George Sharp - Director of Investor Relations Alan R. Mulally - Chief Executive Officer, President, Executive Director, Member of Long-Term Incentive Compensation Award Committee and Member of Finance Committee Lewis W. K. Booth - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President of Premier Automotive Group, Executive Vice President, Director of Jaguar Brand, Non-Executive Director of Volvo Cars Division, Director of Land Volvo Brand and Director of Ford of Europe Michael L. Seneski - Chief Financial Officer of Ford Motor Credit Company

Himanshu Patel - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division Timothy J. Denoyer - Wolfe Trahan & Co. Joseph Spak - RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division Peter Nesvold John Murphy - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division Adam Jonas - Morgan Stanley, Research Division Brian Arthur Johnson - Barclays Capital, Research Division Matthew T. Stover - Guggenheim Securities, LLC, Research Division Colin Langan - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter Ford Motor Co. Earnings Conference Call. My name is Katina, and I'll be your coordinator for today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mr. George Sharp, Director of Investor Relations and Executive Director. Please proceed.

Thank you, Katina, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to all of you who are joining us today either by phone or by webcast. On behalf of the entire Ford management team, I'd like to thank you for spending time with us this morning, so we can provide you with additional details of our fourth quarter and full year 2001 (sic) [ 2011] financial results. Presenting today are Alan Mulally, President and CEO of Ford Motor Co.; and Lewis Booth, Chief Financial Officer. Also in attendance are Bob Shanks, Corporate Controller; Neil Schloss, Corporate Treasurer; Paul Andonian, Director of Accounting; and Mike Seneski, Ford Credit CFO. Before we begin, I'd like to cover a few items. Copies of today's -- this morning's press release and the presentation slides that we'll be using today have been posted on Ford's investor and media website for your reference. The financial results discussed today are presented on a preliminary basis. Final data will be included in our Form 10-K that will be filed next month. The financial results are presented on a GAAP basis and, in some cases, on a non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP financial measures discussed in this call are reconciled to the U.S. GAAP equivalent as part of the appendix to the slide deck. Finally, today's presentation includes some forward-looking statements about our expectations for Ford's future performance. Of course, actual results could differ materially from those suggested by our comments today. The most significant factors that could affect future results are summarized at the end of this presentation. These risk factors and other key information are detailed in our SEC filings, including our annual, quarterly and current reports. With that, I'd now like to turn the presentation over to Ford's President and CEO, Mr. Alan Mulally.

Thank you, George, and good morning to everyone. We are pleased to have the opportunity today to review our fourth quarter and full year business performance and the progress we continue to make in delivering our plan. We also will share with you this morning our major assumptions and key metrics for 2012. Let's start by turning to Slide 3. Our fourth quarter results reflect higher volume and net revenue, the 10th consecutive quarterly pretax operating profit and positive Automotive operating-related cash flow. In the quarter, North America drove our Automotive profitability with strong performance. However, since the third quarter earnings call, the deteriorating external environment impacted most of our Automotive operations outside of North America. In addition, commodity costs, exchange rates and the floods in Thailand all had a greater-than-expected adverse impact. As a result, our margins were somewhat lower than the guidance we provided in October. In 2011, we improved total company pretax operating profit and improved Automotive operating-related cash flow, enabling us to further strengthen our balance sheet. In addition, Ford Credit continued to perform strongly, providing significant contribution to our overall profit, consistent with our guidance. During the quarter and throughout the year, we continued to invest for future growth in a stronger product lineup around the world. Turning to 2012, we expect to continue improving our business and delivering solid profits and strong Automotive operating-related cash flow while working to strengthen our operations in Europe and South America and continue to grow. We believe our 2011 performance, as well as our guidance for 2012, confirm that we are well on track to achieve the mid-decade outlook we provided in the middle of last year. Let's look more closely now at the financial highlights for the quarter and full year 2011. Slide 4 summarizes our fourth…

