Autoblog

Ford Motor Company's third-quarter earnings report released earlier today basically said, "Times are bad, but we'll be aight." General Motors' just-released earnings report for the same time period says "Holy effin' hell, we're running out of things to cut, please help us!" We'll try and it keep it simple, but the main number is $2.5 billion, as in $2.5 billion lost during the Q3 '08. That compares with a $42.5 billion loss this time last year, but the bulk of that was attributable to a one-time charge against the books. Unfortunately, not only was GM North America revenue down, but the automaker claims the credit crisis has made its way around the world and contributed to losses in GM Europe and GM Asia Pacific, as well as its own financing arm, GMAC.

Here's the bigger story: General Motors burned through $6.9 billion of its cash reserves during Q3 '08, which reduces its bank account from $21 billion at the end of Q2 to $16.2 billion today. That's barely enough for such a big automaker to survive the coming winter, so In response, GM has announced to create an additional $5 billion of liquidity by the end of 2009. Below are the big changes we can expect.

• Retiming select vehicle programs in North America and Europe by three to 12 months, i.e. lengthening product lifecycles
• Deferring capacity expansion projects
• Lower sales promotion spending, i.e. less advertising
• Less support of dealer network activities and channel consolidations
• Scaling back production
• Curtailing discretionary spending (travel, consulting, over-time, etc.)
• Increase reduction in force from 20 to 30%

Three other things deserve mention. The first is that rumors of the Volt being delayed are untrue. In fact, GM says that spending on the Volt and other fuel economy initiatives will be increased. The second is that GM acknowledged it was considering acquiring Chrysler LLC (though it wasn't named directly), but the merger talks have stopped for the time being. And finally, the main message GM wants to get out via its earnings report is that despite cutting spending even more, it considers government aid essential for its survival. So, ball in your court, Obama.

Follow the jump for a pair of lengthy press releases from GM.

[Source: General Motors]

The Audi Club of North America puts out a publication aptly titled the Quattro Quarterly that gives Audi owners the inside skinny on everything from future products to how to swap bigger brakes into their B5 S4. One of our intrepid readers, Kevin, sent us a few scans of the QQ's latest issue, where it outlines Audi's product plans for the next five years. While some of it has already been confirmed, other interesting factoids, including the future of the R8, RS-TT and the development of an R4, have long been rumored on these very pages. Follow the jump for the full breakdown on what Audi has in store, but be aware that we're handing out grains of salt below the fold.

DaimlerChrysler reported third quarter earnings today of $686 million in net profit, but its Chrysler Group division dragged down that profit margin by posting a loss of $1.47 billion, a figure that completely erased the gain of $1.24 billion made by Mercedes-Benz. During a presentation today, DaimlerChrysler CFO Bodo Uebber didn't rule out the possibility that the Chrysler Group could be sold off. While far from saying the division has a For Sale on its windshield, Uebber told reporters, "We don't exclude anything here... We will do our analysis. Second, we will talk about measures. And third, we will draw our conclusions."

DCX predicts the Chrysler Group will finish 2006 about $1.2 billion in the red. As we reported earlier, the automaker has put together a task force comprised of executives from all its divisions to study the Chrysler Group's business plan and help the division cut an average of $1,000 from the cost of each vehicle it produces. No doubt the conclusions of this internal study will be used to make recommendations for or against keeping the Chrysler Group in the fold.

We seriously doubt that this proposition is being seriously considered by DCX. For one, the Chrysler Group has been profitable for DCX in the past and likely will be again once it nails down a decent health care deal with the UAW, pads its lineup with more small car offerings and less SUVs, and gets the Challenger out into the public's hands. There are other unprofitable brands under the DCX umbrella, like SMART for instance, that would logically be ahead of the Chrysler Group in line for sale. Still, Uebber should've known the fire storm of speculation that would start if even the prospect of selling the Chrysler Group was even mentioned in passing.

[Source: Automotive News]

The business world has always confounded us for being a place where one can celebrate with champagne after not posting a profit for three months, if only for the fact that you didn't lose as much money as people thought you would. Such is the case with General Motors, which today announced that it had lost "only" $115 million this quarter. Those pesky "special items" in the ledger amount to $644 million for GM and include money that's been spent to aid the reorganization of Delphi and "goodwill impairment" on GMAC (from what we gather, it's a reevaluation of the finance company's worth). Excluduing special items, GM actually posted a net income of $529 million on revenue of $48.8 billion, which is a marked improvement over last year's adjusted loss of $1.1 billion and comes mainly from the good old fashioned practice of selling cars and trucks. General Motors also was able to fine tune the amount of money it expects to spend on Delphi, which previously was thought to be between $5.5 and $12 billion, but now looks to be between $6.0 and $7.5 billion.

