Giant aluminum company, Alcoa Inc. posted its fourth quarter earnings report on Monday, and despite the fact that the firm had managed to trim down its losses during the period and sales went up, the end earnings were well below the estimates pegged by analysts.

For the fourth quarter, the company managed to pull down its losses to $277 Million, but after making all adjustments, Alcoa's final numbers showed a profit of a mere 1 cent per share. Experts were expecting that there would be earnings of a minimum of 5 cents a share.

On the news, the company's stocks also suffered, and in the after-hours trading lost 5% of their value.

For the complete year 2009, the company faced a total loss of $1.15 Billion, or $1.23 per share, which came on sales of $18.44 Billion. In contrast, for the year 2008, Alcoa had reported a loss of $74 Million, or 10 cents a share, on sales of $26.9 Billion.

"This was a tough year for the aluminum industry -- a price crash, demand destruction and credit crunch. Yet today Alcoa is stronger than when the year started", said President and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld.