General Motors has been praised recently for an improving product line, but so far the company is still struggling to get out of the red. The automaker today reported a net loss of $3.25 billion for the first quarter of 2008.
GM absorbed a $731 million non-cash charge to support Delphi’s bankruptcy restructuring. An even larger portion of GM’s loss relates to its unstable GMAC financial division. The company took a $1.45 billion impairment charge (akin to a write-off) for its 49 percent share of GMAC.
In terms of ongoing operations — money made or lost on the GM’s actual car sales business — the company reported a loss for North America of $812 million on revenue of $24.5 billion. This figure compares to a $208 million loss of revenue of $28.1 billion one year earlier (Q1 2007). Luckily, GM posted a profit of $1 billion for the European and Asian markets — resulting in an overall operating profit of $188 million.