Thanks, Alan. Let's start with Slide 7, which shows our financial results compared to the year ago. Since Alan already summarized the results, I'll focus on onetime special items included in our results. Pretax special items in the fourth quarter were a positive $349 million. This includes a $401 million gain related to the sale of our Russian operations to the newly created FordSollers joint venture, which began operations on October 1. Within our benefit from income taxes, there was a favorable onetime noncash special item of $12.4 billion related to the release of almost all of the valuation allowance against our net deferred tax assets. Given the magnitude of the impact related to the release of the valuation allowance, let me provide some additional insights on the next slide. In Slide 8, we began to record a valuation allowance against net deferred tax assets in 2006, reflecting large cumulative losses incurred, as well as our financial outlook at the time. Consistent delivery over the past few years of strong improvements in our business results now supports the release of almost all of the valuation allowance, resulting in the favorable onetime noncash special item of $12.4 billion in the fourth quarter, improving both after-tax profit and equity. Going forward, this change is expected to result in ongoing operating tax rates of about 30%, although our cash tax payments will not be affected, remaining at low levels for a number of years. To allow for appropriate future period-to-period comparisons of our non-GAAP operating after-tax results and earnings per share, we now are expressing our 2011 quarterly and full year tax expense as if the valuation allowance had not existed as of the start of the year. This does not, however, affect results reported in line with U.S. GAAP. Please refer to…

Thank you, Lewis. Slide 34 provides an overview of the business environment. Overall, we expect global growth to continue at a 3% pace during 2012. Economic growth in the U.S. is expected to be in the range of 2% to 3%. Growth in Europe, however, remains very challenging. We expect weak conditions in Europe, with some markets doing better than others while fiscal austerity programs are implemented. Several key emerging markets, including China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey have entered cycles of policy easing to support economic growth. Despite recent declines in commodity prices, we expect them to increase modestly in 2012. Longer-term, we expect prices to continue to trend upwards, given global demand growth. Overall, we assess the global business environment for automotive industry growth to be favorable in 2012, with sales projected to be about 80 million units, up from 76 million units in 2011. In light of the volatile external environment, however, 2012 sales could range from 75 million to 85 million units. Slide 35 summarizes 2011 results for our planning assumptions and key metrics compared with the plan we shared at the beginning of the year. Overall, we achieved solid results across the business in 2011, meeting or exceeding our plan in most instances. Importantly, we delivered improved total company pretax operating profit and Automotive operating-related cash flow compared to 2010. U.S. and Europe industry sales were in line with our expectations, and we met or exceeded our share targets for the United States. Both structural and commodity costs increased in 2011, as we had expected. Capital spending was less than we projected due mainly to efficiency. Shortfalls to our plan occurred in quality in the U.S. and with our Automotive operating margin. We believe we have the quality issues well in hand and are…

Thanks, Alan. Now we'll open the lines for about a 45-minute Q&A session. We'll begin with questions from the investment community then take questions from the media. [Operator Instructions] Katina, can we have the first question?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Himanshu Patel, representing JPMorgan. Himanshu Patel - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: I wanted to just delve into Europe a little bit. You guys, particularly you, Lewis, have been speaking very cautiously on the market for about 6 months now. But your 2012 volume guidance says it's down but not that much, sort of mid-single-digit volume decline. You've posted 2 quarters in a row of net pricing growth in Europe year-over-year, and I think even sequentially in the fourth quarter, it was sort of flattish. So I'm just curious, what are you sort of seeing prospectively to sort of cause the caution? And is it really sort of just the general macro kind of hedged comment that you're making, that volumes haven't fallen yet but you sort of expect them to? Or is it something you're seeing prospectively on net pricing that maybe is just not evident so far in the data in the last couple of quarters?

