Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ford Motor Company earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the prepared remarks. If you wish to ask a question at that time, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press the pound key. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Ted Cannis, Executive Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
All right. Thanks very much, Maria. Good morning and welcome everybody to Ford Motor Company's first quarter 2017 earnings review. Presenting today are Mark Fields, our President and CEO, and Bob Shanks, our Chief Financial Officer. Also participating are John Lawler, Vice President Controller, Neil Schloss, Vice President Corporate Treasurer and CFO of Ford Smart Mobility, Paul Andonian, Director of Accounting, and Marion Harris, Ford Credit CFO. The results today include some of our non-GAAP references. These are reconciled to the GAAP measures in the appendix to the slides. Also today includes Ford's earnings material and Ford Credit's earnings material presentation, as we're no longer holding a Ford Credit call, so you have it all in one package here. Today's discussion includes some forward-looking statements about our expectations for future performance. Of course, actual results may vary, and most of the significant factors are included in the presentation.
With that, what we'd like to do is pass it over to Mark Fields. Mark?
Thanks Ted, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. As you can see on slide three, we're focused on three sets of strategic priorities and importantly taking the actions that will drive value for our shareholders as we expand to an auto and a mobility company. We are reallocating capital to fortify our core strengths, transform underperforming parts of our business, and investing aggressively but prudently in emerging opportunities. While we reallocate capital in each of these areas, that decision-making is being governed by where to play, where not to play, and how to win. With that as a backdrop, what I'd like to do is take you through our first quarter results.
In the first quarter, as you can see on slide four, we delivered total company adjusted pre-tax profit of $2.2 billion, which was lower than our best-ever quarterly profit a year ago. Importantly, revenue was up, and that reflects favorable mix. All the other key metrics were down, and our adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.39. We're reaffirming that we will remain on plan for our full-year guidance, and we continue to expect total company adjusted pre-tax profit to be about $9 billion this year, with stronger profits in 2018. Turning to slide five, our strategic priorities are focused on the four drivers of shareholder value: growth, risk, returns, and rewards. Let me take you through each one of these. In terms of growth, we grew our top line in the quarter with company revenue up 4%, and that was driven by favorable mix.
Here in the U.S., our average transaction prices increased by nearly four times the industry average. Lincoln sales continue to show improvement. They were up 24% globally in the quarter, and that was 9% in the U.S. and 114% in China. In terms of risk, we're sitting at $28 billion in cash, which provides both protection in the current business environment, but also reflects the potential for strategic acquisitions and other prudent investments in the years ahead. In addition to that, we remain fit for any future downturn in North America with a healthy break-even SAAR at 11 million units in the U.S. Finally, in terms of risk, our global funded pension plans are nearly fully funded and de-risked, and Ford Credit continues to be disciplined, while at the same time being a very healthy contributor to our bottom line.
In returns, we had $2 billion in cash flow in the quarter. We delivered our eighth consecutive profitable quarter in Europe, and we had our second consecutive quarter of year-over-year improvements across all key metrics in South America, and that includes market share. Finally, in terms of rewards, shareholders benefited from our continued success and also our strong cash generation as we distributed $800 million in the quarter, and that includes a supplemental dividend that totaled $200 million. Turning to slide six, this summarizes the progress that we're making on executing our strategic priorities. We are fortifying our profit pillars, including our leadership and strong global franchise in trucks. We've announced that we'll be launching an upgraded F-150 in the second half of the year and reintroducing Ranger to North America in 2019.
This introduction will help us expand our 40-year leadership in full-size trucks while introducing a competitive entry into the U.S. midsize pickup truck segment with an addressable retail market of more than $12 billion. In utilities, we introduced the all-new Expedition, which is a critical vehicle in helping us capture market share in the small but lucrative full-size SUV segment. We also announced the global introduction of Bronco coming in 2020. In performance, we have a true global leader with our Mustang. Mustang is now sold in 140 countries, and Mustang was the best-selling sports car in the world in 2016. To reinforce our continued leadership and to fortify that pillar in performance, our new 2018 Mustang is coming this fall. When it comes to transforming traditionally underperforming parts of our business, our transformation of Lincoln continues to gain momentum.
We introduced the first all-new Lincoln Navigator in more than a decade. We also announced plans to manufacture an all-new Lincoln SUV in China for the Chinese market, which will have the benefits of improving profitability and cash flow, while at the same time allowing us to better respond to market needs more quickly. When it comes to growing in the emerging opportunities, I think we've clearly laid out our electrification strategy, playing to our strengths and electrifying vehicles to provide more capability and productivity and performance and better fuel economy for our customers. I believe a prime example of this is our unveiling a couple of weeks ago of the industry's first pursuit-rated hybrid police car.
I believe that further cements our strong franchise among law enforcement and cities by delivering a hybrid vehicle that will power the high electrical loads of a police vehicle, but also reduce engine runtime and reducing emissions. With that as an overview, let me turn it over to Bob and he'll take us through the details of our business performance.
Okay, Mark, thanks. Good morning, everybody. On slide eight, that's where we'll start. What I'll do as usual, Mark has already touched on a number of the metrics on the slide. I will also cover some of the other ones later in the presentation. I want to focus my comments here only on the things that you'll only see on this particular slide. Let's start first with the special items pre-tax, sort of in the middle of the slide. You can see they came in at a favorable $24 million, $210 million better than a year ago. That is driven by the fact that we reassessed the cancellation charges associated with the cancellation of our plant in Mexico. We booked that in the fourth quarter. It was $199 million.
We've taken that down by $46 million, the cancellation charges on that basis would be $153 million. That's what's driving the $24. The balance are European separation costs. When you look at the year-over-year, the $210 million good news is lower separation costs associated with our European restructuring actions, as well as that $46 million improvement in the cancellation charges related to Mexico. The second point I want to make is around our adjusted effective tax rate. It came in at 28.6% for the quarter. That was 80 basis points better than a year ago and consistent with our full-year guidance of an adjusted effective tax rate of about 30%. Then the last point is on the lower right of the slide in the text. We came in with an adjusted EPS of $0.39.
Only about a month ago, I suppose, I guided to $0.30 to $0.35 based on what we were looking at at that time. The $0.39, that difference is due to favorable timing of cost performance and wholesale volume, largely in North America, although we did see some good news in other parts of the business. This is timing, and we don't see it having any impact on our outlook for the full year. All right, let's move on to slide nine. What we're looking at here is total company absolutes and the reporting segment absolutes. We had solid results for the total company, solid results for automotive at $2 billion, which made up the bulk of the company's results. Solid results in the financial services segment at $466 million, and within that, Ford Credit at $481 million, which we'll cover a bit later.
To the far right, you can see all other, a loss of $212 million. Most of that, in fact, almost all of that was net interest expense on our automotive debt. There was a very small loss at our FSM, Ford Smart Mobility LLC. When you go below the chart, you can see the changes on a year-over-year basis. I want to spend a little bit of time here, and I'll do this in selected places throughout my comments this morning. In the lower left, you can see a decline of $1.6 billion in the quarter year-over-year. This was against last year's record results. We have guided for the full year to a total company adjusted pre-tax profit of $9 billion. Last year, we made $10.4 billion. We're expecting a decline year-over-year of roughly $1.4 billion. Effectively, that decline has happened this quarter.
