Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Ford Motor 4Q 2017 Net Income Was $2.413 Bil as Compared With a Net Loss of $(0.781) Mil in the 4Q 2016, an After-tax Net Income Improvement of $3.194 Bil ...................................................................................... The Largest Reason For the $3.194 Bil Net Income Improvement Was a Pension and OPEB Pretax Measurement Loss of $2.985 Bil in the 4Q 2016, Although I Don't Understand Why the US Discount Rate Used Dropped So Much From 4.03% in 2016 to 3.60% in 2017. The Second Largest Reason is that Ford Generated 4Q 2017 Pretax Income of $1.889 Bil and a Related Income Tax Benefit (Not Income Tax Expense) of $0.524 Bil (It’s Not Helpful to an Investor to Just Say This is Due to Tax Planning, Much More of an Explanation is Needed For This Very Unusual Relationship of a Negative (27.7)% Effective Income Tax Rate in the 4Q 2017. ...................................................................................... With all of the Huge Individual Deferred Tax Asset and Liabilities Ford Shows in Its 2016 Annual Report Income Tax Footnote and I Only See Two of Them Which Are Tax Credits Totaling $7.3 Bil and With Ford Having Many Foreign Corps All Over the World and Some of Them Have to Have Large Tax Losses That Have Continued and Also Considering That These Foreign Corps Have Their Own Tax Carryforward Expiration Periods, I’d Be Surprised If By the Time We Get to the Measurement Period End Date on December 31, 2018, There Weren’t Some Kind of Not Immaterial Effect on Ford’s 4Q 2017 Earnings (After All, 5% of $2.4 Bil is Only $120 Mil), Although I’m Not Sure Which Way It Would Go.