Okay. Let me try and frame this. I think, for the obvious external reasons, we remain cautious about the economic development of Europe. Very different by country: some countries well in recession; some countries perhaps on the verge of recession; and 1 or 2 countries continue to do okay. We haven't seen dramatic volume drops, although we have seen incentive spending increase. Encouragingly for the Ford team, we've seen, as you said, net pricing improvements. We've achieved positive pricing that more than offset the increased incentive spending. So I think our overall caution is around the customers' concern about the economic environment. And it's hard, just where we stand at the moment, Himanshu, to say is it going to show in volume or is it going to -- with volumes coming off a bit more. Or is it going to show in incentive activities, with incentive spending going up a little bit, because as you know, we've been restructuring the European business, really, for over a decade. But there's still -- most of our competitors have tremendous amount of open capacity, which results in some incentive activity levels that isn't great for the business.

Himanshu, I might just add to Lewis' comments that we have been continuing to restructure Europe over the years, and we are at about 93% utilization of our capability. And in addition to that, it was really important on our ONE Ford plan to accelerate the development of the new products that we believe the European customers want and value. And also, in 2012, we'll be launching 10 new or significantly refreshed vehicles, including the all-new Ranger, the B-MAX and the Kuga. So I think both on the revenue side, in addition to our continuing matching the real production -- our production to the real demand, that we have opportunities both on the revenue side and the production side. Himanshu Patel - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Would you guys expect Europe to be loss-making this year?

It's too early for us to give you a clear view of that. I think, as you think about the Automotive business, we're guiding the total Automotive, we expect to be up year-over-year. But we're not giving a guidance on Europe for the moment. Himanshu Patel - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Okay. If I could sneak in one more on Europe, a lot of the U.S. banks are very happy with automotive lending. It clearly seems like an asset class where they're comfortable, coming out of the Lehman recession. What is sort of the outlook on European consumer credit availability, particularly as it pertains to vehicle financing, not just for Ford Motor Credit, but what you're kind of seeing out of the banks out there?

Yes, Himanshu, it's Mike Seneski. At this stage, actually, we have seen a pretty stable environment for consumer credit. We have not yet seen any follow-on impacts. And the banks have indicated that there will be some slowdown in lending, but to this stage, we have not seen anything.

The next question comes from the line of Tim Denoyer, representing Wolfe Trahan. Timothy J. Denoyer - Wolfe Trahan & Co.: Quick one on medium- and heavy truck in Brazil, if I could. Can you give us a sense of how orders have been coming in? I would guess the backlogs there are a quarter or 2, and it just seems like expectations are ranging pretty widely from down materially to up a little bit. It seems to be clear there were some prebuys in 2011 ahead of the Euro 5 emission standards that went into effect.

Yes, exactly, we're ahead of plan. The new vehicle has been very well received and very, very competitive. Timothy J. Denoyer - Wolfe Trahan & Co.: Do you have a sense if orders are stepping down in the first quarter of 2012 and how you expect that to go through the year?

We think relatively flat. Timothy J. Denoyer - Wolfe Trahan & Co.: Okay. And then secondly, on Slide 34, I was wondering, the 80-million-unit global industry production forecast, how does that compare to 2011?

2011 came in at close to 77 million. So it was like 76.8 million or 76.9 million or so. Global industry tends to carry on counting for a few weeks after the end of the year, so it's moving up towards 77 million. Timothy J. Denoyer - Wolfe Trahan & Co.: Okay. And then just one little detail on the less than $2 billion automotive structural cost increase guidance for 2012. Can you give us a little -- how much more below $2 billion it might be?

No. The guidance is less than $2 billion. You're seeing an increase in structural costs associated with our growth plans, both in continued investment in new capacity around the world, continued investments in new products around the world and then continued efforts by Jim Farley and the team to get the message out through advertising and sales promotion to continue to improve the brand around the world. So it's really associated with the growth of the business.

Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Spak, representing RBC Capital Markets.

Maybe just a couple of quick ones on North America. Given that a good portion of your North America production is brand-new, what's the outlook for net pricing? You've been able to make good progress, but the comps do get a little bit tougher, so maybe just a little bit color on that.