Now when we look at the next three quarters, they'll be up and down. If we look at the aggregate of the second, third, and fourth quarters and compare that to the same period in 2016, we expect those results to be essentially flat to a little bit better. Effectively, this is the quarter in which the full-year decline flows through to our full-year results. When we think about what's going to happen in terms of our absolutes, we expect the third quarter to be the lowest absolute, and that's going to be driven by normal seasonal factors, the plant shutdowns in the U.S. and Europe, but also the launch of the Expedition and the Navigator. With that, let's move on to the next slide 10. This is the automotive segment absolute results. $2 billion total profit.
You can see North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific profitable with losses in South America and Middle East and Africa. When you go below the chart, you can see that all the operations were down on a year-over-year basis with the exception of South America with an improvement. Let's go to the following slide. Here we're looking at the key metrics for the automotive segment. They're all down across the board with the exception of revenue. You can see revenue is up a bit, and that is driven by favorable mix. These metrics were in the context of a global industry that was about flat on a year-over-year basis. As you look at our market share, our market share was down 3/10 of a point.
That was driven by China and by the U.S., We'll get into details on that when we get to the appropriate regional slides. Go to the following slide. This is what drove the change in profitability for the automotive segment. $1.6 billion for the company, $1.5 billion in automotive. This is where almost all the decline for the company occurred. As you look at it, you can see there are three major drivers. One, unfavorable costs. If you look at contribution costs, structural costs, that's $1.2 billion. $1.2 billion of the $1.5 billion was cost increase, and we'll talk about that in detail. Secondly is lower volume. If you look at the volume and mix and look at the call-out box above that, you can see we had $400 million of good news on mix.
That positive story continues in the quarter. We had about half a billion dollars of unfavorable performance related to volume. That was the second factor. The third was around exchange. That was driven by the sterling, that's the Brexit effect that's coming through, the Canadian dollar, and the Brazilian real. In terms of cost, the cost performance was basically around higher warranty expense. We had guided to, during the quarter, about a $300 million increase related to two recalls. That's one effect. We also had increased reserves for coverages. Engineering expense, that is not actually emerging opportunities. That is increases related to, as Mark was talking about, reallocation of capital to our fortified pillar. This is around those utilities, the five new utilities we've guided to between now and the end of the year.
You're seeing the engineering come through for that, as well as on trucks and vans and commercial vehicles. Product costs, that's basically the effect of the launches that we had last year post first quarter. Super Duty's the biggest one, which took place in the second half. On a year-over-year basis, we're seeing that cost because it actually wasn't in the first quarter a year ago. Finally, commodities, We'll talk about that next slide. When we look at full year for cost, we're up $1.2 billion in the quarter. How should we think about that? If you look at the lower left, or rather the left side of the slide, this is what we're expecting for the full year. It's just a bit more than $1.2 billion.
Again, just as I talked about on profits, for cost, our view is that basically the cost increase that we're seeing in the quarter is a cost increase that flows through to the full year. When you look at the second, third, and fourth quarters individually, there'll be some ups and downs, Again, if I look at the aggregate of those quarters, cost should be effectively flat or maybe up a little bit. This is the same slide that we showed at Deutsche Bank when we gave our initial guidance for the year. The pattern of ups and downs is exactly the same as what we talked about at Deutsche Bank. You go to the far right of the slide, those are the increases related to emerging opportunities. Those are the investments in cost, in electrification, autonomy, mobility, connectivity, data and analytics.
That is going to represent about two-thirds of the full-year cost increase. If you take that bar and move it all the way to the left, that's about two-thirds of that. The balance is basically the net of the rest, which is around the core business. We're still expecting to see efficiencies net of economics of about nearly $3 billion, and that is net of commodity increases of over $1 billion. Those efficiencies mostly offset the investments in the core business, also price-related design, which actually brings revenue with it, and also regulatory costs. This is our view for the full year. Just as with profits, we think most of the cost increase for the full year has happened in the quarter, flows through to the full year.
Let me just make an additional comment and explanation point on costs. We are continuing our intense focus on costs. The reason for that is not only mindful of the current environment that we're in, but also I think preparing us even more for a downturn scenario, which we've talked to you about in the past.
Let's move on to the first of the regions, North America. Many of the things I talked about for the automotive segment apply directly to North America. These are the key metrics. You can see they're lower with the exception of revenue. As with the automotive segment, that revenue is driven by favorable mix. This was in an industry that was down about 300,000 units. That was both for the region, but it was driven by the U.S. Our market share was lower for the region. It was driven, again, by the U.S. Market share in the U.S. was down four-tenths of a point. That was more than explained by fleet. Fleet was down six-tenths of a point. Within that, about half of that was rental. The rest was commercial and government fleets. We think that's largely timing.
That was offset partially by an improved retail share that was up two-tenths of a point, and that was strong performance at F-Series, our utilities, and also Lincoln. Let's move to the next slide and look at the decline in profitability for North America, $1.1 billion from the record results last year. You can see it's exactly the same pattern of things that I talked about for the automotive segment, and it's exactly the same reason, I won't go into details here. That pattern continued here. In terms of guidance for the full year, it's essentially the same thing that I said earlier. We're expecting North America to be actually strong for its full-year results, but down from last year. It's going to be driven due to higher cost.
We think we'll also see some efficiencies coming through in all the other cost categories that will give us a partial offset. We also see exchanges being unfavorable. The majority, just as we talked about for the total business and automotive, the majority of North America's full-year profit decline and increase in cost has occurred in the first quarter.
If we turn to slide 16, what I'd like to do is just dive a bit deeper into our disciplined approach to the marketplace. For example, if you look at the upper left of the chart here, our average transaction prices in the first quarter grew nearly four times faster than the industry. That's really due to the great performance of F-Series and the continued growth of Lincoln, as I mentioned earlier. In addition, like F-150, we reinvested some of the Super Duty aluminum weight savings into capability and features our customers appreciate and most importantly, are willing to pay for. We also saw F-150 transaction prices increase with strong demand for the new Raptor. At the same time, we also continued our disciplined approach to incentives.
While incentives grew for the industry, as you can see, Ford levels were relatively flat as we managed supply and demand well, and that we benefit, obviously, from the strength of our new products. If you look at stocks, our U.S. stocks are in very good shape, and we continue to take a disciplined approach to matching production to demand. Just a note, Ford's day supply tends to be slightly higher than the industry average because of our stronger position in trucks due to the large number of product configurations, which is a real strength of ours. Let's move on to South America, this is a story of improvement. This is the second consecutive quarter where all the metrics have improved, and this was in an industry that actually did grow. You can see the SAAR was up 3%.
Brazil, unfortunately, didn't grow, but the positive sign was that in the month of March, for the first time in 24 months, we had a monthly improvement in the SAAR. We are seeing positive signs even in Brazil start to show up. We did generate positive revenue in the quarter, and that was around volume, pricing, and exchange. Our market share was up, and that was on the back of the strength of the Ka, our subcompact, as well as the Ranger. If we go to the following slides, we can see what happened in terms of causal factor. It was driven by higher net pricing and volume. Those were the key drivers. Inflation is what was behind the total cost increase. Then you can see the exchange, which was driven by the Brazilian real.
