Archive for the ‘Financial’ Category

It's been a busy day for General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson. Not only did he reveal GM's third quarter financials, but he also announced the company's souped-up plan to repay $6.7 billion in loans from the U.S. government. While the financial report was reasonably upbeat (the company ended Q3 $1.2 billion in the red, but that's an improvement on analysts' $2.5 billion loss estimate), the real attention-grabber was GM's aggressive loan repayment plan: the company will now cough up $1 billion at the close of each quarter, beginning in December 2009. At that rate, GM's debt should be fully erased by July 2011 -- far ahead of the 2015 date...

Detroit's Big Three may have grabbed most of this week's headlines, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the world's automakers have been sitting on their hands. One story that isn't getting much play is the fact that Toyota Motor Company -- which posted its first-ever loss last fiscal year -- returned to profitability last quarter.

Although the company's financials weren't quite as impressive as those Ford released on Monday, the ¥21.8 billion ($242 million) profit Toyota realized in July, August, and September 2009 marks a welcome break from the losses Toyota posted in the three previous quarters. Of course, that ¥21.8 billion figure...

The rumors were true: Ford Motor Company has just published financials from the third quarter of 2009, and without being overly optimistic, it's fair to say that the data is moderately rosy. Among several bright spots in the report, one that seems particularly impressive is that July - September of 2009 saw Ford North America's first profit since the first quarter of 2005, four-and-a-half years ago.

In addition to Ford's North American pre-tax profit of $357 million, the company recorded a total net income of $997 million during Q3. That's a substantial improvement on the roughly $200 million loss posted one year ago, during Q3 of 2008...