DETROIT – Ford Motor Co. earned $1.76 billion in the latest quarter, down from a net loss of $3.1 billion in the same period last year.
(Last year’s first-quarter loss stemmed mainly from a decline in the valuation of Ford’s Rivian electric vehicle investments.)
Excluding one-time items, Ford earned 44 cents per share. That beat the Wall Street estimate of 42 cents, according to FactSet.
Revenue rose 20% to $41.74 billion, well above analysts’ expectations of $39.25 billion.
Ford reaffirmed its previous guidance for full-year pretax profit of $9 billion to $11 billion.
Ford lost $722 million before taxes on its electric vehicles, but earned $2.62 billion on its internal combustion vehicles. The company’s commercial vehicle unit increased pretax earnings by $1.37 billion. Ford lost more than $60,000 per electric vehicle sold in the first quarter. The internal combustion vehicle business, Ford Blue, made an average pre-tax profit of $3,715 per vehicle, while the Ford Pro commercial business earned $4,053 per vehicle, according to the company’s financials.
The company’s profits were largely fueled by sales in its most profitable market, the United States. Ford sold just under 472,000 vehicles from January to March, up 9.9% from a year earlier.
The company continued to receive strong prices for its vehicles during the quarter, driven by unloaded trucks and large SUVs. According to Edmunds, the Ford’s average selling price was $56,534.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ford cut the prices of its Mustang Mach E electric SUV, the same day Tesla slightly raised the prices of the Model Y, the Mach E’s main competitor. Ford also said it will reopen the Mach E order bank on Wednesday after upgrading a factory in Mexico to increase production. Automakers were able to ramp up production and get vehicles to dealers on time after being hit by shortages of semiconductors and other components in 2022.
Shares were down 1% in after-hours trading.
Ford warned that “higher industry customer incentives as vehicle supply and demand rebalance” would be a “headwind” to profitability.
This includes Reuters