In terms of guidance, we are seeing signs of improvement in the economic environment of South America. PMIs are looking better. Consumer confidence is better. The central bank has been cutting its policy rates pretty aggressively. We believe that we are close to the trough of this current economic cycle. As a result, we continue to believe that South America will see an improvement in terms of the loss this year relative to last year, and that will be driven by the favorable market factors tied to the economic recovery. We think most of the improvement for the full year will take place in the second half of the year, and that's tied to the momentum that we expect to start to occur in terms of the economic environment. All right, let's move to Europe.
Europe is another profitable quarter, the eighth in a row. Feel very, very good about what's happening in Europe despite the effects of Brexit. We're seeing a growing industry in which we gain share. Very positive overall performance across our European business. You can see that revenue was up. That was driven by volume and mix. The share was up. This was driven by Kuga and our commercial vehicles. Once again, in the quarter, the Ford brand was the number one selling commercial vehicle brand in the market. Feel very good about that performance. When you go to the following slide and look what's behind the results, you can see that the results, while profitable, they were down on a year-over-year basis, and this was due to higher cost.
Some of that associated with the launch of the all-new Fiesta, some of it related to increased manufacturing costs to support the higher volume that we're projecting for the full year, but also related to a recall. Europe was one of the business units that was affected by the recalls that we announced during the first quarter. About $100 million affected their results for that particular factor. In terms of our outlook for Europe, we continue to expect Europe to remain profitable, although at levels below 2016. The key factors driving the decline are going to be the weaker sterling, but also higher costs, particularly associated with the launch of the Fiesta and the EcoSport, which is coming later this year, as well as for continued investment for future growth.
We do expect to see favorable market factors. We saw in the quarter again, and we expect for the full year to see continued improvement in Russia. The majority of the full-year profit decline in 2016 is expected to occur in the first half of this year due to cost and stock effects related to the Fiesta launch and also the major recall I just referenced that took place in the first quarter. Let me just provide a couple additional comments on our European business. I just want to reemphasize that we remain committed to our strategy in Europe, as you know, which has been focused on product, brand, and cost, and taking the actions necessary to ensure that our business not only remains competitive but also delivers sustainable returns.
On that, on the revenue side, we'll continue to take actions to increase the mix of higher-margin vehicles. That includes adding the ST-Line for both EcoSport and S-MAX in the second half of this year, and also launching what we call the Active and then the Vignale trim levels on the new Fiesta. Work on the revenue side of the equation. Let me also just talk about in terms of what we see in the market and addressing specifically the drop in diesel demand in Europe. The industry in the quarter was down about four points to 46%. Our mix is about 45%, just a tad lower.
Our product and our manufacturing plan is flexible, and I believe we're well positioned to meet customer demand and also the regulatory compliance through the success of our EcoBoost engines, but also our plans for electrification in the region and the diesel engines that we have meet the stringent Euro 6 requirements. Let's move on to Middle East and Africa. Here the story is basically one word, it's volume
The volume is affecting every metric that you can see here on the page, a decline in volume. The industry in which we participate, that excludes primarily Iran as the major market that we don't participate in. You can see the SAAR was down 12%. We've also seen lower market share that's primarily in the Middle East, where we've had some performance issues, and also we've had adverse market mix. Volume is the story in terms of the metrics in Middle East and Africa. If you go to the following slide, you can see that very clearly here on the causal factors slide. $124 million, more than explained by the volume decline. You can see across the rest of the business, the team has done a great job of managing pricing, keeping that flat, and cost performance has been favorable.
We've seen some good news on the exchange, that's related to the ZAR. For the full year, we continue to expect Middle East and Africa to improve compared with 2016, that's going to be driven by lower costs and favorable exchange with lower volume being a partial offset. We do expect that the year-over-year improvement will largely be realized in the second half of the year. If we move on now to Asia Pacific. In Asia Pacific, there's actually two stories. There's a China story and there's a story in the rest of the region. China, this was a challenging quarter. You can see the industry was down 1.6 million units, which more than explained the decline in the overall region.
This was the effective payback into the fourth quarter from the strong fourth quarter performance related to customer expectation that the purchase tax incentive would be eliminated at the end of the year. As it turned out, only half of it was, but clearly had an effect on the industry. It had an effect on us. Our share is down, and that was largely around the units that were most affected by that purchase tax incentive. That was the Escort and the Focus. When you look at our JVs, you can see it affected them as well. We earned a good profit of $274 million on a net basis with a margin of 13%, but that was down on a full year basis. The other part of the story is around the rest of the region. The rest of the region was profitable.
Every market other than India was profitable, and every market, including India, improved on a year-over-year basis. If we go to the next slide and look at the factors behind the change in Asia Pacific, largely driven by what happened in China. You can see that with the net pricing. That's the negative industry pricing in China, the volume effect. Then you can see we're able to hold costs flat and a bit of exchange that was more than explained by the weakness of the renminbi. For the full year, we continue to expect to be profitable in Asia Pacific and to actually improve versus 2016. That's going to be due to higher volume. We believe we'll see recovery of volume in the balance of the year. We expect cost to be about flat.
We'll continue to see negative net pricing. We do expect to see adverse exchange related to the weaker renminbi.
As Bob mentioned, obviously the China tax incentive change drove a pull ahead in sales of cars, obviously with the smaller than the 1.6 liter engines into the fourth quarter of last year. There's no doubt we faced higher competition, and also our own market performance issues in China. We've taken actions to respond, and that includes changes in our go-to-market plan. We do expect to return to growth in China from the second quarter onwards through the balance of the year as both the industry strengthens and our go-to-market changes take effect in the marketplace.
Let's move into Ford Credit. There has been a lot of concern, a lot of articles written, a lot of papers written over auto financing in the broadest sense of the word, and we have actually been talking about that for a year. All I can tell you is that we feel like we are in a really good place with Ford Credit and with Ford based on what we see today, what we know today, and how we have kind of factored that into our outlook. If you look at the metrics here, you can see on the second set of data there that the business grew. Managed receivables were up 6%. Pre-tax results fell only 6% to $481 million. When you look at some of the portfolio metrics, the next three sets of data, the FICO score is very strong at 741. That is on average.
You can see delinquencies are up a bit, but still below the historical experience that we have had. It is moving up. It is still not even at that level. In terms of the loss to receivables, it is approaching historical performance, but still at a very healthy level. The portfolio is performing as we had expected in the environment that we had expected, and that is because the team continues to follow the same tried and true, disciplined, and consistent practices around servicing and origination that we have been following for many years. If you go to the following slide and you look at the decline of $33 million of profitability and look at the very middle, it is around the lease residuals, and that is the supplemental depreciation that the team has taken in response to what we have seen in terms of auction values.
The rest of the factors on a net basis actually improved, driven by the favorable volume and mix of the business on a global basis. Nothing that is here that to us is a surprise or was unexpected. If you go to the following slide, looking at financing trends, again, everything in line with our expectations. If you look at the upper left in terms of lease share as a percent of retail sales, you can see that both the industry and ourselves are beginning to pull back if you compare that back to the first quarter of 2016. We continue to track below the industry largely because of our product mix. If you look at the auction values in the upper right, we actually saw a sequential improvement in auction values. That is seasonality.
