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By Bloomberg

Ford Motor Co. beat analysts’ estimates for the fourth quarter and said assembly of the aluminum-bodied F-150 is going “extremely well,” even as the second-biggest U.S. automaker grapples with losses in Europe and South America.

Ford reported net income of $52 million, or 1 cent a share, down from $3.04 billion, or 74 cents, a year earlier. Excluding one-time costs, such as a charge in Venezuela, the profit was 26 cents a share, beating the 22-cent average estimate of 18 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. For the full year, Ford posted pretax profit of $6.3 billion, better than the $6 billion it forecast as it cut financial goals in September.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields has predicted pretax profits will grow by as much as 51 percent this year as Ford turns away from a year of heavy spending and reduced production to introduce 24 new models. Ford’s U.S. sales fell last year, losing almost 1 percentage point of market share as the industry had its best year since 2006.

“2014 was a solid, but challenging year,” Bob Shanks, Ford’s chief financial officer, told reporters in Dearborn today. “It positions us for a very strong 2015.”

Ford rose 2.4 percent to $14.80 at 7:49 a.m. New York time, before regular trading. Ford shares rose 0.5 percent in 2014, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 11 percent.

“It certainly has been challenging, especially in light of how healthy the industry has been,” Michael Razewski, a principal at Douglas C. Lane & Associates in New York who oversees more than $4 billion, including Ford shares, said in an interview. “This is definitely an important year for Ford.”

Profit Center

No new model introduction is more important than the F- Series truck line, which accounts for 90 percent of Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford’s global automotive profits, according to Morgan Stanley. Ford will have two factories running at full tilt before midyear, Shanks said today, cranking out the F-150, which achieves as much as 26 miles (42 kilometers) per gallon on the highway, a 29 percent improvement from the older model.

The introduction of the F-150 “is going extremely well,” Shanks said. “We’ll have the whole system up and running at full speed in the second quarter.”

Ford is struggling with instability in South America, where it lost $187 million in the fourth quarter, compared with a $126 million loss a year earlier. Ford took an $800 million pretax charge on Jan. 23 because its inability to exchange U.S. dollars for the devalued Venezuelan bolivar is restricting its operations there. The automaker also removed Venezuela from its consolidated results and excluded the unit’s $500 million cash balance from its automotive gross cash.

Venezuelan Challenge

“This announcement highlights the continued challenges the company is facing in the South American business,” Joseph Amaturo, an analyst with the Buckingham Research Group who has a “neutral” rating on Ford, wrote in a Jan. 23 note to investors.

To install new factory tools for the F-150, Ford shut down its two truck plants for 13 weeks last year, costing the automaker production of 90,000 of the pickups. It will lose more output this year as its F-150 plant near Kansas City, Missouri, takes six weeks to convert to the new model.

Ford sold 753,851 F-series trucks in the U.S. last year, down 1.3 percent, while remaining the top-selling vehicle in America for the 33rd consecutive year. The truck sheds as much as 700 pounds (318 kilograms) to improve fuel economy, mostly by using aluminum instead of steel in its body.

Gasoline Prices

Selling a more fuel-efficient truck has become more difficult as U.S. gasoline prices have fallen to a six-year low. A gallon of regular gas sold for an average of $2.038 on Wednesday, down 38 percent from a year ago, according to the AAA auto club. In initial advertising for the F-150, Ford has focused on how much more the new truck can haul and tow, rather than fuel economy.

“Ford made very big bets on small and light for fuel economy,” Adam Jonas, a Morgan Stanley analyst who rates Ford “underweight,” said in an interview. “That is diametrically opposed to where the consumer is going in the here and now.”

Ford posted pretax operating income of $1.55 billion in North America in the fourth quarter, down from $1.8 billion a year earlier. Ford’s U.S. sales fell 0.6 percent to 2.47 million last year, as the overall market rose 5.9 percent. Ford’s U.S. market share declined to 15 percent last year from 15.9 percent in 2013, according to Autodata Corp. of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

Full-year pretax profit in North America of $6.9 billion means that UAW members at the automaker will receive profit- sharing checks that average about $6,900, down from last year’s record $8,800.

“This year, we have the opportunity to have a breakthrough,” Fields told investors at a Jan. 13 meeting in Detroit. “We have all these launches -- the 24 launches last year, the 15 this year. We expect our volume and sales revenue to go up, our operating profit and our pretax profitability.”

Fields has said pretax profits will improve this year to $8.5 billion to $9.5 billion, which Ford reaffirmed Thursday. Yet he also said North American profit margins will stay in the 8 percent to 9 percent range this year, down from more than 10 percent in 2013, because the new truck won’t reach full production until the second quarter.

‘Rough Transition’

“They will look back and say, ‘We’re glad we did the truck in aluminum, but man, that was a pain and boy, that was a rough transition,” Jonas said. “Longer term, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. But sometimes doing the right thing means investors have to be patient.”

Ford’s fourth-quarter automotive sales fell to $33.8 billion, as North American production was cut by 5.4 percent to about 715,000 cars and trucks. Analysts had predicted fourth- quarter automotive sales of $34.6 billion, the average of 13 estimates.

In Europe, where Ford has been losing money since 2011, pretax operating losses totaled $443 million in the fourth quarter. The automaker said its sales in Europe rose 7.3 percent last year, outpacing industrywide gains, as the region slowly recovers from a deep recession. Ford closed a factory in Belgium last year and expanded production at two plants in Germany.

Ford changed its forecast for European losses this year citing worsening conditions due to deterioation in Russia. Ford now says it will lose less in Europe this year than the pretax loss of $1.1 billion it posted for 2014. Previously, the company forecast a loss of about $250 million in Europe in 2015.

China Sales

In its Asia Pacific region, Ford had pretax profit of $95 million in the fourth quarter. The company’s sales in China surged 19 percent last year, as it delivered a record 1.1 million vehicles on strong demand for its Kuga sport-utility vehicle and Mondeo sedan. Last year, Ford introduced its Lincoln luxury line in China, which Fields said could eventually be the brand’s No. 1 market.

Ford’s move this month to boost its quarterly dividend by 20 percent to 15 cents a share was a reward for investors who have stuck with the automaker during this period of lower sales and profit, Jonas said.

That increase was welcome news to Razewski, helping to ease the pain of the stock’s poor performance.

“You’re getting paid to wait,” Razewski said. “We’re all waiting a little longer, so maybe we should be paid a little more.”