Liam Denning, Columnist

Alcoa's Long Division Problem

The latest numbers fail to clarify the company's plans to split in two.

April 12, 2016 at 5:02 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

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Alcoa's results sure put the gap in GAAP.

The company's latest set, released late Monday, was no exception: Net income was $16 million in the first quarter or, excluding special items, $108 million. Just how special those adjustments are at this point is debatable. Since the start of 2014, Alcoa's cumulative net profit under generally accepted accounting principles amounts to all of $73 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The pre-specials number? $1.95 billion.