Tough times

Detroit, Oct. 23 (Reuters): Ford Motor Co has suffered a quarterly loss of $5.8 billion on declining sales of its profitable trucks, charges for employee buyouts and writing down the value of some facilities ahead of plant closures.

The company also said it would restate financial results from 2001 through the second quarter of 2006, citing an accounting change on interest rate derivatives used to hedge its long-term debt.

Ford, which is closing 16 plants and cutting up to 45,000 jobs in North America, suffered a net loss of $3.08 a share. A year ago, it posted a loss of $284 million, or 15 cents a share. The third-quarter loss from continuing operations was 62 cents a share, matching the average analyst expectation as tracked by Reuters Estimates.

Ford said special items reduced third-quarter results by $4.6 billion after taxes, or $2.46 per share.

The automaker took pretax charges of $861 million for job cuts related to plant closings in North America, $259 million for global personnel reduction programmes at other facilities, and $437 million to pay out pensions earlier than planned for employee buyouts.

Ford also took pretax charges of $2.2 billion to write down the value of North American assets and $1.6 billion for the impairment of Jaguar and Land Rover assets.

The company reported third-quarter revenue of $36.7 billion, down $4.1 billion from the same period a year ago.