General Motors reported its best quarter since 1999 Wednesday, setting the stage the automaker to begin selling shares to the public once again.GM reported it earned $1.96 billion in the quarter, compared to a loss a year earlier when it was still in the process of emerging from bankruptcy. It's the third straight quarter that the automaker has reported a profit.142Email Print CommentThe last time GM reported a profit this large was the first quarter of 1999, when it earned $2.05 billion. But by 2005 the company's declining market share and uncompetitive cost structure had plunged it into a series of annual losses that culminated in its 2009 federal bailout and bankruptcy filing.What emerged from that was a new company without much of the debt, labor obligations and excess capacity of the old GM. Wednesday's earnings report put the company in position to post its first annual profit since 2004.The results were in the middle of the earnings range the company signaled last week, when it said it would earn between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion. The details released Wednesday showed most of the profit coming from its North American operations, where it made an operating profit of $2.1 billion.
