General Motors’ third-quarter profit nearly doubles to $1.38 billion

Big profits from rising SUV and truck sales in North America helped General Motors nearly double its third-quarter profit and more than offset its struggles in Europe and South America.

On Thursday the automaker posted net income of $1.38 billion, or 81 cents a share, compared with $698 million, or 45 cents, a year earlier.

The July-September quarter was the first this year without significant charges for recalls. GM has issued 75 recalls in 2014 covering more than 30 million vehicles, costing the company more than $2.8 billion.

Without $331 million in one-time items, GM would have made 97 cents a share, exceeding Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts polled by FactSet expected 95 cents.

Revenue grew 2% to $39.25 billion, above expectations of $38.79 billion.

In North America, revamped pickup trucks and SUVs helped to push GM’s pretax profit up 12.1% to just over $2.4 billion. The company’s profit margin — the amount of revenue it gets to keep — hit 9.5%, the fifth straight quarter of growth. In China, pretax profit rose 14% to $484 million.

GM’s North American wholesale vehicle sales rose about 60,000 over last year, and half the increase came from pickup trucks and SUVs with high sales prices, Chief Financial Officer Chuck Stevens said.

“The new trucks and SUVs are more profitable than the ones they replaced. That certainly helps from a profit perspective,” he said.

GM sold 884,000 vehicles in North America during the quarter, an increase of 9.4%.

But the company’s loss in Europe, including Russia, grew 63% to $387 million. GM also lost $32 million in South America. But Stevens said both regions improved from previous quarters as cost cuts took hold. The company expects to record a pretax profit in Europe during 2016.

Stevens said GM spent about $700 million on recall repairs during the third quarter, although the expenses were booked during the first half of the year. The biggest recall expense stems from the callback of 2.6 million small cars to fix faulty ignition switches that have been linked to 29 deaths. GM has hired compensation expert Kenneth Feinberg to pay victims and their families and expects to pay $400 million to $600 million in claims.

GM said the quarter included $200 million in restructuring costs, mainly for the closure of an assembly plant in Germany.

GM shares fell 38 cents, or 1.2 %, to $30.93 on Thursday.