Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) reported its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday while the markets were closed. The auto giant beat earnings expectations but this quarter was saved by North American business. Ford posted a record pretax operating profit of $2.2 billion, and its net income came in at $1.6 billion. Earnings came to $0.40 per share, and sales in total were down by 1% to $32.1 billion. Thomson Reuters had estimates of $0.30 per share and $31.07 billion in sales.

The auto giant reported a liquidity position of $34.4 billion in total, a gain of $500 million from the second quarter; it ended its third quarter with Automotive gross cash of $24.1 billion, which was said to exceed its debt by $9.9 billion. This net cash improvement was $1.8 billion year over year and up $400 million from the second quarter.

Ford Credit reported a pretax profit that was in line with its expectations at $393 million, and the Ford Credit unit now expects full year pretax profit of about $1.6 billion and total distributions to its parent of about $600 million. Ford Credit continues to project managed receivables at year’s end to be in the range of $85 billion to $90 billion.

Ford North America’s pretax profit exceeded $2 billion for the third straight quarter and its operating margin exceeded 10%. As far as why this was a North American quarter, Ford Europe’s results reflected unfavorable market factors and that included the lowest level of industry sales in almost 20 years.

The news is driving shares higher on a day where futures are surging after being closed for two days. We have shares indicated up around $10.85, after closing at $10.31 last Friday and the 52-week trading range is $8.82 to $13.05.

JON C. OGG

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