Ford Earns 39 Cents Per Share

Ford earned 39 cents per share which is four cents more than Wall Street’s forecast:

Ford reported net income of $1.4 billion, 45 percent less than the $2.55 billion it earned in the same period of 2011. Revenue declined 2 percent, to $32.4 billion.

Officials attributed about half of the decline to the company’s tax rate quadrupling from a year ago. In addition, its European business swung to a $149 million pretax operating loss from a $293 million operating profit.

Excluding taxes and special items, Ford earned $2.29 billion, or 39 cents a share, marking its 11th consecutive quarterly operating profit. That is 19 percent less than a year ago, when it earned $2.84 billion, or 47 cents a share, but higher than Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 35 cents.

“Our team delivered a solid performance during the first quarter, with particularly strong results in North America, despite a challenging global external environment,” Ford’s chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, said in a statement. “We remain focused on investing for future growth and developing outstanding products with segment-leading quality, fuel-efficiency, safety, smart design and value.”

Ford earned $2.13 billion in North America, up from $1.84 billion in the first quarter of 2011. The company said that was the highest quarterly profit for the region since at least 2000, when it began reporting North American results separately.

The improvement was a result of higher sales and prices paid by customers, even as increasing gasoline prices prompted a shift toward smaller vehicles.

The automaker recorded positive automotive operating-related cash flow for the eighth consecutive quarter, increasing cash reserves to $23 billion from $21.3 billion a year ago.

(…)

For the full year, Ford said it expects operating profit and margins in North America to be “significantly higher” than in 2011, allowing global operating profits to be roughly flat. It said operating profit would be higher in the second half than in the first half because of new product introductions and production increases, including plants scheduled to open in Thailand and China.

“We feel really good about the quarter and what it portends for the rest of the year,” Robert Shanks, Ford’s chief financial officer, told reporters at the company’s headquarters. “It demonstrates not only the much leaner cost structure that we have, but our ability to do well no matter what the customer wants to buy.”

Posted by on April 27th, 2012 at 8:40 am


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