IN BRIEF

Ford posts profit, warns of losses ahead

Ford surprised Wall Street Thursday by posting its first quarterly profit in two years. Then it spoiled the party by warning investors that it still expects big losses in the next two quarters and no return to full-year profitability until 2009.

Ford squeezed most of the gains out through cost cutting, mainly with a roughly 30 percent decline in jobs, and good sales overseas.

Ford’s profit of 31 cents per share compares with a net loss of 17 cents a share, or $317 million, in the same quarter of last year.

The second-quarter profit surprised 15 Wall Street analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial who expected the company to lose 35 cents per share excluding special items.

HOUSTON

Exxon Mobil profit slips by 1 percent

Don’t let Exxon Mobil Corp.’s 1 percent drop in second-quarter profit fool you. It was still the fourth-best quarterly result for an American company — ever. And analysts say the company’s massive global footprint points to more big quarters.

The world’s largest publicly traded oil company said Thursday lower natural gas prices and a drop in production hurt results for the April-June period, contributing to a rare miss of Wall Street expectations.

But Exxon Mobil’s net income of $10.26 billion was still eye-popping and off only slightly from the $10.36 billion it earned in the second quarter of 2006, the third-best U.S. quarterly result. It already holds the record for the No. 1 quarterly and annual profits.

Exxon Mobil produces 3 percent of the world’s oil.

Vista license sales reach 60 million

Microsoft Corp., the world’s biggest software maker, has sold 60 million licenses for the Windows Vista operating system since it went on sale to all customers at the end of January.

Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner announced the number Thursday at its analysts’ meeting. That’s on pace to beat the initial estimate of Roger Kay, an analyst at Wayland, Mass.-based researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates. Kay estimated 82 million licenses would be sold for the year.

Fiscal fourth-quarter sales of Windows for personal computers met the low end of the company’s forecast, spurring concern among investors that demand for Vista is lower than expected.

NEW YORK

Southwest considers ways to serve fliers

Can airlines do a better job of accommodating families?

That’s the question Southwest Airlines is asking by experimenting with various ways to board and seat traveling families.

“We began testing about two weeks ago on all flights departing from San Antonio,” Linda Rutherford, the airline’s vice president of public relations, said Thursday. “We are testing several different ways to conduct family boarding.”

Options under consideration include “having designated rows for family seating; having them board with no onboard designated area, and preboarding them as we would normally,” Rutherford said. She said the experiments would continue for a few weeks, and that it was too early to draw conclusions.

Alcoa to incur big costs from bid for Alcan

Alcoa will incur $75 million in third-quarter costs related to its failed bid for rival aluminum producer Alcan, including fees paid to Citigroup and Goldman Sachs Group for unused loans.

Securing $30 billion in credit to fund the bid required commitment fees totaling $67 million, New York-based Alcoa said in a regulatory filing. Additional expenses related to the bid brought the total to $75 million, or $49 million after tax, which will be reflected in third-quarter results, Alcoa said.

The company already took an after-tax charge of $17 million in the second quarter, reflecting investment banking, audit and other fees from its failed $27.7 billion offer. Alcoa, the world’s second-largest aluminum producer, withdrew the bid after Rio Tinto Group agreed to pay $38.1 billion for Alcan.

COLUMBIA, S.C.

Companies’ merger gets shareholder OK

Shareholders approved a deal Thursday that would combine Canadian forest products company Abitibi-Consolidated LLC with South Carolina newsprint maker Bowater, company officials said.

Seventy percent of Bowater’s shares were voted in favor of the all-stock deal at the annual meeting in Atlanta, the company said. Abitibi said 80 percent of its shares were voted in favor of the deal at a special meeting in Montreal.

The new company, to be called AbitibiBowater, and based in Montreal, would be the third-largest forest products company in North America.

NEW YORK

Treasury prices rally, pushing yields down

Treasury bond prices rallied sharply Thursday, pushing the benchmark yield down to its weakest level since late May, hit by investor nervousness about shakiness in other credit markets.

At 5 p.m. EDT, the 10-year Treasury note was up $9.06 per $1,000 in face value, or 0.09 points, from its level at 5 p.m. Wednesday. Its yield, which moves in the opposite direction, fell to 4.79 percent from 4.90 percent.

The 30-year bond rose 1 0.06 points. Its yield fell to 4.95 percent from 5.02 percent.