Ford reports largest loss in 14 years

It was the largest quarterly loss in more than 14 years for the nation's second biggest auto maker, and company officials predicted things would get worse in the fourth quarter as market share drops and Ford pays for further plant closures and restructuring costs.\nThe July-September performance brings Ford's losses to $7.24 billion for the first nine months of the year.\nFord's new chief executive, Alan Mulally, called the latest results unacceptable but said he was encouraged by Ford's progress in turning itself around by emphasizing more fuel-efficient vehicles.\n"Let's make it clear. These results are unacceptable. We know where we are with our business and why we're where we are," he said in a conference call with reporters and industry analysts.\nHe said there's a clear opportunity to return to profitability by building more vehicles that will sell across the globe, increasing productivity and quality, improving collaboration with parts suppliers and unions and accelerating efforts to reduce plant capacity to match lower consumer demand for Ford products.\nThe company has previously said it would return to profitability in North America sometime in 2009.\nFord also said it plans to restate its earnings for 2001 due to accounting errors involving derivative transactions in its credit company. The restatement is expected to affect financial results from 2001 until the third quarter of this year. Derivatives are manufactured financial instruments based on movements in prices of stocks or other securities and are used to help holders avoid big losses.\nThe company expected the restatement would improve results for 2002 but said other periods are under study.\nFord's net loss of $3.08 per share in the third quarter was larger than last year's third-quarter loss of $284 million, or 15 cents per share.\nRevenue fell 10 percent to $36.7 billion from the same period a year ago.\nExcluding restructuring costs, the company said it lost $1.2 billion, or 62 cents per share, from continuing operations. Excluding special items in the third quarter of last year, Ford lost $191 million, or 10 cents per share.\nWall Street had been expecting a loss of 61 cents per share before one-time items for the quarter, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Financial.\nFord shares fell 13 cents to $7.88 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, where they have traded in a 52-week range of $6.06 to $9.48.\nMulally, a former Boeing Co. executive, took over earlier this month as Ford CEO from Chairman Bill Ford, who is part of the auto maker's founding family.\nDearborn-based Ford's turnaround plan aims to cut $5 billion in costs by the end of 2008 by slashing 10,000 white-collar workers and offering buyouts to all of its 75,000 unionized employees.\nThe loss including restructuring costs was Ford's largest quarterly loss since the first quarter of 1992, when the company lost $6.7 billion due mainly to accounting changes.\nExcluding charges, Ford would have lost $2 billion on its North American automotive operations in the latest quarter.