Alcoa Has Profitable Third Quarter

English: HABS No. PA-6724-2. View of entrance to ALCOA Building from southwest. ALCOA Building (a.k.a. Regional Enterprise Tower), 425 Sixth Avenue, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Entrance pavilion built of glass and aluminum. Design by Harrison and Abramovitz. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Alcoa today reported a small profit in the third quarter, saying productivity improvements offset lower sales and falling aluminum prices.

The company said it earned $24 million, or 2 cents per share, on sales of $5.77 billion vs. a loss of $143 million, or 13 cents per share, and sales of $5.83 billion in the year-ago quarter.

The results included $109 million in after-tax restructuring charges related to shutting down smelters in the face of a glut in aluminum supply. Alcoa said it has idled 274,000 metric tons of high-cost capacity in the last five months.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/news/alcoa-has-profitable-third-quarter-706729/#ixzz2hARy0Nrl

U.S. Steel Earnings Higher Than Estimates

 

U.S. Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

U.S. Steel Corp., the country’s largest producer of the metal, reported second-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates after demand rose for tubular products.

Net income fell to $101 million, or 62 cents a share, from $222 million, or $1.33, a year earlier, Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel said today in a statement. Profit excluding one-time items was 69 cents a share, exceeding the 49-cent average of 19 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales declined to $5.02 billion from $5.12 billion, compared with the $5 billion average estimate.

Demand from U.S. Steel’s customers in the oil and natural- gas drilling helped offset lower prices for hot-rolled steel coil, a benchmark product used in cars, trucks and appliances.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-us-steel-earnings-20120731,0,264490.story

GoggleWorks Apartment Project Uses An Unusual Steel Framing Process

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The wraps on the new GoggleWorks apartments on Washington Street in Reading will be long gone by early summer. In the meantime, the $16.7 million building remains swathed in plastic to keep workers warm.

The plastic also has been covering up an unusual construction process based on a metal framing system. Instead of a typical structural steel framework filled in with masonry blocks and wooden planks, it has prefabricated metal framing and walls that stack in place made by ClarkDietrich Building Systems, an Ohio-based provider of steel construction products and services.

Eric Burkey, president of Reading-based Burkey Construction Co., the project’s general contractor, said the walls are set in place and the cold-formed steel joists and metal deck are set before the walls are placed on the floor above. The wall panels literally sit one on top of the other and carry through the overall height of the building.

“This kind of system has been around for a while,” Burkey said. “It just hasn’t been used a lot.”

Read more: http://businessweekly.readingeagle.com/?p=2331