Notable Basic Material Stocks (APA, CF, ANR)

Apache Corporation (NYSE:APA) added 0.50% to $105.79. This month, the company posted a 74 percent jump in quarterly profit as natural gas and crude oil prices rose from a year earlier, but results fell short of analysts forecasts.

Profit in the third quarter was $765 million, or $2.12 per diluted share, compared with $441 million, or $1.30 per share a year ago.

Adjusted for one-time items, company’s profit of $2.19 per share lagged Wall Street analysts’ average forecast of $2.24 per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

The stock has a 52-week range of $81.94-$111. The stock went up more than 2% year-to-date.

CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) went up 1.87% to $116.66. For the third quarter, the company this month posted net income of $48.2 million, or 67 cents per share, up from $38.5 million, or 78 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Excluding the charges, CF earned $1.12 per share. Analysts expected earnings of $1.43 per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Revenue more than doubled to $917.1 million. Analysts had expected $984.3 million.

Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. (NYSE:ANR) fell 0.86% to $46.20. This month, Alpha posted a third-quarter net profit of $31.9 million, or 27 cents per share, after a net loss of $16.3 million, or 16 cents per share, in the same quarter of 2009.

But, excluding one-time items, earnings were 58 cents a share, well below the 79 cents analysts on average had forecast, according to Thomson Reuters.

Alpha shipped 21.2 million tons of coal in the quarter, up from 16.5 million a year earlier. Although average per ton price realizations rose, the cost of coal sales rose to $664.7 million from $469.5 million. The average cost of sales in the U.S. East rose to $63.04 per ton from $50.96.