Ford claims it will break even in two years
Ford declared again today that it would not need government aid and forecast that it would break even in two years.
The carmaker is the only one of the big three American automotive manufacturers not to need government support.
Its rivals, Chrysler and General Motors (GM), are surviving on emergency state money and are both under tight deadlines to restructure or be pushed into bankruptcy by the US Government.
Ford repeated its aim to survive independently as it reported a smaller than expected loss for the first quarter.
The carmaker made a net loss of $1.43 billion in the first three months of the year compared with a profit of $70 million in the same period last year. Sales fell to $24.8 billion from $39.2 billion as Ford slashed US production by half. The better than expected results help lift the Dow Jones industrial average by 52.33 point to 8,009.39 within minutes of trading opening.
Excluding one-off items, its loss was $1.8 billion or 75 cents a share. On average, analysts had been expecting a loss of $1.23 a share.
Ford has been ahead of GM, its main rival, in paring down its business.
Over the past two years it has sold Aston Martin, Land Rover and Jaguar and has put Volvo on the market.
GM, meanwhile, is racing against a deadline of June 1 to jettison most of its European operations, which include Opel and Vauxhall.
Ford burnt through $3.7 billion in cash in the first quarter, a sharp drop from the last quarter of last year, when it got through $7.2 billion in cash.
At the end of March the company had $21.3 billion left in gross cash.