Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. posted a net profit of $16 million for the first quarter of 2011, a 25% rise over the same period last year.

That mark came against sales of $906 million for the quarter, up 20% year-over-year.

Increased raw material costs rang up $164 million for the quarter, Cooper reported.

Cooper’s North America Tire Operations posted net sales of $648 million during the first quarter, up 22% from 2010, and an operating profit of $22 million, up $8 million year-over-year.

“Despite elevated raw material costs, we continued making improvements to our underlying operations and delivered solid operating profits during the quarter,” said Cooper chairman and CEO Roy Armes. “We still intend to produce 10% more units in 2011 than we did in 2010 to help meet the continued strong demand for our products. We expect raw material costs to remain at elevated levels after the first quarter, but persistent volatility can make it difficult to accurately predict movements in raw material prices. We have forecasted that our raw material index is likely to be sequentially higher, by between 10% and 15%, during the second quarter. We believe increases to the raw material index should begin to decelerate during the third quarter.”