Is Ford headed for financial trouble?

NOHOME said:

In reply to dps214 :

They'll be fine until the whole economy collapses, and then everyone's going bankrupt not just them.

But that is my point,  no matter how bad it gets, some car brands will survive due to being diversified. Ford is known ONLY for "trucks" and if they fall out of  affordability, I see them as being the worst positioned of the transportation builders to survive. 

Just a thought, affects me in no way but keeps the conversation going and my post whoring on-point. 

Uh no I mean the WHOLE economy and EVERYONE. But that's an extreme (hopefully) hypothetical. Maybe ford is only known for trucks but everyone only wants trucks, so as long as there's cheap options they'll be fine.

Noddaz said:

Ford not having an entry level car could be a future issue.

With no entry level model how would you "step up" when it is time for a new, better vehicle?

Or has the market changed that much?

I work at an Acura Dealer and I do know still move from lower models to upper models in Acura.

I just checked and ford has FIVE models with starting prices cheaper than the cheapest acura ($20-27.xk). They have plenty of entry level options, just none of them are cars. 

alfadriver said:

The sucky thing of the development of the entire market has been the mass exodus of selling cars.  I honestly hate that.  But Ford isn't the only one who barely has any cars to sell anymore.

That's my beef currently, I'd like to replace my MINI , but with what ? Stick shift hatches are dinosaurs and I'm not ready to capitulate and buy a CUV yet. I  do acknowledge that I'm a very small piece of the market and there just aren't sales enough to justify building my kind of car......too bad.

I don't get this notion that Ford's only successful vehicle is the F-150. They sell a huge amount of Explorers, Edges, Escapes, etc. People who don't want trucks aren't buying cars, they are buying SUVs and crossovers, and Ford is well-covered there.

Sidewayze said:

For the vast majority of owners a truck actually makes very little sense, but that hasn't kept them from selling like crazy. 

 I'd say at this point most North Americans are so invested in truck culture that they really wouldn't have any sense of self left if they had to drive a car.  

A truck ( or SUV on the same chassis) is the best way to tow your race car.  It's also the best way to tow your boat and travel trailer, it's the best way to haul big stuff home from garage sales and the best way to haul farm goods to market.  I used mine to haul home everything used to build my house. 
   With a race car,  2 collector cars, and 2 boats, mine is often in use as intended. 
 When not used that way I commute to and from work in it.  
 Carpenters use them,  contractors, handymen, yard maintenance crews,   Etc. Shall I go on?  
 

Datsun310Guy said:

I just toured the Ford F150 River Rouge plant last December. 

This is what the tour guides told me:

1. They are only making F150's with an order.  Nothing is being built for dealer stock. 

2. Ford's ten hour shifts give you 300 trucks X 2 shifts a day.  The weekend is a single shift and nets 300 a day so the total is about 3,600 trucks a week.

3. My buddy ordered one last year and just got it in January - he said it was a 5 month wait and he paid sticker.

I'm not convinced there is trouble unless we start hitting $5-$7 a gallon........

I don't think $5-$7 or even higher will kill sales. Not at $40,000 for a F150 EV. 
in fact I think if oil prices keep going up. There will be more and more EV's sold.  
 What's you break even number?  
 How many miles would you be willing to pay for gas at $5-$7 dollars  @ 25 gallons per fill.  That' $125-$175 a tank full. 
 How many fill ups  per week?  1?  So your monthly gas bill is going to be somewhere around $600 per month plus payment insurance and maintenance?  
  I'll bet an EV is going to be significantly  cheaper. 

Hmmm...  I presented Ford as a potential buy at our stock club meeting last night.  Reasons:  Ford has a number of hot vehicles they are selling now - Mustang Mach E (stupid marketing name, but they can't build enough of them), Bronco, Maverick, F-150, etc.  The electric Transit should be shipping this month.  The electric F150 demand has them sold out for a long time.  Ford is planning on ramping to 600K/yr electric cars next year, which should put them second to Tesla (which shipped 800K this year IIRC).  They have invested big time in an electric future, and I'm betting that's the way things are going.

From an investment perspective, Ford's price/earnings is under FOUR (TSLA is at 175), which unless I'm missing something, makes the stock a helluva buy if it even comes close to executing on it's future plans.  I'm not a Ford fan boy, but I think they're beating GM and Toyota and the rest of the old school auto companies at moving forward into the next generation of cars and trucks.

