bradford Research. "There is still too much aluminum out there, inventories are too high and demand stinks."

The aluminum price tumbled some 50 percent in the second half of 2008 from a peak of $3,380 per tonne last July. During the first quarter of this year, the price fell another 9 percent from $1,530 to $1,392.

In January, Alcoa, which has recently slashed 15,000 jobs, posted a fourth-quarter loss -- its first in six years.

Now, Wall Street expects more red ink for the first quarter when Alcoa kicks off the earnings season on Tuesday.

Analysts currently expect a loss of 52 cents per share compared with a profit of 44 cents per share in the first quarter of 2008. Revenue is expected to be $4.0 billion, down 45 percent from $7.4 billion a year earlier, according to Reuters Estimates.

The outlook for the rest of year is gloomy too, according to Alcoa's chief executive, Klaus Kleinfeld. He told the Reuters Mining Summit last month that he sees a decline of 6 percent to 7 percent in global consumption of aluminum -- worse than his previous forecast of 2 percent. First quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to fall by almost 37 percent versus a year ago, according to data from Thomson Reuters, as global demand slumps.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica, Editing by Walker Simon)