DETROIT - General Motors Corp. reported Wednesday it earned US$950 million for the last three months of 2006, its first quarterly profit in two years.
The world's biggest automaker, which is the midst of a massive overhaul that includes shedding thousands of jobs and closing plants to become more competitive with Asian automakers, wound up with a loss of $2 billion for all of 2006, compared with a restated loss of $10.4 billion in 2005.
Chief financial officer Fritz Henderson said despite the fourth-quarter profit, no one at GM is declaring victory over the company's financial woes.
He would say only that he expects GM's year-over-year performance to improve in 2007, and he would not predict whether the company would continue to be profitable through the year.
"The objective is to build a successful and profitable enterprise going forward,'' he told reporters Wednesday morning after the earnings report was released.
The fourth-quarter results included $770 million in special items attributed to the sale of a 51 percent stake in GM's financial arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp. But the Detroit company said it would have made $180 million in the quarter without the GMAC sale proceeds.
