Ford Motor profit beats Street

Ford Motor Co said on Thursday fourth-quarter results beat Wall Street expectations, and it reiterated a forecast that 2016 pretax profit would be equal to or higher than previous year.

The switch will put at least another $709 into the pockets of each of Ford’s 52,900 US hourly workers as part of profit-sharing checks early this year.

The company’s stock price has tumbled in recent weeks, falling to a three-year low in early January after Ford signaled margins in North America could flatten out. But Ford also achieved a record pretax profit of $765 million in its Asia Pacific region and returned to profitability in Europe for the first time since 2011.

Results were boosted by a shift in the accounting of pension plans.

North America remained the core of the second-largest United States automaker’s business, with operating profits rising 25.6 percent to $9.3 billion. Shanks said low oil prices, low interest rates and a growing housing market in the US all bode well for 2016.

The No. 2 USA auto maker in terms of volume relied primarily on increased light-truck demand in its home market for its most recent quarterly performance, but also reported improved results in Asia and Europe.

“We really started to see the global operations start to come forward”, Shanks said.

Revenue was $40.3 billion, up $4.4 billion from a year ago.

The company said it expects sales, profit margins and earnings to all be equal to or better than 2015 results this coming year.

Meanwhile, automotive operating cash flow more than doubled to $7.3 billion.

Analysts had expected Ford to report adjusted earnings of about 51 cents a share on $36.40 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.