Ford Motor Beats Earnings for Q4

Ford Motor ($F) posted strong quarterly results this morning. For Q4, the company earned 31 cents per share, which was six cents per share more than expectations. Ford earned 20 cents per share during Q4 of 2011.

Quarterly revenue rose from $32.6 billion to $34.5 billion. Wall Street had been expecting $32.94 billion. In terms of net earnings, Ford earned $1.59 billion last quarter compared with $1.03 billion the year before. For the entire year, Ford raked in $5.66 billion on revenue of $134.3 billion.

The equation continues to be the same: they’re doing well in North America, but not so well in Europe. During 2012, Ford lost $1.75 billion in Europe. To give you an idea of how rough that is, they only lost $27 million there in 2011. In fact, the company said today that it’s expecting to lose $2 billion in Europe this year. Previously Ford had said they expected the same loss for this year as they had last year. Pre-tax earnings in North America rose 110%.

The New York Times described Ford’s Q4 as a “microcosm of Ford’s recent overall performance.” That’s a nice way of putting it. Alan Mulally, the head honcho, said, “We are well positioned for another strong year in 2013, as we continue our plan to serve customers in all markets around the world with a full family of vehicles.”

As bleak as things look in Europe, I like the steps that Ford is taking there. They’re being very aggressive, and they’re way ahead of GM. Basically, Ford is doing in Europe today what they did in North America a few years ago. Namely, restructure, reorganize and streamline operations. It’s painful in the short-term as we’re seeing in Europe today. But it’s very profitable in the long-term as we can see in Ford’s North American results today.

The stock looks to pull back a little today. Don’t be alarmed. Ford continues to do very well.

Posted by on January 29th, 2013 at 9:01 am


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