Ford Motor Co.'s quarterly earnings beat Wall Street earnings expectations on Thursday, and the automaker maintained its 2015 profit forecast.

Excluding special items, fourth-quarter earnings were 26 cents per share, which beat expectations of 23 cents per share by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net income was $52 million, or 1 cent per share, a fall from $3.07 billion a year earlier, when results were boosted by a one-time $2.1 billion special tax item.

Ford took a one-time charge of $800 million for an accounting change in Venezuela that also shields its future earnings from the volatile currency and operations there.

Revenue of $35.9 billion topped expectations of $34.54 billion by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

In North America, Ford made a pretax profit of $6.9 billion in 2014, which will yield an annual bonus for about 50,000 union-represented workers of $6,900 per person, down from $8,800 in 2013.

Ford maintained its forecast for 2015 pretax profit of between $8.5 billion and $9.5 billion.