If you look at the 2017 first quarter versus 2016 first quarter, that is a 7% decline in auction values. That is consistent with the industry. Our view for the full year is that it will be about 6% on average. You will see different factors by quarter point to point, but on average about 6%, and everything we see says that we are on track for that. On the lower left, everything looks good in terms of what we are seeing relative to repossession ratios and severity, and we have already covered the LCRs in the lower right. Again, everything very much in line with our expectations. Then on the next slide, we just tried to capture everything that we have been looking at and everything we have been reading about in terms of concerns and trends around the financing industry.
Our view is that both Ford and Ford Credit's outlooks have incorporated these industry trends appropriate. As a result, Ford Credit itself is on track for the profit that we've guided to for the full year of $1.5 billion, with an expectation that their results will improve in 2018 as a result of less supplemental depreciation. If we go to the following slide, which is slide 29. This is around cash flow. Solid performance on cash flow. If you look at maybe the fourth line there, I guess. Automotive segment pretax profit of $2 billion, it basically flowed right through to the operating cash flow. The negative net spend was completely offset by the combination of the working capital and the timing differences.
If you look at the capital spending of the $1.7 billion, it suggests to us that we're on track to the full year guidance of $7 billion. If you go further down the page, you can see the changes in debt, $200 million. That is just us making normal debt repayments. The pension contributions in the quarter at $200 million, that's in line with our full-year plan of $1 billion. No change there. In terms of shareholder distributions, Mark mentioned that. That's in line with our plan for the year of $2.7 billion. Finally for me on the balance sheet, very simply put, auto cash liquidity balance is strong. Automotive is looking strong, Ford Credit's looking strong, well-capitalized, strong liquidity.
When we go down and look at pensions, everything that we're seeing right now relative to asset returns, discount rates, our plan contributions would suggest that our funded status at the end of the year should improve compared with the end of last year.
Okay, thanks, Bob. Since our last discussion, we've updated some of our expectations for the full year industry sales for all the major markets. If we look at the new news here on slide 31, it's really within the industry, we now expect Brazil to be slightly higher in 2017, that reflects, as Bob mentioned, better performance from the fleet sector. In Europe, we expect industry volume to be slightly higher compared to our prior guidance in 2017 and 2018, that really reflects gains across most of the EU 20 markets, with the exception of the U.K. Turning to China, we expect the industry volume to be higher at 28.2 million units in 2017 and then flat in 2018, that really reflects the positive economic momentum that we've seen in the first quarter.
Just a note, we continue to expect the U.S. to decline slightly this year, but remaining at a historically high level. On slide 32, our 2017 company outlook continues to be consistent with previous guidance. Turning to our business unit guidance on slide 33, you can see our latest assessment of what we call puts and takes for each of the regions or segments compared to the results from a year ago. While our guidance remains unchanged, we are seeing a significant increase in headwinds from higher commodities, that's mainly steel, but we see it across most commodity groups. As I mentioned earlier, we're increasing our efforts to deliver greater cost efficiencies across all parts of the business to mitigate this headwind and of course, further improve the fitness of our overall business.
Turning to slide 34, again, we expect total company adjusted pretax profit this year to be about $9 billion, that sets up a platform for a stronger result in 2018. We do expect this improvement to be led by gains in our core business, that's thanks to the full year availability of important new high-margin vehicles like the Navigator and the Expedition. We also expect F-Series to continue to perform well in the market. As Bob mentioned, we also anticipate Ford Credit to benefit from lower supplemental depreciation. At the same time, we'll continue to invest in the emerging opportunities that will drive not only future growth for the company, but profitability as well. Putting it all together, on slide 35, we delivered a solid quarter.
Again, we continue to expect to deliver another good year for this year in line with our previous guidance. Just wrapping it up on slide 36 before we open it up for Q&A. We have a very clear vision and strategy for our business going forward. We remain fully focused on the strategic priorities that will drive value as we continue our expansion to an auto and a mobility company. We're focused on fortifying our core strengths, transforming the underperforming parts of our business, investing aggressively but also prudently in emerging opportunities. I believe that we're already well along the process of transforming our business. From a business that's a strong, healthy automotive company to one that will be even stronger and bigger going forward. As usual, we look forward to sharing with you our progress throughout the year.
With that, I'd like to have my colleagues join me, we can take any questions that you might have.
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, we will take calls from the investment community first, followed by questions from news media. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Colin Langan of UBS.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. Actually, talking about the last slide, you talk about transform and the focus on luxury, small car, and emerging opportunities. Can you give any color on what is the timeline for getting those on track and fixed? In particular, there's been a lot of chatter around small cars and those maybe possibly losing money and any plans to how could you get those back to profitability?
Thanks, Colin. It's Mark, as you said, we're going to stay very focused on our strategy of fortify, transform, and grow. As you think of the transform areas, listen, in some of these cases, we've said it's a journey, and we want to show continual improvement. If you look at each one of those areas, if you look at luxury, we've talked about not only the sales growth that we've had with Lincoln, but if you look at what I call the hygiene factors of the brand in terms of how the brand is viewed, in terms of customer sat, both on the service and the sales end, both here in the U.S. and in China, we've made a lot of progress. We've announced the localization of production of a Lincoln SUV in China, which is going to help the profitability.
We have very clear metrics around this. We're on plan, and as we said, going back to our investor day, we want to make sure that our sales success is matched with financial success with Lincoln, and we're in the process of making improvements and on that journey. In the case of small vehicles, again, we've talked about some of the key elements that drive small vehicle profitability, reducing complexity, and we've talked about how we've significantly reduced complexity of vehicles like our Focus and Fiesta and continue that going forward with the next models. We've talked about low-cost production, and we've been very clear in moving our production here in North America for our small vehicles to low-cost areas. Even in the case of Europe with the launch of EcoSport in Romania.
We're going to continue to make progress on that and show you the proof points along the way. Finally, in emerging markets, obviously last year we took actions to exit some markets and also to close our plant in Australia, which is one of the reasons, as Bob mentioned, outside of China, our operations are profitable, including Australia. We've said we're in the process of examining our strategy in India, and when we have something to talk about, we will. We will continue to work this and keep you apprised.
Actually, on your last point, that was one of the more interesting comments when Bob was going through his commentary. When we look at Asia-Pac, we take out China, it's losing about $150 million, but everything except India is actually making money. Is India really losing? Is that the pace and what can you do to kind of address that? Are there other factors in that $150 loss that I'm not thinking about?
Well, let me just be clear. First of all, China made money in the quarter, and you have to remember that China has a number of different components. It's the JVs, it's Lincoln, it's the imported Ford brand. It's also charges that we hold centrally around engineering that we're incurring today that will be compensated for in the future through royalties from the JVs. China made money. Outside of China, we made money. In fact, the only major market that didn't make money was India, and India improved. We saw improvement everywhere through the region outside of China, and we're profitable. It was, if you will, both sides of the equation were working for us in terms of profitability in the region.
