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$2.7B profit for 09 - Have you driven one lately?
Topic Started: Jan 28 2010, 09:34 PM (299 Views)
LTC8K6
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DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) - Ford Motor Co. made $2.7 billion in 2009, its first annual profit in four years.

The automaker on Thursday also forecast a full-year profit in 2010. Earlier it had only promised to be "solidly profitable" in 2011.

Ford benefited from cost-cutting, a $696 million profit in its credit arm and popular cars and trucks like the Ford Fusion midsize sedan and Ford Escape small sport utility vehicle. It gained market share in North and South America and Europe, despite the worst U.S. sales climate in 30 years.

"While we still face significant business environment challenges ahead, 2009 was a pivotal year for Ford," Ford CEO Alan Mulally said in a statement.

Ford's 2009 net income of 86 cents per share showed a significant improvement from the year before, when it lost a record $14.6 billion. Excluding one-time items of $711 million, Ford made 43 cents per share. Those items included severance payments and retiree health-care charges.

The profit surprised Wall Street, where analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected an annual loss of 31 cents.

In the fourth quarter, Ford earned $868 million, or 25 cents per share, compared with a loss of $5.9 billion a year earlier. Ford earned money in three of the four quarters last year.

Ford said it will make profit-sharing payments to its U.S. hourly workers in March. They will be the first profit-sharing checks since 2004.

The Dearborn-based automaker's debt load increased by $7.4 billion to $34.3 billion, largely because it took a charge of $7 billion to account for debt to a union-run retiree health-care fund. That puts Ford at a disadvantage to GM and Chrysler, who were able to shed debt in bankruptcy court.


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100128/D9DGO8O80.html



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LTC8K6
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Anyone remember the old crappy Ford Fiesta?

Well, forget it. This new one is very good if you are in the market for a small car:

http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/fiesta/
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Greg

How'd Chevy do? Chrysler?
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LTC8K6
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I haven't heard anything...

Maybe it's hard to tell?
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kbp

I think the new owner is facing a problem with debt.
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Greg

I suppose they're probably waiting to their numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. The'll have to announce them at the next meeting of shareholders. So when does the UAW next meet?
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Tom E

Yes I have driven either a brand new chevy truck or Avalanche for the last twenty years buying at least one per year.

This summer I bought an F150

Tom E.
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Mason
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Tom E
Jan 29 2010, 08:54 PM
Yes I have driven either a brand new chevy truck or Avalanche for the last twenty years buying at least one per year.

This summer I bought an F150

Tom E.
.
You can't go wrong with an F150.


.

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Baldo
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Congrats to Ford! They are building better cars. They didn't let Obama's Car Czar run them!

They do have a lot of debt hanging over them that GM & Chrysler got wiped away and the UAW refused to renegotiate the contracts to what GM & Chrysler got.

However it is good news
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Baldo
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Well there is always a hook! The pensions problem continues and they basically just moved it off books for this year and didn't confront it in bankruptcy. The Big Three are still facing quite a hurdle.

Pension liabilities weigh on Big 3
Automakers face growing deficits as funds bring lower rates of return
David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Washington -- The pension plans of Detroit's Big Three automakers, covering nearly 1.3 million people, still face growing shortfalls even though Ford Motor Co. is making money again and its domestic rivals slashed costs dramatically in bankruptcy.

The huge pension liabilities weighing down the companies' balance sheets are left over from the "legacy" costs that for so long made Detroit automakers uncompetitive against their lower-cost foreign rivals.

The obligations are growing as the pension funds earn lower rates of return, driving up future funding needs.

General Motors Co.'s pension fund deficit stands at $18 billion, The Detroit News has learned from documents not yet made public, and Ford said last week that its shortfall worldwide grew to $12 billion as of Dec. 31, up $500 million from a year ago.

GM's pensions were underfunded by $12.7 billion at the end of 2008 using different accounting rules, so it isn't clear precisely how they fared.

Chrysler Group LLC, with about 200,000 participants in its plans, declined to release its pension balance sheet, but as of the end of 2008 pegged it at $3.6 billion.

The underfunding does not pose an immediate danger to current and future retirees, but automakers will have to tackle it and there is no easy fix.

"It is a big cautionary sign that is going to have to be addressed," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the auto industry. "This is the culmination of the work lives of hundreds of thousands of people, so it is not a small matter."


Proposals pending in Congress, Shaiken said, would just "delay the payments, so it is not clear how that is going to eventually be resolved."

GM and Chrysler shed tens of billions of dollars in costs while in bankruptcy last year, but chose not to terminate their pension plans, as companies often do when they seek court protection while they restructure.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the government pension insurer, last year assumed responsibility for at least a half-dozen auto supplier pensions covering 100,000 people, adding more than $7 billion to its own deficit. The agency was relieved that it didn't have to pick up GM's and Chrysler's as well.

Still, the PBGC has expressed concerns about the overall state of auto industry pensions. GM spokeswoman Noreen Pratscher said this week that the Detroit automaker is considering a voluntary contribution to its hourly pension plan, as a bookend to its action on behalf of hourly workers at its former parts unit, the bankrupt Delphi Corp. She didn't disclose the amount.

GM agreed to make up $1 billion in losses that Delphi employees stood to lose when the PBGC took over the Troy-based supplier's pension plans. That contribution would cut GM's deficit...snipped

Concerns at Ford

The biggest factor contributing to Ford's pension fund shortfall is that the amount it will need to meet its future obligations is growing, because low interest rates are driving down the predicted rate of return on the assets in the pension fund.

Ford told Congress in 2008 it thought it would have to make a pension plan payment between $3 billion and $4 billion in 2010.

But as a result of an improvement in "market conditions," Ford doesn't expect to be required to make a U.S. pension plan payment this year.

"We take our obligations very seriously, managing our plans with integrity and prudence even during difficult times," said Ford spokesman John Stoll. Ford will have to address pension issues as part of the planned sale of its Swedish unit, Volvo. The automaker made $600 million in contributions in 2008 when it sold the Jaguar and Land Rover brands.

JP Morgan auto analyst Himanshu Patel said in a research note that Ford's pension underfunding was "substantially worse than expected" -- $3.5 billion lower in assets than JP Morgan had estimated.

http://detnews.com/article/20100206/BIZ/2060315/Pension-liabilities-weigh-on-Big-3


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Mason
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GM has no problems - Uncle Sam is writing the checks.

Uncle Sam is Owner and minority owner is the UAW.

Money as far as the eye can see. I would not look for quality to improve, to the contrary.

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