Ford cuts 2017 profit forecast for credit arm

Ford Motor Co on Thursday lowered the 2017 pretax profit forecast for its financial services arm by $300 million due to lower auction values for used vehicles in the United States.

The company now expects Ford Credit to record a pretax profit of about $1.5 billion in 2017.

Ford affirmed that it expects full company pretax profit in 2017 to be down from 2016, and to improve in 2018. In September, Ford lowered its forecast for pretax profit this year by $600 million to $10.2 billion.

Ford expects its core automotive business to improve in 2017 and 2018. The full company's pretax profit will be down in 2017, it reaffirmed, due to investment in three areas of the business: electrified vehicles, self-driving vehicles, and shared mobility such as ride-sharing.

Bob Shanks, Ford's chief financial officer, told industry analysts in New York on Thursday that Ford is not changing its investment plans in electric and hybrid-electric vehicles because of expected changes to U.S. regulations in a Donald Trump administration.

Shanks also said it was too early to assess the impact of Trump's election on the No. 2 U.S. automaker.

During the campaign, Trump targeted Ford as an example of U.S. companies moving jobs to Mexico.

Ford, which earlier had said the greatest declines in used vehicle auction values were for small cars, said the trend of significant declines had now spread over more of its product lineup.

Ford shares were down 0.8 percent at $11.90 in afternoon trading.

(Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru and Bernie Woodall in Detroit; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Andrea Ricci)