Yeah, as we talked about, China was a challenge, and as Mark mentioned, we do expect and are starting to see signs of that improving, both in terms of the overall market, but our own performance as well.
Our next question comes from the line of David Tamberrino of Goldman Sachs.
Great. Thank you for taking our questions this morning. I think the first one I want to harp on is, we've seen a lot of the banks' earnings so far this year or this quarter, and most of them talked about pulling back on their auto loan profiles. It seems as if credit is somewhat tightening from that perspective. Do you anticipate or do you expect to grow your asset base within Ford Motor Credit as you might see a little bit more challenging times for customers being able to get loans from your third-party partners or from other lenders?
Well, let me comment first, and then I'll turn it over to Mario, CFO at Ford Credit, if he has anything he wants to add. We are growing. You saw that in the first quarter. We would expect to see growth for the full year. It's not just here, but it's around the world. I think you also have to remember what the role of Ford Credit is. The role of Ford Credit in Ford is to be there good times, bad times. That's why the practices that we follow around origination and servicing, we've been through the good and the bad, and we know how to manage the business appropriately.
In either condition, which is why we believe that we were ahead of recognizing some of these factors that are now being written about so much across the region. We think that we will grow over the balance of the year, and we think it will grow in a way that's very healthy and supportive of the overall business. Marion, you want to add anything?
Sure, Bob. The growth is as much around the world as it is in the U.S. With plateauing sales in the U.S., our growth in receivables here is really not that large. For all that we've seen written about in the press, we have seen a number of banks start to pull away from deep subprime lending or longer-term financing. It's really at a plateauing kind of level. We haven't seen a real retrenchment yet. As Bob said, this is the value of a captive to ensure that we're able to support Ford when banks come and go.
Got it. Just following up on that, is there a specific total asset base or total level that you'd get up to or maybe you'd stop yourself at?
We haven't guided on a number like that. We would expect to continue to grow, with North American volumes plateauing, we don't expect dramatic growth.
Okay, thank you. Just my second question. As I look at the European profit segments, it looked like incentives were much more of a headwind this year or this quarter than it was previously, and net pricing was down year-over-year. On slide 33, you're effectively looking for the full year to see a positive net pricing. Just wondering what you're expecting in the back half of the year or even the second quarter onward from a pricing perspective within the region.
When you look at our European business, obviously the net pricing that we have was taken away by incentives, and that's really where we are in the cycle of some of our products, some of our key products in Europe that are aging. The example I'll use is Fiesta. We're on run-out on that right now. That represents 25% of our volume in Europe. What we do expect is when we launch the vehicle and what I mentioned earlier around some of the new additions in terms of the high end, that's the physical, if you will, that will kind of flip the outlook for the remainder of the year once it's launched at the back end of the second quarter.
Our next question comes from the line of Rod Lache of Deutsche Bank.
Good morning, everybody.
Morning.
Had a couple questions. First, on Europe. Just given the declines in diesel that we're seeing in the market broadly, I was wondering if you can share some perspective on how you think companies are going to behave. Effectively, I think that as a result of this, CO2 emissions are basically moving backwards, just given that diesels are more CO2 efficient. Is that something that is a risk for that region? Does spending on 48 volt or other technologies need to accelerate versus the prior plan? Do you think that the industry starts to incentivize diesel a little bit more to support demand?
Well, I think a lot of that, Rod, is also going to be based on what some of the tax regimes are in the various governments. It's very clear, as you know, that both consumer sentiment and regulation we believe are going to continue to reduce diesel. That's why I think we're well positioned for a couple of reasons. First off, what we're not seeing is we're not seeing diesel demand decrease in the commercial vehicle end of the business. As you know, that is a very important piece of our business in Europe and from a profitability standpoint. At the same time, even though we're not seeing it, we are making the investments which are in some of our emerging areas. As you know, we're going to be introducing a plug-in hybrid Transit in 2019 into the region.
As you get back to the passenger vehicle side, our belief is we're well positioned from a couple of different aspects. One, manufacturing flexibility. If people swing more back to, obviously, petrol engines, we have the capability to have that flexibility. We also have, as I mentioned in my comments, we've built a very strong brand around EcoBoost engines. At the same time, to your question of will we have to spend more, we've laid out an electrification plan, and that includes Europe. I think our plans to introduce not only a plug-in hybrid Transit, but also some of the other vehicles that we've talked about will serve us well. We'll have to see how the market behaves in terms of incentive spendings in the interim. You've seen a number of our competitors make a number of announcements of moving towards electrification, et cetera.
I think either way, we'll be prepared for that.
Okay, great. Switching gears to China, I was hoping you can give us a sense of the full-year earnings expectation there. Maybe you can define and quantify some of the key earnings drivers that are within your control. Also what some of the factors you considered when it looks like you're assuming flat demand into 2018.
I'm not going to guide to China. We guide to the region. In terms of the region, as I said, we expect to improve. We think that will be driven by higher volume. That includes China. That'll be the industry that Mark talked about. We also believe, and we're already seeing it in the month of April, that our own performance will pick up from where it had been in the first quarter. That's against a backdrop of costs that we expect to be flat. They were actually flat, as you saw in the quarter. We think they'll be flat for the full year. That will be partially offset a bit by the pricing that we talked about and the exchange, but it will basically be around volume.
Great. Just lastly, really quick, you mentioned U.S. auction value is down about $1,150 year-over-year. Pricing in the new car market's not down to the same extent. I was wondering if you could just square that for us. From a consumer's perspective, obviously there's an impact on affordability, but are you seeing any effect on mix or is it basically volume pressure that's coming in as a result of that?
As you saw in the quarter, we had favorable mix. I do think, in North America, when we look at the balance of the year, that while we'll hold onto the mix improvement that we've been getting over the last number of quarters, I don't think that you'll see that for the full year, I think, in terms of an improvement. I think we'll see probably mix about flat, if not a little bit lower, because the comps obviously get tougher as you get into what we had, Super Duty in the second half of last year and so forth. I think the mix improvement, in North America on a year-over-year basis, will probably end in the second half of the year. We do expect that we'll still see negative pricing in North America for the full year on a year-over-year basis.
We actually were a bit positive in the quarter, but we've actually factored in some negative pricing in the second half of the year. Again, that's related to some of the timing of launches that we had last year, which helped us actually on that front. I think we've factored in both an end of mix improvement year-over-year. We have factored in continued negative pricing other than the first quarter. We've also factored in a lower industry. We think that we've got a pretty good handle in terms of, I'll call it the cyclical pressures that you're talking about that are affecting the region.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Brinkman of J.P. Morgan.
Great, thanks for taking my question. You previously communicated, I think at your investor day, that embedded in your 2017 guidance is an expectation for the Super Duty to be a year-on-year headwind to profits on increased cost to manufacture, higher amortization of tooling, et cetera. At the same time, looking at your slide deck today, your ATPs on slide 16 are extremely strong, and you're driving good mix benefits as shown on slide 15. That's not all Super Duty, I'm sure, but I'm curious if, my question is, if maybe the price and the mix benefit of this vehicle might be outperforming your expectations, and how that is netting out against the cost of the vehicle relative to your expectation.