On the auto side of things, GM's global market share was 13.9% percent in Q3, up slightly from the second quarter but below the 14.4% it recorded in Q3 2005. In the all important North American market, however, GM captured 25.1% of consumers' hearts and wallets, the best quarter it's had this year. GM North America still reported a loss of $367 million in Q3, but again, it's an improvement of $1.3 billion over last year this time and was acheived despite producing 96,000 fewer vehicles (likely the result of lower rental and fleet sales).

You can check out GM's full press release for more details after the jump.

[Source: GM]

Restating Ford Credit financial results from 2001

Quarterly financial reports are always difficult to decipher, but the title of this post is crystal clear. Ford announced this morning that its third-quarter net loss was $5.8 billion. A lot of the loss can be contributed to the restructuring efforts of the Way Forward plan, as Ford lost only $284 million in Q3 2005 before the plan had begun. For instance, Ford is paying out $861 million for costs related to closing or idling plants in North America like the Maumee (Ohio) Stamping Plant and Essex (Ontario, Canada) Engine Plant, including money for worker buyouts and jobs bank benefits.

Of course, Ford has not been doing so hot in the area of selling cars and trucks, either. It's North American operations took the biggest hit with a loss of $2.0 billion in Q3, while its Asia Pacific and African units contributed another $56 million of red ink. Ford's South American outfit, however, recorded a profit of $222 million and Mazda threw another $40 million in the win column, though that number fell from a profit of $112 million last year. Ford of Europe was down only $13 million last quarter, and is expected to be profitable by the end of the year. And then there is Ford's Premier Auto Group, whose losses grew from $108 million this time last year to $593 million in Q3 2006.

Finally, Ford Motor Credit recorded a Q3 profit of $262 million, down from $577 million during this time last year. The Blue Oval's financing and credit arm also added a wrinkle by announcing it would restate its financial earnings since 2001 to, now stay with us here, "correct the accounting for certain derivative transactions." What happened and why we probably couldn't decipher with four years of accounting school and a calculator, but it means that all the results Ford reported this morning for its Q3 performance are preliminary, as they will need to be released again once this error at FoMo Credit is corrected, and chances are the correction won't improve the numbers. What was new Ford CEO Alan Mulally's response to his company's performance over the last three months? "These business results are clearly unacceptable." Indeed they are, Alan.

You can follow the jump for press releases from Ford on both its Q3 2006 earnings and the FoMo Credit restatement of earnings.

[Source: Ford]

General Motors reported global sales of 2,296,000 vehicles in the third quarter, which is a 3-percent decline versus Q3 of last year. That's only 66,000 unit off what was sold during the same period in 2005, and the GM spinmeisters attribute the difference to the employee pricing war last year and the company's commitment to reduce rental and fleet sales this year. Aight, we can buy that, so perhaps GM really did hold its ground this year in the global market.

The automaker claims its market share in North America, which includes the U.S. and Canada (it's first and third biggest markets) has increased steadily each quarter this year, from 23.8 percent in Q1 to 24.1 percent in Q2 to 25.1 percent in Q3. Since the press release has no hard numbers, that claim is difficult to verify, but most around the Autoblog office believe it to be true since the General's done particularly well with its more vanilla offerings like the Cobalt and Impala. Still, the General's global brands kicked it up a notch with Chevy seeing growth in nearly every market, especially the ones that will become increasingly important like India (up 44%) and China (up 6%). As we reported earlier, HUMMER sales are also strong around the world, up 54% year to date. It's all about the H3 though, with GM neglecting to mention the H2 in its press release at all.

Check out the rest of GM's report on its Q3 performance after the jump, but as with any sales report, be ready to wade through some spin.

[Source: GM]

The Chrysler Group is stepping in line with Ford today, which earlier announced more buyouts for Blue Oval workers, plant closings and that it won't see a profit in North America until 2009 at the earliest, to announce that it has increased the amount it expects to lose in the third quarter by almost $1 billion to a total of $1.5 billion. Citing a laundry list of reasons mirroring those that also caught Ford by surprise, including high fuel prices, lack of a competitive small vehicle lineup and high legacy costs, Chrysler states that it will take the hit this quarter but is "striving" to achieve a profit in Q4. The automaker will have eight new vehicles out by year's end to help achieve that aim, including the new Dodge Caliber, Jeep Patriot and Compass, and Chrysler Sebring. We wish 'em the best of luck.

[Source: DaimlerChrysler]

German luxury marque Audi is preparing a product push that will considerably grow the company's lineup by the end of the decade. The new models include an A4-based four-seat grand tourer called the A5 inspired the Nuvolari concept car, a four-door coupe based on the A6 called the A7 (AutoWeek illustration shown), an all-new A2 aimed at the MINI, the redesigned A8 with V12 diesel and V10 gas powerplants, an A4-based low riding CUV inspired by the Roadjet concept and finally an even smaller Golf-based SUV called the Q3. You can check out the schedule for each vehicle over at GermanCarBlog.

[Source: AutoWeek and GermanCarBlog]

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