Alcoa Inc.’s second-quarter profit is likely to show the largest U.S. aluminum producer’s earnings won’t recover to pre-financial crisis levels until after 2012, analysts say.

The “story of the second quarter is trying to establish what is a normal baseline for Alcoa’s earnings,” said Jorge Beristain, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in Greenwich, Connecticut, who rates the shares “hold.”
The New York-based company will post earnings excluding one-time items of 11 cents a share, according to the average estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Quarterly earnings won’t exceed 44 cents through 2012, estimates also show.
In the 18 months through June 2008, before commodity and stock markets tumbled and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy, they averaged 62 cents a share.
(Source: Bloomberg)