Well, as we said, I think several quarters in a row, we expect to see continued improvements in net pricing -- but slowing down. I think, slowing down for a couple of reasons. One, as you said, the comps are more challenging. But really, the plan around the North American recovery was to have low-cost products and to achieve competitive transaction prices, and we are closing the gap with the best of the competition. So there's less gap to close as we continue going through our new product launches. But the other key to the North American plan is to keep products fresh. And I think you could -- if you were at the Detroit show, you could see the real efforts going on to continue to have really fresh products, not just in North America but around the world. And that's the underlying -- that's what ONE Ford is about: great products, fresh around the world, earning competitive transaction prices with competitive cost because of the scale we can generate.

And then maybe just some color. Last year, you sort of gave the outlook for retail share in the U.S. equal to improved. Maybe some color on what you expect in 2012. And then similarly, strong operating-related cash flow. Will it be higher than 2011, in line or maybe a little low?

Let me talk about the operating-related cash flow first. Yes, we do expect it to be stronger. I think if you think about it as probably comparable with this year but adjusted for the increased CapEx we're expecting. We're guiding to more than $1 billion of incremental CapEx this year, so if you think about it as comparable, adjusted for the CapEx levels. We're not giving out specific details of retail and retail share. We think we're talking about total share being equal or slightly improved.

Okay. And if I could just do one quick one, you mentioned in Ford Credit, I think you said you still had a benefit of -- or either $800 million from the lease and credit loss this year -- even though I think on a year-over-year, it was a headwind. But I understand that's coming down. But is that to imply that 2012 will be roughly about $800 million lower than '11?

Well, that's one of the major factors of our outlook for Ford Credit being lower in 2012 than 2011. We've been guiding for some quarters the very favorable factors associated with very strong residual values on the vehicles being returned from lease and astonishingly good performance by our book, with our customers really paying for their vehicles. We did expect those to be tailing off in the period. We're now at record low credit loss reserve, so there's no more credit loss reserve to release. In fact, as our receivables start to grow, as we've guided, you can expect us to actually increase our credit loss reserves a little. So yes, those are the significant parts of the year-over-year reduction.

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Nesvold, representing Jefferies.

I'll be very brief. So one of the things that jumped out from the outlook was that material costs are not expected to be significant in 2012. Was that a function of your hedging programs, or are you seeing some other relief there that gives you more optimism there for 2012?

We saw commodity cost come off a bit in the fourth quarter, and we're seeing that sort of levels in the first quarter. But we do expect commodity cost to be up a little bit year-over-year. But if you think on a year-over-year comparison, we'll have -- got the benefit of hedging, we've got the non-repeat of hedging losses that we saw in 2011, and we've got some modest commodity cost increases. But net, we don't expect it to be material.

Your next question comes from the line of John Murphy, representing Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

I'll just keep it to 2 questions. First, how much lending is Ford Motor Credit doing in Europe as a percent of your total sales? Is that in the ballpark of 30% to 40% like we'd see in North America, or is it a lot lower or higher?

It's lower. If you separate out between wholesale and retail, it's stronger on wholesale -- most of our deals are financed through Ford Credit, and a bit lower on retail.

If you look in Appendix 17, John, it gives you a breakdown of our receivables by our North America and international.

Great. And you feel like you could probably step in there and support the business like you did in North America in '08 and '09?

Yes. I mean, I think you can watch our behavior. We'll keep the credit company well funded. It's an important asset both here and in Europe, and we're not going to deflect from that plan. And we're comfortable that we can do that. Just one other observation about Ford Credit because I was describing the year-over-year reduction. I think we can expect to see a bit of pressure on margins because we are moving some of our borrowing towards unsecured. So we can see -- as well as the factors we've been talking about, I think you can see a bit of pressure on margins because of that.