Yeah, I would say that's a good observation. I would say that everything is coming out better than what we'd expected, not just on Super Duty, but F-150. The volumes are stronger. We've grown share. The pricing has been better. The mix has been stronger. We've actually seen some favorable performance on cost. I think everything right across the board on the whole Super Duty lineup has been good. Of course, we've got diesels coming in as well, that's going to be another feather in the hat of F-Series in terms of what we can do to attract consumers in the segment. I agree with you. Everything is better than what we had expected when we talked about that, about a year or so ago.
I would just reemphasize, this is another example of how we're fortifying the profit pillars because when you look, Bob mentioned our overall F-Series performance. Not only were our transaction prices up significantly and much more than the competition, but our share of the segment, our share of the full-size segment is over 38% now. It's up over a point and a half in the first quarter. Customers are really seeing the value and the capability that we've made in the investments in the aluminum body and the high-strength steel frame. We're not resting on our laurels. We know we have the updated, the freshened F-150 coming in the fall of this year. We have the Ranger coming, et cetera.
We're going to continue to reinforce this profit pillar, and as I've talked about in the past, kind of build out our moats around this, because it's such an important part of our business.
That's great to hear. Thanks. Then just lastly from me, probing the implications of GM's exit from Europe. Firstly, is the sale of Opel Vauxhall to PSA a threat because it makes a stronger competitor with more scale, or is it instead maybe an opportunity because it removes a weaker competitor that was maybe competing on price? Then secondly, I know you mentioned in your prepared remarks, that you're committed to your operations in Europe, and of course, you had a really great 2016 there. Can you just sort of summarize for the investors what you think are maybe the biggest differences between your European operations and GM's such that staying in Europe is the right thing for you to do for your shareholders, even if leaving was the right thing for theirs?
Well, again, I'll just talk to Ford. In the case of the PSA purchase of Opel, I think the answer to your first part of your question is yes. In that, I think there's some opportunities, particularly near-term opportunities, and we're actually seeing that in the marketplace right now in terms of share and things of that nature. I also think longer term, it does take out one more competitor. At the same time, we have a bigger competitor, and I think we're factoring that into our plans. In terms of Europe as we go forward, I won't do a comparison. I think from our standpoint, our business, we're going to stay focused, as I mentioned, on that strategy of product, brand, and cost. Importantly, our strategy in Europe is really to play to our strengths.
Commercial vehicles, utilities, which we've grown a lot and where the market is moving. One out of every four vehicles on the passenger side part of the market in Europe last quarter was SUVs and performance vehicles. As we do that, we can leverage kind of our global scale and technology at the same time, as we go into not only improving our petrol engines, but electrification and diesel. The other element that's different is, remember, we decided to stay in Russia.
You heard from Bob, we're seeing improvement in that Russia business. This is where we take a point of view on the future. We put a plan together, it's starting to bear fruit, and it's helping our European business.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Ryan.
Our next question comes from the line of George Galliers of Evercore ISI.
Yeah. Good morning, guys.
Good morning, George.
Just following on from Rod's questions around diesel, I was wondering if you could give any indication of your exposure to diesel residual values in Europe. Have you made any adjustments to those given declining share, changes in consumer sentiment, and clearly political risk?
Well, in terms of lease, I think we actually provided some data on that at the Let's Chat event back in March. We actually do almost no leasing in Europe. From that regard, which is different than some of the competitors that we're up against in Europe. From that regard, there's no lease exposure relative to residuals. If you think about just the overall market in terms of residual values, depending upon how that plays out, as Mark was talking about, I think that would be an impact that would be an industry effect that we would have to deal with as it happens. It wouldn't be an impact that would affect leasing because we don't do that to any significant degree in Europe.
The only other thing I'd add, George, is when you look, I mentioned our mix in Europe is about 45% diesels, which is about a point or two below the industry. If you look at the U.K., which is our largest market, represents 30% of our sales, our diesel mix is somewhere in the neighborhood around 35%. That's just due to the mix of our products, right? We're selling more SUVs, more larger vehicles. I think it's an important market for us, and we're below the rest of the industry.
Yeah. The other thing, too, is that it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. If there is that kind of shift, you would think it would also start to give you a balance in terms of the residual values of your petrol vehicles because of the consumer movement into that and the demand for the petrol relative to diesels. It's not just one way.
Okay, great. Just to be clear, and I probably should know the answer to this, you're not on the line on your retail products on the sort of trade cycle management products with respect to the minimum future guaranteed values offered by Ford Credit on the diesel.
We are, George, but it's at a significantly lower level than what a projected residual would be. It's a trade cycle management product in Europe, and it's more like a balloon where a customer does have the ability to turn back in a vehicle. The product is structured with a deep equity position.
Okay, great. Then the second question I just had was sort of a bit of housekeeping. In the deck, you give a distribution for this year of $2.7 billion. I think on the Detroit deck it was $2.8. Is the difference related to some of the anti-dilutive buybacks?
Yeah. I finally found something good about lower share price. That's the fact that the cost of the anti-dilutive share repurchase program isn't as great as what we had thought.
Got it. Okay, thank you.
Yeah, let's be clear on that.
It's the only thing good.
Okay, great. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, George.
Our next question comes from the line of John Murphy of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Good morning, guys.
Good morning, John.
Just have three quick ones here. First, as raw material costs go up, is there an opportunity to potentially share that with some of your partners, namely your suppliers, if that becomes a real headwind?
Well, the way that we structure our interactions with the supply base on commodities, it's a number of things. Steel is contract, right? I'm sure that our purchasing organization is negotiating as hard as they possibly can in terms of those contracts to make sure that we get the best price that we possibly can. If you look at many of the other commodities, though, we actually index. As a result of that, I think that's probably one of the reasons why when commodities are falling, we tend to get a much faster and quicker improvement because it will flow through to us relatively quickly from the indexing. I think the converse is true when prices start to go up.
I think the team actually is working, though, with the supply the amount of various commodities that we have on our components and in the suppliers' components. They're working on that. The other thing that I would mention is that we do some hedging, there's some protection for hedging. In fact, at this point in time, about half of our full-year exposure is already locked in through the combination of contracts as well as hedges. The other thing that's interesting about the commodities is there's actually a correlation of some commodities with some of our currencies. What we'll see as well, there might be bad news on a particular commodity. Oftentimes it's going to be offset by good news on a particular currency. Australia dollar is a really good example of that. You can't just look at the one factor.
It's actually something that we look at across both exchange exposures as well as commodity exposures.
Okay, that's helpful. Just a second question on cash conservation, or really your cash balance is a little bit higher than I think you've talked about in the past. At this point in the cycle, are you just going to let the cash build up on the balance sheet and really just be set to take advantage of opportunities and to be incredibly cushioned in case we do go into a downturn sooner rather than later?
Yes. Let me make a number of comments. As Mark mentioned, we're not uncomfortable at all with the fact that we have a lot of liquidity at this point in the cycle. I want to remind you, John, that about $3 billion of that is related to the debt issuance that we had back in December, which was very specifically for To give us the capital that we could use at some point in the future to support both the core business and the emerging opportunities around strategic opportunities, whether it's equity into something, purchase of something. As Mark said, we're going to look at that very prudently, and it has to be completely consistent with our strategic framework and our objectives. $3 billion of that is for that.
