Chrysler reports $183M second quarter operating profit, $172 million loss overall
The post-bankruptcy Chrysler Group is continuing its financial recovery even as the overall economy continues to sputter along. In the April–June quarter, the automaker posted an overall operating profit of $183 million and added $474 million to its cash coffers. After factoring in all the non-operational expenses (everything besides building and selling cars and trucks), the automaker still had a $172 million loss for the quarter. That’s not bad considering the only new product that Chrysler has launched in the past year is the new Jeep Grand Cherokee, and it didn’t start shipping to dealers until late in the quarter.
Chrysler isn’t providing any comparisons to the pre-bankruptcy 2009 results, but second quarter revenues are up 8.2 percent compared to the first quarter of this year. The operating profit was up by $40 from Q1 and the bottom line was cut from the $197 million loss in the first three months.
For the remainder of 2010, Chrysler is projecting to at least break-even as it starts to sell the new Jeep in volume and brings a number of new and revised products to showrooms after a long drought. The revampedDodge Charger and Chrysler 300 will be joined by the Fiat 500 by the end of this year, and several other vehicles get major interior upgrades. Depending on how things go in the current quarter, Chrysler says it expects to probably bump up its projections for the second half of the year.
