FORD Motor on Wednesday announced it lost $752 million in the second quarter, including a loss in its North American operations and the costs of replacing 13 million Firestone tyres, but still beat Wall Street expectations. The loss for the world's second-largest automaker amounted to 41 cents a share for the April-June period in contrast to a loss of $577 million, or 47 cents a share, a year ago. Ford said it lost more than $1 billion on its North American operations in the quarter. Restructuring charges of $201 million for Mazda Motor, of which Ford owns a one-third interest, and an accounting charge also had a negative impact on Ford's bottomline. Excluding the costs of the Mazda restructuring and the accounting change, Ford lost $551 million, or 30 cents a share, in the latest quarter. That beat the consensus forecast of a 34 cents a share loss by analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call. During the second quarter of 2000, Ford's results were depressed by a loss on the spinoff of its Visteon auto parts unit and a European restructuring. Excluding those costs, Ford would have earned $2.53 billion, or $1.18 a share, in the second quarter of 2000. Revenues were $42.31 billion, a 5 per cent decline from $44.5 billion in the second quarter a year ago. Ford in May announced it would replace the tyres at a cost of $2.1 billion after taxes. The automaker said about 2 million tyres have been replaced, and it expects to complete the program by the first quarter of 2002. Ford said all the costs of the replacement programme were reflected in the second quarter. Ford said its worldwide vehicle sales during the second quarter of 2001 were down 7 per cent compared with the second quarter of 2000. It lost $1.14 billion in North America in the quarter, compared with a profit of $1.84 billion for the same period a year ago. Ford said it earned $141 million in Europe during the second quarter compared to earnings of $156 million last year. ...
