Inside Ford's Best Year In A Decade

by Edward Niedermeyer

January 28th, 2011 2:08 PM

Regular TTAC readers know that there’s more to a successful performance from an automaker than pure volume alone. Average transaction prices, market share, and incentives all play a role in translating production numbers into profits. Luckily, our pals at TrueCar have broken all that lovely data down, and they’ve sent over the numbers behind Ford’s recently-announced $8.3b profit, the Blue Oval’s best performance in over a decade. And, as you can imagine, a performance like that requires not only a hefty increase in volume (up nearly 20% on the year) but also improvements in market share (up 1.23%), and transaction price. Yes, incentives stayed stronger than they perhaps needed to be, but they now make up a lower percentage of the average transaction price. And that, ladies and gents, is how you make a $5.4b pre-tax operating profit in the US market alone [Q4 and historical data after the jump].

#HighFinance #Sales

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Z71_Silvy on Jan 28, 2011

Wow...disappointing results. http://www.cnbc.com/id/41311347 http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/ford/ford-shares-tank-on-worse-than-expected-earnings-results/19819553/ Why would anyone expect anything other than disappointment from Ford?

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Joe_thousandaire on Jan 29, 2011

2005 was really their best year. How is it that Ford could make more money in 2010 with less market share and selling a million fewer cars? Was it the $500 less per vehicle in incentive that made all that difference? Decreased labor costs? Better corporate structuring? Someone enlighten me.

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