Ford Motor Company today posted a net quarterly loss of $123m and promised deeper efforts in the next two months to turn its ailing operations around.
Hurt by falling sales and by steep restructuring costs, Ford's earnings in the April-June quarter reversed from a profit in the same period a year ago of $946m.
The net loss came to seven cents per share, or three cents per share excluding special items. Wall Street analysts had expected Ford to post a quarterly profit of 14 cents a share.
'We've seen an improvement in North America results in the second quarter, but the external factors we face aren't going to get any easier,' the company's CEO Bill Ford said in a statement.
He said that Mark Fields, Ford's president for the Americas region, was accelerating his planning for recovery in the all-important North America market.
The ailing auto giant's revenue in the second quarter fell$ 2.5 billion from last year to $42 billion. But that still beat Wall Street's target for sales of $39.61 billion.
Ford's sales were down across all the major regions including North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Its Premier Automotive Group, which includes the luxury British marques Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin, reported a pre-tax loss of $162m, compared with a pre-tax profit of $17m a year ago.
In the second quarter, Ford took special charges amounting to $486m for costs related to layoffs and plant closures in North America. Ford is in the process of shedding some 30,000 jobs and shutting or reducing capacity in 14 factories as part of a painful reorganisation.
Along with rival company General Motors, Ford has been struggling to shore up its sales and profit margins in the face of intensifying competition from foreign carmakers led by Japan's Toyota.
