By Nathan Gomes, Joseph White and Paul Lienert
(Reuters) -Ford Motor Co on Tuesday posted a 20% jump in first-quarter revenue, thanks to strong demand for trucks and SUVs, but issued a measured full-year outlook tempered by continued losses in its electric-vehicle unit.
The automaker reaffirmed guidance for full-year adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of $9 billion to $11 billion and adjusted free cash flow of about $6 billion.
Those numbers include an anticipated loss of $3 billion in Ford’s Model e electric vehicle unit.
Shares were down 2.3% in after-hours trading.
Although U.S. vehicles sales in April were much stronger than expected, Ford cautioned that “higher industrywide customer incentives as vehicle supply-and-demand rebalances” will be a “headwind” for profitability.
The company for the first time broke out financial results for its Ford Blue, Ford Pro and Ford Model e units. Ford Blue earnings before interest and taxes doubled to $2.56 billion, a margin of 10.4%, and Ford Pro EBIT nearly tripled to $1.4 billion, a margin of 10.3%.
For 2023, the automaker expects full-year EBIT for Ford Blue to climb slightly to $7 billion, while Ford Pro EBIT could nearly double, to almost $6 billion.
Ford lost more than $60,000 per electric vehicle sold in the first quarter.
Its combustion-vehicle business, Ford Blue, averaged pretax profit of $3,715 a vehicle, while the Ford Pro commercial business earned $4,053 per vehicle, based on the company’s financial data.
In a briefing, Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said the company is on track for its Model E electric vehicles to be EBIT margin-positive by the end of 2024.
Lawler also said the macroeconomic outlook is “opaque at best” and that Ford expects continued pressure on pricing this year.
Prices for Ford’s combustion models, such as Bronco and Explorer, were flat year-over-year, Lawler said.
Most of the pricing improvement Ford achieved during the quarter came from the company’s Ford Pro commercial vehicles.
Ford’s profit in the first quarter was $1.8 billion, or 44 cents per share, compared with a loss of $3.1 billion, or 78 cents per share, a year ago.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share were 63 cents, compared with 38 cents a year ago. Analysts had expected 41 cents.
The Dearborn, Michigan-based company reported revenue of $41.5 billion for the quarter through March, compared with $34.5 billion a year ago.
(Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru and Joseph White and Paul Lienert in DetroitEditing by Ben Klayman and Matthew Lewis)