Okay. And then just a second question, Alan, for you. As you look at your, sort of your midterm targets, I mean, you're basically talking about global Auto op pretax margins 8% to 9%. We're roughly running about 300 to 400 basis points below that currently. I mean, if we were to see the market somehow all of a sudden shoot up to those midterm targets on volumes or sort of mid-trend levels in North America and Europe, do you think you would get there just by the cycle and volumes recovering? Or are there other steps internally at Ford that you think you need to take to make some significant changes to get there? I'm trying to understand what's internal and what's just returning to trend volumes.

I would put both of those in there, John, because clearly, the expansion in the world economy and the industry is a plus, but also the power of capturing the value of the ONE Ford plan, as we've talked about. And we -- as we've talked about, we are just on the beginning of being able to capture that value because as we move to our global platforms and our aligned business framework with our suppliers worldwide over the next 2 or 3 years, we're going to have -- nearly 85% of our volume is going to be on these 9 platforms. And as we continue to implement this across the product line, we'll continue to reap the benefits and the value of that. So I'd say I'd have both of those in there.

So I mean, to try to characterize that, would that be 1/3 pricing, 1/3 volume and 1/3 cost, roughly? Or is that parsing it too fine?

I think that's a little bit too fine. But to your point, we're clearly -- as we talked about a little bit earlier, we're clearly seeing us closing the gap on the value of the products, based on the quality and the features and the fuel efficiency and the smart-design features. People really are valuing the Ford product line, so I think we'll continue to stay competitive that way. We'll see the volume increase, and then we'll see continuing year-after-year increase in the productivity, including the investment efficiency because of the ONE Ford global platforms also.

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Jonas, representing Morgan Stanley.

Lewis, so any comment on preregistration activity in Europe? We hear it's running as high as 20% in recent weeks.

No, it varies by manufacturer. It varies quite significantly by country. We'll stick to our process of not chasing marginal business.

But are you seeing a pickup from the competition?

We're seeing -- yes, we've seen tick-ups, particularly right at the month end.

Okay. That's the way it usually works. Mike, a question for you. You mentioned that the credit loss is still at historic lows, and I think even improving quarter-on-quarter -- at least, they were 3Q. If you really were pressed to look anywhere for a sign of weakness in terms of credit quality, not the availability -- you said to Himanshu's question that was pretty stable, where are you seeing it start to crack? Or anywhere?

We're not. I mean, you'll see in the fixed income call our input FICOs look good. The credit quality of the portfolio looks good.

Adam, we should comment. Clearly, in some of the peripheral markets in Europe, there's tremendous pressure on the consumer. And we've seen some pressure there, but that's not material to the Ford Credit business.

Okay. Finally, quick one. Just North American model launch disruption this year: Fusion, Escape, MKZ, the big ones. Can you kind of try to dynamic when it's most disruptive, when we'll start seeing the benefit? I'll leave that more open-ended for you to describe to us so we can have a better understanding quarter by quarter, please.

Yes, we've got a huge amount of product launches -- not just the major car lines you're talking, but continued expansion of EcoBoost, for example. The biggest periods of launch are the second and third quarter, but you can expect us right through the year to have a lot of launch activities. So in the second and third quarter, you'll, in particular, see some manufacturing launch losses. But you'll also see we've got capacity actions. So we've got third shifts coming on in 3 of our plants, with a second shift coming on in Kansas City truck. And they're spread, I think, mostly in the first half. And then you'll see -- if you think about structural cost, you'll see the advertising and sales promotion that goes with all those product launches. So I mean, actually, it's going to be a pretty busy year. I know Mark is sweating with the thought of it, but excited because -- I just want to get back to the thesis. If you come on to our stand [ph] at Detroit, you see what our future looks like -- I mean, just great product.

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Johnson, representing Barclays Capital.

Yes, rather than rehash guidance, one really question for Alan. How would you say you're managing the company differently, along with Lewis, in an era where we're looking at some macro downturns in Europe and South America as opposed into the rising environment we've generally had over the last 3 or 4 years? And in particular, how is that affecting the cost discipline? Are you looking for faster cost takeout than you normally might have looked at? How is it affecting how you're monitoring pricing, which seems to be holding up even in the face of some of these weakened macros? And are there kind of other changes, say, for example, in your Thursday meetings as we go forward?

