) reported a 20% drop in its second-quarter profit. AES posted its quarterly profit at $140 million, or $0.18 per share, versus a year-earlier profit of $174 million, or $0.22 per share. Its earnings from continuing operations fell to $0.09 per share from $0.24 per share. Its revenue dropped 5.5% to $4.19 billion. However, analysts were expecting earnings of $0.27 per share on revenue of $4.69 billion. Gross margin declined to 16.5% from 22.4% AES' revenue from the Latin American utilities business dropped 26%. AES shares gained 1.16% to close at $12.25 on Friday.