Alcoa Corporation

Alcoa earned 483 million dollars this quarter, more than double the 232 million from a year ago. After paying for upkeep and equipment, it still kept 472 million dollars in cash. It's also cashing in on the AI building boom by agreeing to sell part of an old New York site to a data center builder for up to 315 million dollars.

The Australian refinery that stumbled earlier this year is running smoothly again, which pushed alumina production up 11 percent to 2.5 million metric tons. Aluminum output rose for the sixth quarter in a row to 649,000 metric tons, helped by the finished restart of its Alumar smelter in Brazil. Alcoa expects to make and ship even more of both next quarter.

Revenue fell 7 percent from last quarter to 3.7 billion dollars because aluminum prices and shipments both dropped. Alcoa also expects about 60 million dollars in extra costs next quarter from raw materials, maintenance, and pricier alumina for its smelters. Alcoa doesn't set the price of aluminum, so when the market cools, profits can shrink fast.

Alcoa borrowed 2.6 billion dollars by selling new bonds to help pay about 3.1 billion dollars in cash for South32's mines, refineries, and smelters. That raises its expected interest bill for the year to about 185 million dollars, and the deal won't close until the first half of 2027. Big purchases like this can be hard to fold in, so how well Alcoa handles it matters.