Business: To Higher Roads

Buoyed by still rising production, automakers last week rolled out a glittering group of quarterly earnings reports and said that still better times are ahead.

Chrysler's President L. L. Colbert told stockholders that first-quarter earnings exceeded the $1.30 per share reported in the company's best and final quarter last year. Chrysler's retail sales from April 10 to April 20 were the highest in the past 17 months. Colbert said "considerable improvement" in earnings can be expected in the second quarter, when Chrysler plans to boost production to 300,000 cars and trucks, 40% above the first quarter's 215,175.

American Motors earned $2.10 for its second fiscal quarter, boosting first-half earnings to $5.66 per share v. $1.25 during the same period last year. For the first time since 1954, American returned to a quarterly cash dividend program, declared a 60¢ payment. With the peak sales season coming up, President George Romney said he "anticipates an even higher level" of production, sales and earnings.

Studebaker-Packard tripled its first-quarter sales over last year ($115 million v. $35 million), reported earnings of $1.20 per share, the best quarter since Studabaker-Packard was formed in 1954.

Other first-quarter earnings (per share) :

1959 1958

OILS

Texaco $1.56 $1.25

Shell Oil 1.14 1.01

Sun Oil .96 .54

CHEMICALS

Du Pont $2.17 $1.15

American Cyanamid .62 .58

Union Carbide 1.38 .76

RUBBER

B. F. Goodrich $1.15 $ .70

U.S. Rubber 1.55 .45

MISCELLANEOUS

Libbey-Owens-Ford $3.28 $ .72

Phelps Dodge 1.28 .67

Republic Steel 1.71 .55

American Tobacco 1.85 1.79