Updated 11:03 ET with comment, early trading.

General Motors reported a first-quarter profit of $1 billion -- down from more than $1.6 billion a year ago -- on strong results in North America and continuing losses in Europe.

"This management team is not getting ahead of ourselves," CEO Dan Akerson told financial analysts today on a conference call. "We're not immune to the industry issues like recession or overcapacity in Europe or competition that's intensifying everywhere we do business. Every day we keep our teams focused on these cold, hard facts."

The results were 60 cents per share (about a fourth of which are still owned by taxpayers). The profit, before being reduced by 33 cents per share in mostly Europe-related special charges, beat Wall Street analysts expectations by 8 cents per share.

GM was strong in North America, with an operating profit of $1.7 billion, up 35% from a year ago, but the skunk at the party was GM Europe, which lost $256 million and also was responsible for a special charges of nearly $600 million for a goodwill writedown and pensions. The unit's annual loss last year was its 12th consecutive year of losses.

The restructuring of the Opel operation has been gaining little traction:

But it is now battling the headwind of the recession in most of Europe. But the loss there was narrower that the about $300 million many analysts had expected.

"We're relieved to hear that international (particularly Europe) was better than feared. However, we lack confidence that this is the bottom of the cycle in Europe," Jefferies analyst Peter Nesvold wrote in a note to investors.

GM's profit in the quarter a year ago was about $1.6 billion billion before special and one-time items (the $3.2 billion total was padded by the sale of its Delphi stake). But GM's operating profit before interest and taxes this quarter was $2.2 billion, up 10% from a year ago. And net revenue this quarter was up $1.6 billion, or more than 4%, from a year ago to $37.8 billion.

"The U.S. economic recovery, record demand for GM vehicles in China and the global growth of the Chevrolet brand helped deliver solid earnings for General Motors," said CEO Dan Akerson in a statement.

"New products are starting to make a difference in South America, but Europe remains a work in progress. We'll continue to work on both revenue and cost opportunities until we have brought GM to competitive levels of profitability," he said.

GM's stock continues to trade below its $33 IPO price in 2010 and closed Wednesday at $22.93 and is down 30% in the past year. Taxpayers need a price of $53 to break even on the billions spent on GM's 2009 bankruptcy restructuring.

The company's profit margin of 5.8% was up from 5.6% a year ago, but still well below the double-digit U.S. margins of such rivals as Hyundai.

Among the Detroit automakers, GM's first-quarter profit compares to profits of $1.4 billion at Ford (here) and $473 million at Chrysler (here).

GM raised its forecast for overall industry sales this year in the U.S, saying "pent-up demand" would result in sales of 14 to 14.5 million, up a half million. And it said it expects its North American results in the second and third quarters "to be comparable to the first quarter of 2012 due to the scheduled downtime at factories that produce full-size trucks" for the switchover to the redesigned Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups.

In other words, the first quarter is a good as it will get in the U.S. for a while. GM's U.S. market share, as the Japanese makes return to normal from the disasters of last year, was down to about 18% in April from 20% last year. And the company is in a lull in new-product intros due to delays caused by the 2009 financial implosion.

But GM CFO Dan Ammann also told reporters to today that GM is getting better transaction prices for its vehicles, while trimming back its incentives a bit.

Jesse Toprak, VP, Market Intelligence for TrueCar.com says the market share is not a concern going into Q2: "Despite the market share decline in the US, gains in China and improvements in transaction prices are likely to contribute to another profitable quarter but there's still room for improvement, especially in further enhancing their product line up."