Ford Motor Co. reported that for the first quarter they have posted a $1.2 billion dollar loss. This is the mostly costly loss in four years and happens at a time when Ford is frantically trying to bring about major changes.

Ford’s North American automotive unit, which has been struggling with declining sales and high fixed costs, reported a pretax loss of $2.9 billion in the first quarter, including one-time items. Ford said that was primarily due to lower sales, increased incentives, acceleration of charges related to plant closings and losses at former Visteon Corp. plants now under the control of a Ford-managed entity.

Worldwide, Ford’s automotive operations lost $2.7 billion before taxes, compared with a profit of $473 million a year ago. That included $2.5 billion in one-time special items such as restructuring charges. Ford sold 1.7 million vehicles worldwide, up 3 percent from a year ago.

“While we are not satisfied with our performance, particularly a loss in North America automotive, we are encouraged by the success in our global operations and at the Ford Motor Credit Company,” Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Ford said in a statement. “We have said we intend to restore automotive profitability in North America by no later than 2008 and we remain committed to deliver on our promise.”

Source: Yahoo! News

SeekingAlpha.com is a great stock market and personal finance site.

They have an entire section devoted to charts and data by market sector.

They also have a recent Apple conference call transcript posted. An excerpt:

The quarter’s revenue of $4.36 billion was the second highest in Apple’s history, topped only by our record December quarter results, and grew 34% year over year. These results were driven by continued strong growth in our music business and solid performance in our Mac business during the transition to Intel.

Operating margin for the quarter was 12.1%, and net income was $410 million, or $0.47 per diluted share on a GAAP basis.

Excluding the impact of $42 million in non-cash, stock based compensation expense, operating margin was 13.1%, net income was $440 million, and diluted earnings per share were $0.50.

The quarter’s non-GAAP operating margin was the second-best ever for Apple and demonstrates the leverage in our business model.

This is interesting. You’d think Apple makes most of its money these days from iPod and iTunes related sales.

Nope, Mac volume is still a huge earner for them:

I’d like to first talk about our Mac business, which represented 50% of our total quarterly revenue, an increase 7% year over year. Mac units were up 4% year over year to 1.11 million, and ending channel inventory was within our target range of 4 to five weeks.

Read more here.

Technorati Tags: apple, charts, stock, investing

Sony Ericsson says that the first quarter has shown major profits. Their popular Walkman music phones are just one of the reasons for the sales that the Swedish based company has made.

The world’s No. 5 handset maker said net profit rose to 109 million euros ($132 million) in the three months ending March 31, up from 32 million euros in the same period in 2005.

Quarterly sales grew 55 percent to 1.99 billion euros ($2.42 billion) from 1.29 billion euros a year earlier.

“With a total of eight Walkman phones now announced or shipping, plus the introduction of new Cyber-shot imaging phones, we are beginning to deliver the differentiation in our product portfolio which Sony Ericsson promised at the start of the joint venture,” aid Miles Flint, president of Sony Ericsson.

The launch of Walkman phones in August 2005 has helped Sony Ericsson tap into the rising demand for music-enabled devices. The company has recently also moved to gain a greater share of fast-growing markets by introducing cheaper handsets in emerging markets.

Mattrest giant Seal Corp. didn’t do as well as many had hoped considering that they are a big name company. As it stands now $2.8 million of those shares were to be sold off.

Via Yahoo! News

The mattress company, which is still majority owned by an affiliate of private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., floated 28 million shares in an IPO valued at $448 million on Thursday. Sealy sold 20 million shares in the IPO, while shareholders including KKR offered another 8 million.

Ben Holmes said,

“I would have liked to have seen more of the proceeds go to reducing their debt load. Instead, it was just a transfer of wealth from the IPO buyers to the partners at KKR.”

According to Yahoo News, “Nordic telecommunication giants Nokia and Ericsson will need to grow by acquisition to counter the long-term impact of a planned merger of Alcatel and Lucent on their business.”

French company Alcatel and US company Lucent are merging to become a giant company worth about $25 billion, which will make them the 2nd biggest telecom in the world (behind US-based Cisco).

Some analysts are suggesting that Nokia should now think about merging with German company Siemens. Similarly, Ericsson should consider increasing its fixed-line business so that it can stay competitive.

For now, according to Optically Networked, Alcatel and Lucent are focusing on “the massive job of synchronizing operations on both sides of the Atlantic” and deciding which side will “bear the brunt of the layoffs, which are expected to be about 10 percent of the combined workforce of about 88,000.”

Are you a fan of long-term investing?

If so, Morningstar is suggesting you take a look at stocks in the media sector.

Media stocks have performed poorly over the past few years, but don’t let that deter you:

We suspect that future returns for media stocks will be much better than those of the recent past … and we’re not just saying this because the past several years have been so bad.

In fact, 40% of the 60 media stocks Morningstar covers have ratings of either 4 stars or 5 stars, and the media sector overall includes more undervalued stocks than any of the other 12 sectors Morningstar analyzes.

Where should you start? How about Washington Post Co., one of Morningstar’s favorites. And don’t forget The New York Times Co. and The Wall Street Journal. Finally, remember to take a look at local options: firms — like Journal Register, McClatchy and Lee Enterprises — that “own scores of small, community-based newspapers … are much less vulnerable to changes in technology.”