Fiat 3rd quarter beats forecast, may take some charges

Posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 12:39 PM EDT.

Italian car maker Fiat SpA said it might write off some past investments as it turned in a better-than-expected trading profit for the third quarter on Wednesday and confirmed year targets, Reuters reported.

Fiat, which owns 20 percent of U.S. car maker Chrysler, said the group trading profit was 308 million euros ($459.9 million) while its revenues for the July-September quarter fell 15.9 percent to 12 billion euros, the news service said. Analysts had forecast trading profit for the Fiat group of 249 million euros on average in a Reuters’ poll with revenues expected at 11.865 billion euros.

For the autos unit, which includes the Lancia, Alfa Romeo and Fiat brands, trading profit was 155 million euros, well above analysts’ expectations of 118 million euros, the news service said. Fiat said it confirmed its targets for the year of trading profit over 1 billion euros and debt under 5 billion euros, the story said. The company said as a result of aligning some business with Chrysler’s, it “may revisit the future viability of its past investments, necessitating the write-off, as unusual items, of these legacy investments.” (Reuters)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 12:39 PM EDT and is filed under Company and tagged Dashboard. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.