Moody’s Investors Service, operated by Moody’s Corporation (MCO), has raised the corporate family rating and probability of default rating of Ford Motor Co. (F) from B2 to B1. The rating agency believed the automaker’s business restructuring model, along with a recovery in the U.S. automotive industry, will improve the company’s operating and financial results in the long term.
Ford has revealed a profit of $1.76 billion or 46 cents per share (before special items including sales of Volvo cars) in the first quarter of 2010, outperforming the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 31 cents per share. The profit showed a $3.55 billion improvement from a loss of $1.79 billion or 75 cents per share (before special items including sales of Volvo cars) in the first quarter of 2009.
Sales in the quarter escalated 15% to $28.1 billion. Excluding sales of Volvo cars in 2009, sales increased more than 30%. The improvement in results was attributable to strong sales of new products, betterment in global Automotive operations and higher profits at Ford Credit.
Analysts are strongly optimistic about Ford’s results. Over the last 30 days, all of the 12 analysts covering the stock have raised upward earnings estimates of the company for 2010. For 2011, 9 out of 11 analysts have revised upward estimates, while none have revised them downward.
The strong agreement among the analysts is clearly reflected in our Zacks #1 Rank of the stock, which translated into a short-term rating of Strong Buy.
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Read the full analyst report on “F”
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