This year's profit-sharing to hourly union workers will be $5,500 each — up from $5,000 last year.
Automaker Fiat Chrysler raised its profit- sharing with U.S. employees after reporting Thursday that profits nearly doubled last year, thanks to higher margins on its model mix that helped overcome a sales decline in North America.
Outgoing Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told analysts that the company would hit zero debt in 2018, as set out in the business plan laid out four years ago. Fiat issued full-year 2018 guidance of net revenues above 125 billion euros and an adjusted net profit of around 5 billion euros.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles reported net profit for last year hit $ 4.3 billion, compared with 1.8 billion a year earlier, as the company cut its industrial debt nearly in half. Marchionne said he expected to hit zero debt in the second quarter.
More than 70 percent of 2017 profits were generated in North America, where Marchionne has shifted production away from cars, with more than two- thirds of all production now in trucks and utility vehicles.
As a result, Fiat Chrysler announced it would increase profit-sharing to 40,000 union workers on an hourly wage in the United States to $5,500 each — up from $5,000 last year.
That will be in addition to a $2,000 bonus already announced for 60,000 hourly and salaried workers due to savings from the Trump administra-tion’s tax plan.
Marchionne said he would maintain present guidance until the third quarter before considering a boost as has been customary at the house, despite the positive benefits of the U. S. tax plan. Marchionne said “there is a strong likelihood” Fiat Chrysler, long the No. 3 among the big three U. S. carmakers, would outperform Ford in profits this year.