More than half of General Electric Co.'s revenue is expected to come from outside the U.S. for the first time this year, Chairman Jeffrey Immelt said in an interview before the conglomerate's annual meeting.
Ford's North American automotive operations continued to suffer losses, but other key units, including Ford Europe, posted profits. Notably, the company's Premier Automotive Group posted a record $402 million pretax profit in the quarter.
The North American Automotive unit posted a pretax loss of $614 million, versus a loss of $442 million a year ago. Sales in the division fell $1.6 billion to $18.2 billion. European pretax profit rose to $219 million from $65 million. Sales rose to $8.6 billion from $6.8 billion. First-quarter revenue in Ford's South American operations climbed to $1.3 billion from $1.2 billion, although pretax profit fell to $113 million from $137 million.
This these appears to be becoming far more important to US companies.