Think about the rest of it as around $25 billion, which is still above our minimum cash of $20 billion. We think that that's not a bad place to be at this point in the cycle, but also depending upon our results, it gives us the ability to provide a very nice supplemental dividend, which is the other means that we'll use to provide distributions to shareholders above and beyond the regular dividend. We'll have to see how the performance comes out in terms of the year relative to net income. That's the other way that we would utilize that, consistent with our strategy on the supplemental dividend.
That's helpful. Then just lastly, I hate to ask a question like this in this forum, on cadence of earnings, traditionally you guys have been around 60/40 first half, second half. The way you're talking about the guidance per region as you went through your comments, kind of indicates that the second half might be equal to or maybe even a little bit stronger than the first half. I just wonder if you could give us color there because it looks like estimates are still looking for the first half to be a bit stronger than the second half, and it sounds like your commentary is more equal weighted to maybe even a little back-end loaded.
My least favorite subject is calendarization. It's like trying to grab Jell-O. The third quarter will be the weakest absolute of the year. I can say that with some confidence. I think in terms of first half, second half, probably the historical experience is more or less right, probably 55%-60%, somewhere in that range would be about right. I have a big asterisk beside anything I say with calendarization.
Okay. We'll make our estimates. Thank you very much.
Okay.
Thanks, John.
Our next question comes from the line of Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley.
Grabbing Jell-O. I like that one, Bob. Mark, Continental in their powertrain capital markets day a couple days ago said that they are engineering what they see as their last generation internal combustion powertrain to be launched in 2023. Do you agree with that kind of spirit that this is the last generation of ICE?
Well, I can't speak to Continental. I did see Elmar and what they laid out in their plans how they were going to spend their capital. Listen, our view very simply, you've heard us, that in the next 15 years we expect in the industry there to be more electrified options in the marketplace than ICE ones, and electrified being hybrid, plug-in hybrid and full BEV. At the same time, there will still be a market for ICE engines. Part of that is due to the job to be done and the duty cycles for things like truck applications or heavyweight applications or climatic applications. Our view is that over time, the cost of ownership of internal combustion engines is going to cross with an electrified. They'll probably do it first for hybrids, then for plug-ins, and then after that somewhere down the road in BEVs.
That's going to be a combination of improvements that we see in the technology, in the scale, and also the infrastructure for electrification. On the other hand, you're going to see costs go up on the ICE side of the house because of regulations. That's why we're making the investments. I can't speak to individual suppliers, but I do believe that there will be some portion of this industry where ICE applications will be very appropriate. Plus at the same time, the world's not sitting still in terms of the technological advances in ICE engines.
Plus a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid includes an ICE.
Right.
Got it. And Mark, you actually kind of brought up my second question, which is when do you see that crossover occurring? You guys are obviously doing a ton of work on this space and you have your own assessments and experiences of the cell cost at the pack level, et cetera. When do you see that for, let's say, the average application of a pure EV? Forget hybrid for a second, but pure EV being lower cost of ownership than an ICE, whether it's a hybrid or not.
Well, we haven't really talked about that because there's lots of moving parts on there, but I still think that's a ways away.
Okay.
I still think that that is a ways away, and as I said, I think it will happen first for hybrids and then plug-ins. BEVs, when you look at the cost per kilowatt hour and some of the advances that have to be made, I still think we're a ways away on that.
Okay. My last question on cars. There's this old adage out there that it doesn't matter what happens to car sales because car companies make all their money in trucks and SUVs. My understanding was that you, Ford in particular relative to your U.S. domestic peers, used to make some really good money in passenger cars through your global platform architecture and the right product at the right place and EcoBoost and that was a different environment perhaps and hindsight's 2020. I just want to understand, is that true that you used to make good money in cars and does this mean that this segment shift that the industry's going through of a kind of a shunning of cars, if you will, whether it's cyclical or secular, that you have to kind of overcome those decrementals with something else? Yeah.
Well, I'd actually turn that around and say the industry shift that we're seeing around the world from cars to SUVs plays to our strengths
Okay. Again, I know you don't disclose profitability on a model line basis, are you able to comment on directionally whether that is accurate, that you had been making positive profit on the cars throughout much of the cycle?
Well, I'm not going to comment on our past profitability around cars or any of our vehicle lines. We obviously want to make sure that as we go forward, we're allocating our capital to those areas that are going to drive value in the company. That's why I think when you look at how we're doing that and some of the examples we talked about earlier, plus the segmentation around the world, it's going to play to our strengths, Adam.
Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, simply press star then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from one of Brian Johnson of Barclays.
Yes, good morning.
Good morning, Brian.
Two questions. One about Ford Credit and just a kind of broad strategic question. The first question on Ford Credit. Okay, 7% auction declines year-over-year. A couple kind of sub-questions around that. First, as you look forward through the remainder of 2017 and since two-thirds of your lease book, almost by definition, is in the out years, what sort of auction declines are you keeping, and has that already been factored into the supplemental depreciation? If we see further weakening, will there be more sequential depreciation that's going to be needed?
Brian, what I would say is that, as we've mentioned already, we're expecting an average decline of 6% this year. We also have assumed, and we haven't provided, nor will we today, further declines in the forward years. We are writing new contracts, if you will, on the assumption of those lower declines. We believe that we've called that right, that we have factored in what is going to happen over the next several years and have that reflected appropriately in what's going on the book today. That would not be supplemental depreciation. That's us just writing the contracts at the right level, look at the right return. It would mean, for example, if those lease vehicles that the leasing expense will be more expensive for Ford Credit. They can either pass it along, they absorb it in favorable marketing.
We think that we've called that right, and that's how we've set up the business.
I guess my question just in the weeds was if you had a 1Q16 origination and that car's not going to come back till 1Q19
what have you assumed? Have you taken the hit that you think you're going to get in 2019 now, or do you have to wait till ALG walks those guidelines down?
No, you don't take any hit because you basically have written a contract with the assumption that that is a lower and have a lower value. Obviously, that means that for Ford Motor Company, in terms of what it may have to do in terms of subvention and so forth could be more expensive than in the past. Let me have Marion just add or supplement if you want to.
Yeah. It's complicated. You have to understand the accounting around this. In your example, if a contract had been written in the first quarter of 2016 and ALG
You said 2015.
You said 2016.
Oh 2016, sorry.
If a contract had been written in the first quarter of 2016 and ALG subsequently lowered their outlook on that, we immediately start to take supplemental depreciation for that. We're taking a substantial amount of supplemental depreciation this year, as we talked about at the Let's Chat event. We took a lot in 2016, and we took our first bite at the apple at the beginning of 2016 and then second cut at the apple at the end of 2016. We're taking more supplemental depreciation in 2017 than we did in 2016. That is for the entire portfolio all the way out through 2018, 2019 into 2020. It's completely contained within our outlook. That's why we've guided that we expect our 2018 results to improve from 2017 as we would expect to have lower supplemental depreciation.
We've factored those sequential declines into our outlook, and it's rolling through our accounting today.
Brian, I just wanted to reconfirm, though, that for new contracts, not only have we obviously assumed what we expect to happen this year, but we have further assumed declines post 2017 and factored that into the new business that we're writing.