Oh, you bet. Well, it's just fantastic. The way we manage the business has enabled us in the past and now to move decisively to the changing conditions. And to your point, every Thursday, we review everything: macro environment worldwide; also where we are versus the plan; areas that need special attention. Clearly, what we're working on now for this year is to continue to improve an already very well operating operation in North America. We're strengthening and growing our profitable South American operations in the face of the increasing competition, as we talked about. We're ensuring that our European operation remains on track to deliver sustainable and appropriate returns in an uncertain environment, as we've discussed, using our ONE Ford plan; and of course, continuing to implement growth and increasing profit contribution from Asia-Pacific going forward; and as we've covered today, continuing to really perform in Ford Credit. So if you look at all that together, then you come back to our plan, the thing that's enabling us to respond decisively around the world is the fact we have dramatically simplified and focused our Ford plan. So we're continuing to match production to the real demand. We're continuing to accelerate the development of new products. And as we just talked about, we're looking to accelerate getting the value out of our ONE Ford plan, led by the global platforms and the simplification of the product line and also expanding our market presence around the world. So the ONE Ford plan, the way we manage the business is continuing to serve us very well.

And in particular, as you kind of look at markets like Brazil, how do you make the trade-off? Would you -- if the pricing -- a, is the pricing deteriorating there and you're standing out, and that's why share is declining? And is there a point at which you would accept even greater volume declines?

Well, as you well know, the fundamental strategy is to manage for profitable growth. And in Brazil, specifically, as we've talked about, the market is becoming more competitive. And again, based on matching the production to the real demand -- and also in Brazil, the introduction of all the new vehicles that we have that are moving onto the global platforms for the first time, we're going to be able to work the revenue side even much better in addition to working our fundamental productivity with the global platform. So Brazil is going to continue to be a really good market for us.

The next question comes from the line of Matthew Stover, representing Guggenheim.

I had one sort of administrative question, a real question. The first question is on materials and the commodity hedge. What was the full value of that? I must have missed it -- in '11, Lewis.

Total year-over-year increase was $2.3 billion.

That was on the hedge?

That was commodity and hedge. We haven't split them out this time.

Okay. I mean, so when you make the comment about the commodities, then it's off of that base? We don't see material improvement or change at all off of the...

Year-over-year, we expect a slight increase, but we don't expect it to be material.

Okay. And then the other question is, Alan, you made a comment about Europe running at 93% capacity utilization, and the business right now is losing a couple hundred million bucks. I recognize that there's a structural issue in Europe. There's just way too much capacity. Given that high level of utilization, do you folks look at your fixed asset base and feel as though you need to do something?

Well, we are. And I think that's an important question because we're continuing to utilize even more our lower-cost operations in Turkey and Romania. And we're also -- as you know, we've just signed a very mutually beneficial joint venture with Sollers in Russia. And so we are nearly tripling our production capacity there to serve the Russian market, which is going to be, over the next year or so, probably the biggest market in Europe. So we'll continue to look at the balance of our production throughout Western and Eastern Europe and Turkey. But again, I think the most important thing, as Lewis mentioned, is that we have continued to work the structure and the competitiveness of Europe over the years. And this is just a tough last year, especially with the commodities and the economy slowing down and the industry slowing down. But I think the fact that we have been working and we continue to work is -- I think we'll be in very competitive shape going forward.

Your next question comes from the line of Colin Langan, representing UBS.

Can you comment on South America? The margins fell pretty significantly in the fourth quarter, and you seem to indicate that the margins will be lower next year. I mean, is the fourth quarter abnormally worse, or is that going to be the new run rate? And also, I know there were some import taxes in Brazil that came into effect in December. Is that going to help in the first half of the year as some of your competitors are kind of pushed out of the market there?

