Ford 'money machine' may report most profitable year since 2000

Ford 'money machine' may report most profitable year since 2000

DETROIT (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. may report its most profitable year since 2000 tomorrow, boosted by new models and a better reputation. The annual profit would be the second straight for CEO Alan Mulally, who has improved quality and expanded the model lineup.

Ford, according to an analyst survey conducted by Thomson Reuters, is expected to generate a fourth-quarter pretax profit of about 48 cents a share on revenue of $30.57 billion. On that basis, the company would post profits of about $1.7 billion for the fourth quarter and $8 billion for all of 2010.

Ford posted $6.37 billion in net income during the first nine months of the year -- the most since 1998 and more than any other automaker. In 2009, Ford posted annual net income of $2.72 billion on revenue of $118.31 billion.

“Ford is building better cars, they're more fuel-efficient and they've really focused on quality since Alan Mulally came in,” said Gary Bradshaw, a fund manager at Dallas-based Hodges Capital Management, which owns 100,000 Ford common shares and 100,000 preferred shares. “He's just making this company a money machine.”

The estimates for quarterly and 2010 profit exclude items such as a $960 million charge Ford planned to take in the fourth quarter because of a plan to pay investors in its convertible debt to swap their notes for shares. Profit excluding items was 9 cents a share in 2009.

Ford shares rose 68 percent in 2010 and have gained 9.4 percent this year on the New York Stock Exchange. Ford, battered by $30 billion in losses over three years, fell to a close of $1.26 on Nov. 19, 2008, as rising fuel prices and the financial crisis led to a collapse in auto sales. The shares rose 48 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $18.37 yesterday.

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