Alcoa Announces Full-Year Income from Continuing Operations of $1.4 Billion, or $1.60 per share; Highest Annual Revenue and Second Highest Profitability in the Company's History.

Extract

---

Alcoa Announces Full-Year Income from Continuing Operations of $1.4 Billion, or $1.60 per share; Highest Annual Revenue and Second Highest Profitability in the Company's History.

NEW YORK -- Alcoa (NYSE:AA)

Highlights:

--Income from continuing operations of $1.4 billion, or $1.60 per diluted share, for full year 2004, up 33% from 2003; second straight year of double-digit earnings growth;

--2004 revenue of $23.5 billion, the highest level in the company's history, and 11% higher than 2003;

--Second straight year with debt reduction of over $1.1 billion; debt-to-capital ratio declined to 29.3%, the lowest level in five years;

--Fourth quarter income from continuing operations of $345 million, or $0.39;

--Fourth quarter revenue of $6.0 billion, up 12% from the same period last year;

--Progress on major growth projects in Australia, Brazil, China, Iceland, Jamaica, Suriname and Russia;

--Restarting more than 200,000 metric tons of primary metal capacity in North America in 2005.

Alcoa announced today that its full-year 2004 income from continuing operations was $1.402 billion, or $1.60, up 33 percent from $1.055 billion, or $1.22, per diluted share, in the previous year.

"This year, we achieved the highest revenue in Alcoa's history and the second highest profitability," said Alcoa Chairman and CEO Alain Belda. "Strong cash flows allowed us to reduce debt by more than $1 billion and invest...

See the full content of this document

---