Let me try and give you a sort of slightly broader answer. I think what we're seeing in South America and Brazil, in particular, is a sort of a change in the environment. The way the real has strengthened so dramatically has attracted people in, importers that typically hadn't been a big player in the marketplace. And that put pressure on pricing for a couple reasons. One, just increased competition. And secondly, those importers were bringing in global products, whereas historically, most of South America was really operating on legacy products. So what we've seen is -- in the typical past of Brazil with high inflation, high local inflation and the exchange rate variability, we could price to offset that. What we saw in the fourth quarter is that ability to price to offset -- in the fourth quarter, both pretty high local inflation and deterioration in the -- weakening of the currency, we couldn't price to offset that. As we look forward, I think the real key is we are moving towards our global products. And we'll see, starting in the second half -- and no secret, we showed it at Delhi, the new EcoSport, a tremendously important product for South America. And starting from then, we'll potentially have a complete transformation of the product line from historically legacy platforms and local solutions to global platforms and global solutions. And by the mid-decade, we'll have 16 new products, 15 of which will be on global platforms. So I think that's the sort of transition you can see in the market. And I think -- as you think about 2012, I think we would expect to see the second half better than the first half because of the launch of the new products.

I might just add also that in the fourth quarter specifically, nearly 50% of that deterioration was exchange. And just one more comment, building on what Lewis shared, is as we introduce our new ONE Ford global platforms, we're going to be increasing our market coverage from 67% up to nearly 82% with our new family of vehicles. So we have some real opportunities to serve new market segments going forward also with products that are going to have a lot more value and a lot more competitiveness.

And I talked about EcoSport in the second half. I should also -- we're very excited about Ranger because Ranger is going to be important around the world, and it's going to be in South America in the second half of this year.

Okay. I guess just 2 more quick ones. I mean, any color on what you're expecting for FX next year? It seems to have been an issue this quarter. And any comment on structural cost? It's up $2 billion this year. At what point does it sort of hit a plateau where the incremental growth is no longer that large? It sounds like you've been doing maybe some global catch-up over the last few years.

Well, in terms of our structural cost, we still got some period to go because, as we said, we broke ground on 4 new plants in Asia-Pacific last year. We've got 7 plants in Asia-Pacific under construction now. As our volumes grow, we'll have increased manufacturing cost just because of our volumes growing. And as we want to continue to improve our brand, we'll have increased advertising and sales promotion. So I think it's too early to say we'll get to a plateau. It's something we pay a lot of attention on in the Thursday meetings. It's something that gets discussion at every Thursday meeting. In terms of foreign exchange, I wouldn't want to guess on that.

But clearly, it's part of our plan to grow towards that mid-decade guidance that we gave, that we're going to move up to around 8 million vehicle production, as well as moving the guidance up to 8% to 10% -- the margins up to 8% to 10%. And that's fueled by especially the growth in Asia-Pacific, as Lewis mentioned, both on the product line coverage as well as the new production facilities.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we would now like to welcome questions from the media community. [Operator Instructions] Your next question will come from the line of Dee-Ann Durbin, representing the Associated Press.

You talked about the loss of U.S. market share in the fourth quarter. Since the retail share remained the same, I wanted to talk about the fleet, apparently, that you're losing. Is it good fleet? Is it bad fleet? What's going on with fleet?

Dee-Ann, I think, really, it's more noise than any signal. I mean, it was only a very small change, so I don't -- we don't see any signals in that. It's just the timing of the orders.

And Dee-Ann, like we've talked about, the fleet is really good business, dominated by the companies, and a very big and important part of our plan.

I just wondered if you were -- I mean, are you losing, for example, police contracts, taxi, that kind of business?

No, not all. And just with that one specific, I think our new Interceptor, and the fact that it was designed in concert with the police throughout the United States, is going to be a terrific product for them.

Your next question comes from the line of Ben Klayman, representing Reuters.

Today's GDP numbers show inventories accounted for a big chunk of the economic growth in the fourth quarter, and I was just hoping to get your guys' insight as to are you guys still ramping up inventories, are you keeping them stable or letting them run down? And sort of what signs are you picking up about the strength of demand from U.S. consumers?

