Why Century Aluminum Stock Crashed Today
Shares of aluminum producer Century Aluminum (NASDAQ: CENX) crashed on Thursday, falling 18.6% through 2:50 p.m. ET after the company announced that it will idle its Hawesville, Kentucky, aluminum smelter in response to "skyrocketing energy costs."
"The power cost required to run our Hawesville, KY, facility has more than tripled the historical average in a very short period," CEO Jesse Gary said, and "this makes it necessary to temporarily curtail operations for approximately nine to 12 months until energy prices return to more normalized levels."
What does this mean for Century? For one, it means a big drop in production capacity over the next year. The smelter in Hawesville is Century's second largest worldwide, and its largest in the U.S. With an annual production capacity of 250,000 metric tons of aluminum, it represents nearly 25% of the company's total global production capacity of 1 million metric tons.
Source Fool.com
