Take that Mitt!
GM Earns Record $9.19 Billion Profit; Opel Posts Loss
By Tim Higgins - Feb 16, 2012 8:11 AM ET
General Motors Co. (GM), which regained the global auto sales lead last year, earned $9.19 billion last year, the largest profit in its 103-year-history, while its European business again lost money.
Fourth-quarter net income attributable to stockholders slid 48 percent to $725 million, the lowest in two years. GM had earned more than $2 billion in each of the three previous quarters. Profit in the fourth quarter fell 25 percent to 39 cents a share, trailing the 41-cent average estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
GM North America earnings before interest and taxes more than tripled for the year to $7.19 billion on improved U.S. sales. The automaker’s Europe business, including the Opel brand, lost $747 million for the year. While that’s better than Europe’s $1.76 billion loss in 2010, it’s not break-even as GM had planned until November.
“GM’s results in Europe certainly dampen the positive results in the U.S. but you have to still say they had a really good year,” Rebecca Lindland, an industry analyst with IHS Automotive, said before the results were released. Before a government-backed bankruptcy in 2009, “they were making record losses, so they’ve made a tremendous amount of progress.”
GM global sales rose 7.6 percent last year to 9.03 million to outsell Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) as the world’s top-selling automaker. GM lost the sales crown in 2008 to Toyota.
GM’s full-year profit in 2010 of $6.17 billion had been the automaker’s largest annual income since its predecessor earned $6.7 billion in 1997, excluding profit in 2009 to account for its post-bankruptcy recapitalization.
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-16/gm-earns-record-9-19-billion-net-income-while-opel-loses-money.html
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