NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Ford Motor Co. reported higher fourth-quarter profits Tuesday that topped Wall Street forecasts and said it expects to do much better than forecasts in the current quarter.

But the results and the new guidance did little to reassure skeptical investors, and Ford stock fell at mid-session.

The world's No. 2 automaker behind General Motors Corp. earned $150 million, or 8 cents a share, in the period excluding special items. That's an improvement from the loss of $860 million, or 48 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. Analysts surveyed by earnings tracker First Call had a consensus forecast of 7 cents a share in the period.

The company had a number of restructuring charges related to European operations, its luxury models and the account for derivatives that brought it to a net loss for the quarter of $130 million, or 7 cents a share, up from a loss of $5.1 billion, or $2.81 per share, a year earlier.

Chief Financial Officer Allan Gilmour said the company expects to earn 20 cents a share in the first quarter excluding special items. First Call's consensus forecast for the period is for earnings of 5 cents a share, up from a loss one year ago of 6 cent a share, with a range of estimates from a loss per share of 5 cents to earnings per share of 13 cents.

Analysts have been skeptical about Ford's guidance, however. The consensus forecast for full-year 2003 earnings is 47 cents, despite guidance from Ford earlier this month that it expects to earn 70 cents per share excluding special items this year.

Allan Gilmour, CFO and vice chairman of Ford Motor, talks about his company's numbers and future prospects. Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

Despite the new higher guidance, shares of Ford were slightly lower in trading Tuesday.

Revenue rose $869 million to $41.6 billion in the quarter, despite a 1 percent decline in total number of vehicles sold worldwide to 1.79 million.

The company continue to lose money on its core automotive operations in both the United States and Europe during the fourth quarter and the full year. Ford Credit was the unit that pushed the overall company into the black during the period.

Overall automotive operations lost $191 million in the quarter and $539 million for the year. But that was a $612 million reduction in the loss from automotive operations in the same quarter a year ago, and a $1.4 billion improvement in the automotive loss for the year.

Company executives would not give a projection of when they project the U.S. auto operations to return to profitability, but they did say cost-cutting and profit improvement efforts are doing better than projections unveiled a year ago at this time.

"It depends on volume and economy," said Gilmour. "The best we can say is North American has made a lot of progress, and more than people here a year ago thought was possible."

Still, Gilmour and Chairman and CEO William Clay Ford Jr. acknowledged that there are doubts among investors that Ford will be able to meet its goals for this year of no change in net pricing and gains in market share in all its various markets around the globe.

"Every company in world is telling you they are going to increase their market share in '03 and obviously we can't all be right," said Ford. But he said that the rollout of new models, including a new version of the nation's best-selling vehicle, the F-150 pickup, should help Ford make share gains. Increased production of some luxury makes is seen lifting European market share as well.

Ford's U.S. market share was 21.2 percent in the fourth quarter, down 1.6 percentage points from a year earlier, but up 0.5 percentage points from the first quarter of 2002.

Ford's marketing costs as a percentage of revenue, which includes the costs of popular but expensive financing incentives, reached 16.2 percent in the quarter and 15.8 percent for the year. While the fourth-quarter figure is down from the 16.7 percent a year earlier, when zero-interest financing became widespread in the industry as a reaction to Sept. 11, the 15.8 percent is up from the 14.7 percent of 2001 as a whole.

The company said it expects to build 1,035,000 vehicles in North America in the quarter, up 25,000 from its estimate earlier this month. Much of that additional production is to build inventory of the F-150 so that sales can continue when assembly lines shut for the changeover later this year.