We're being very careful on inventories. In the U.S., we had some dealer stock build in the fourth quarter, but it was really to make sure we had the inventories that are now -- to support the going rate in terms of days supply. I think we're at 58 days, which is just slightly actually lower than our typical level. So I think, as you've seen over the last several quarters -- in fact, several years, Mark and the team have done a really nice job of matching our production with demand. We do see our running rate -- the industry running rate is going up. So you can expect to see dealer stock levels increase a little bit as the industry goes up, but not our days supply. We'll keep our days supply well under control.

We've talked about this a little bit. This is a slower recovery than we've had from recessions in the past, but it's a very important recovery. The guidance that -- or the economic expansion we see now in the United States is going to be between 2% and 3%. And also, we've moved the industry volume up from 13 million units this year to between 14 million and 15 million next year.

13.5 million to 14.5 million.

I'm sorry, 13.5 million to 14.5 million next year. And the neat thing about that, too, is that with the average age of the vehicles getting closer to 11 years, that the consumers really do want to obtain the value and the fuel efficiency of the new vehicles. So we got a number of things in here that look really well for us going forward in the market.

Okay. And then one other quick question I just had about freight cost, and I was hoping you guys could provide some color as to where you're seeing that. Is it in the U.S., and is it rail? And are you going to be able to pass that on to the customers?

The freight cost increase we've seen is really associated with the premium freight we've had to enable to support our plants for a couple of reasons. One, during the year, as we went through the tsunami crisis and then the Thailand crisis, we had to sort of accelerate our supply lines by putting stuff in air and premium freight. And then as we've grown, our suppliers in 1 or 2 cases have struggled a little bit to keep up with us. And again, we've had to have some premium freight to keep the plants going. So it's more expedited freight cost levels rather than specific ambient freight costs.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of David Shepardson, representing the Detroit News.

Lewis, you talked about other strategic actions you're considering with the pension plans. Are you considering a hourly pension buyout program?

David, when we're ready to talk about our other plans, we'll talk about it at the appropriate time. We're not ready to talk about things we have in mind.

And how many years do you think it will take until you can fully fund your pension plans?

Well, as we guided, we expect, with both asset returns -- a return to a more normalized discount rate -- I mean, the discount rate is at historic lows, and our cash contributions, we expect overall, our funded pension plans to be fully funded by the end of the plan period, so in the next few years. Obviously, there were 3 caveats you just heard, but that's what we expect.

The next question comes from the line of Alisa Priddle, representing Detroit Free Press.

You've talked a lot about North America being the real driver in the fourth quarter. Can you give us a little bit of context of how dominant you think the role of North America will be in 2012?

Yes. I mean, we would expect North America to continue to be an extremely strong contributor to the business, I think, for a couple of reasons. One, it is our largest business unit by some, and more importantly, it's operating in a gradually expanding environment. And then also within North America, by far, the dominant part of Ford Credit's profits are earned in North America. Europe, you've heard us express some caution about giving guidance. South America, we expect to be strongly profitable next year, although perhaps a little bit lower than this year. In Asia-Pacific, we expect to return to profitability. But within that context and within the fact we're investing for the future and many of the other reasons, we expect North America to be a very strong contributor to 2012.

One of the neat things about North America, too, is it has the widest -- and most of all the members of the complete family of best-in-class products. And so it really is the engine also for supporting our growth worldwide.

And in terms of net pricing, can you give any kind of color on -- now that you're adding the Fusion, completing the car line, what kind of effect do you think it might have?

As I said earlier, we expect to see continued net pricing opportunities. We're seeing a fairly stable pricing environment in the U.S. And as our products continue to get great, every time we launch a new product, we close the gap. And I think we'll continue to do that.

At this time, I'd now like to hand the call back to management to proceed to closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much, Katina. Well, thank you, everyone. That concludes today's presentation, and we appreciate all of you joining us today.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.