Okay, great. Second question for Mark. There's an automaker who makes about 100,000 run rate cars a year who's valued higher than Ford, roughly the same. Yeah, we can debate the valuation of that company. In terms of your investments, whether it's big data, autonomy, mobility, electrification, what do you think the market's missing in that comparison?
Well, again, I can't speak to Tesla. I know you didn't mention the name, but I know that's who you're referring to. We're just going to stay focused on our strategy. First off, I just want to say on the valuation. We are absolutely committed to making sure that we create value for our shareholders. As we execute this strategy of fortifying our profit pillars and transforming the underperforming parts of our business and growing in the emerging opportunities, that I'm confident that we're going to create value and we'll continue to return value to our shareholders. In terms of maybe what the market is missing, in terms of you look at the valuation of our business. First off, I think we have a robust and defensible core. You've heard this morning how we're fortifying the efforts around that.
The cost structure that we've put into the business and also the strong balance sheet allows us to pay a nice sustainable dividend, which, by the way, has a nice yield. I think the upside around as we transform the underperforming parts of our business and grow in the emerging areas. I think on the growing in the emerging areas, and you mentioned them, mobility and data and autonomous vehicles and connectivity. I think we need to do a better job as a company in dimensioning what that means for us in the future in terms of revenue and profit growth. We've talked about the investments, and we'll do that going forward.
Our next question comes from the line of David Whiston of Morningstar.
Thanks. Good morning. ALG had said yesterday they were looking for industry incentive spending to peak in July, and I was just curious if you're that optimistic. Do you think the industry might continue to remain somewhat irrational to keep the SAAR above 17?
Well, I don't think the industry's been irrational. Let me just say that first. If you see what's happening, there's been a very, very slow, long, progressive increase in incentives going all the way back from when the downturn ended. We're just on that track. We have so far seen the ATPs continue to stay ahead of that, so it's inclusive of that. I don't see any particular manufacturer on a consistent basis doing something that I would think is unhealthy for the business. I think everyone's very much focused on margins profitability. Does anybody in any particular month or quarter maybe try to address an inventory situation or gain a tactical advantage? Yeah, sure, that happens. I have not seen that in terms of a consistent approach to the business. I think overall, the industry is relatively disciplined.
Mark talked about what we're doing, and we're going to continue to do what we're doing. I am not aware of anything that would suggest that trend of small increases, progressive increases is going to end.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from the line of Justine Fisher of Goldman Sachs.
Good morning.
Good morning.
The first question that I have is just following up on two questions ago in terms of the outlook for used values in 2018 and 2019. I know, Bob, you said that you guys weren't going to put specific numbers around your expectations in 2018 and 2019. We do know that the off-lease vehicle supply increases significantly in 2018 and 2019. Could you give us color as to whether you expect the declines to accelerate or decelerate year-over-year in 2018 versus 2017?
We expect the declines to continue, and in fact, we have factored in exactly what you referenced, which is the fact that we know how much is going to be coming back because we know what's been leased. We've factored that into our thinking. We do see a continued decline, but I don't want to get into any characterization of the slope of that decline.
Okay, thanks. The second question is following up on something that we talked about at the last chat. You mentioned that you expected lower used vehicle prices to manifest themselves more in new vehicle volume than in new vehicle price, i.e., that the OEMs would cut production instead of just lower their prices on new cars. Can you give us color on what the size of that price-insensitive market is, i.e., how much would vehicle production have to go down in order to shrink the consumer base to that population that will still buy a new car with trim and features, even if used car prices are down? Have you guys done work on that?
My head just exploded from that question. Short answer.
Sorry. That wasn't meant.
Let me just explain how we think about it in my very simple way of thinking. The reality is that, first of all, people that buy used vehicles tend to be people that buy used vehicles. People that tend to buy new tend to buy new. There is some sort of area where maybe people will flip back and forth between the two, but they actually tend to be quite separate consumer sets. Second thing I would say is that, clearly with lower used vehicle values, it's going to have an effect on the ability to price for new. It'll put tension on that because of residual values and so forth. It may affect mix. You may find people that start to move down series or even down from segments, potentially while staying in new. There could be an effect there.
It could affect variable marketing because, again, what we talked about earlier around subvention costs. There's so many different impacts that could take place. The way that we have generally and largely expressed that is our view of just lower volume. That's one of the key factors that is behind our view that the industry will decline this year from last year and will decline in 2018 from 2017. It may play out a little bit differently than that, but the thing that is interesting so far is that what we've seen to date would suggest that is what's taking place right now. I don't know if Mark wants to add.
One other thing. When you look at the data, Bob mentioned the small overlap between new car buyers that buy used and vice versa.
When you dig into the data, actually, the segments that index a little higher are cars, and it's mainly compact and mid-size cars where you see that. You could see that manifest itself on the volume side of the house, on the car side of the industry.
All right. Thanks so much.
You bet.
Our last question comes from the line of Dee-Ann Durbin of the Associated Press.
Hi. Thank you for taking the call. Good morning.
Good morning, Dee-Ann.
I just wanted you to talk really briefly about recall costs. They hit you in the third quarter. They hit you again. What are you doing to improve quality or tackle these kind of recurring big, huge costs?
Well, first off, Dee-Ann, thanks for the question, obviously we're absolutely committed to making sure that we provide top quality to our customers. When you look at some of the work that we're doing, we're doing a lot of work, obviously, in making sure the initial quality of our vehicles is very good because that gives you an indication to the long-term quality. Whether it's our own internal measurements that we have, but also external, J.D. Power and others, it shows we're making very good progress along those ways. At the same time, one of the reasons you see when we do have, in some cases, a recall, and it's fairly large, remember, we were a little bit ahead of the industry in terms of reducing our platforms and getting more commonality of parts across our vehicle lines.
When there is an issue, whether it's our own issue or with a supplier, it tends to hit a bigger population. As usual, whenever we see something from a quality standpoint, we are going to act very proactively to fix that for the customer, and that's exactly what we're going to continue to do.
Dee-Ann, if I could just add to that just maybe to help the understanding. What we do in terms of cost related to quality, I'll say, is we actually reserve with every single vehicle sold a certain amount for coverages, so that's the 3 years, 36,000 miles, if you will.
We also reserve for every single vehicle we sell an amount that goes into a reserve for what we call field service actions, which are recalls.
Yes.
We reserve for that. What happens, though, is that if we get a particularly large recall that comes through that is above and beyond what we can manage within that reserve, and then effectively it forces us to let it flow through to the bottom line, more or less, and then we've got to top up the reserve back to the level that we've developed a minimum level that we have to have, and so we have to go back up to that minimum. A lot of recalls you never hear about because it's covered by the reserve. It's these sort of big, one-time large ones and driven in part for the factors that Mark mentioned that force us to handle it on more of a flow right through to the bottom line basis.
Okay, thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Thanks, Dee-Ann.
That does conclude the question and answer portion of the call. I will now turn the call back over to Ted Cannis for any additional or closing remarks.
All right. Thank you very much for participating in today's call, and we look forward to the next one. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
This concludes the Ford Motor Company earnings conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.