NOHOME said:

As I was driving around in the sea of F150s today, I had to stop for fuel and found out that a Nissan Versa now eats  most of a $100  bill to fill the tank in Canada. Yea gas is spendy here at $1.60/liter and most likely to go higher.

I'm not sure where in Canada you are, but I live in the greater Vancouver area of BC.  Here are the prices at the gas station closest to my place:

Considering they can't make enough Mavericks to feed customer interest/demand and F150's are very popular cars, I think they will be okay for awhile

Americans love trucks. They will treat them like student loans; take out ultra long term loans and hope they can pay them back. We're already seeing it with these $80,000 trucks financed for 8 years. 

Very few of us need F150s. If I didn't need to pull a motorcycle trailer I wouldn't own mine, but I can't face getting a boring, same-as-everyone-else crossover thing since they killed off all the interesting cars.  Pickups still look cool, even if they aren't especially practical.

Wives will still want luxury SUVs when what they really should have are minivans, but those aren't 'cool'.

We Americans buy what we want, not what we need. It's nice to live in a country where that is possible.

Do  you really need an F150 to pull a motorcycle trailer?  I hauled 1000cc bikes behind my Mazda 626 without a problem.

If the only thing you ever haul is a motorcycle then a 1953 Studebaker is fine.   But what if you decide you want to build a garage?  Can you haul home the materials to build that? Or a piano, sectional couch,  dirt to fill in the low spot on the lawn,  stone to build a retaining wall?   An antique wooden boat?  A billiard table? Desk, freezer, 

ddavidv said:

Americans love trucks. They will treat them like student loans; take out ultra long term loans and hope they can pay them back. We're already seeing it with these $80,000 trucks financed for 8 years. 

Very few of us need F150s. If I didn't need to pull a motorcycle trailer I wouldn't own mine, but I can't face getting a boring, same-as-everyone-else crossover thing since they killed off all the interesting cars.  Pickups still look cool, even if they aren't especially practical.

Wives will still want luxury SUVs when what they really should have are minivans, but those aren't 'cool'.

We Americans buy what we want, not what we need. It's nice to live in a country where that is possible.

 If you want to be popular? Buy a pickup. 
 You have friends who need to move, haul home stuff,  build stuff,  not to mention all of the things you can do for yourself with a truck.  

Older lady at my church has 2 cars since she lost her husband. Buick LeSabre and a nice 2WD F150.   She laughs she keeps insurance and plates on both and doesn't need both.

Why does she always drive the F150?  

Comfort - same as my Silverado.  I grew up on little cars but I hate having to move my kid's Civic or Sentra.  It's nice not to fold up to get into a vehicle.  
 

Due to my car plan at work I'm looking at the smaller trucks but hate the smaller cabins.  Comfort comes at a price.

frenchyd said:

In reply to NOHOME :

Trucks last longer than cars. 

Not in my experience.  The body on frame design makes them more rust prone, and they are far more expensive to repair, and they require more frequent repair. 

Datsun310Guy said:

I just toured the Ford F150 River Rouge plant last December. 

This is what the tour guides told me:

1. They are only making F150's with an order.  Nothing is being built for dealer stock. 

2. Ford's ten hour shifts give you 300 trucks X 2 shifts a day.  The weekend is a single shift and nets 300 a day so the total is about 3,600 trucks a week.

3. My buddy ordered one last year and just got it in January - he said it was a 5 month wait and he paid sticker.

I'm not convinced there is trouble unless we start hitting $5-$7 a gallon........

They'll still sell.  Contractors need trucks to work and make money, posers like to show off how much money they can freely waste with a $60k truck anyway, so fuel prices going up would make trucks even more of a status symbol.

The people in the middle, who kinda need a truck to do truck things but the care and feeding are an unwelcome expense, get screwed, but what else are they gonna do truck things with?

stuart in mn said:

Do  you really need an F150 to pull a motorcycle trailer?  I hauled 1000cc bikes behind my Mazda 626 without a problem.

Well, it used to be that you could fit a motorcycle in the BED, but now fullsize pickups have these 4' long bedlets that people used to make fun of Ridgelines about.

Dang, I kind of want to replace my Expedition with a F150. I don't like how much it'll cost me though. And used F150 cost almost as much as new. It hurts me that I like features. I could never go back from cooled seats.

californiamilleghia said:

anyone know what cars Ford is building in Mexico and Brazil that they could bring here if needed ?

They have exited Brazil completely and brought us the Ranger.  Everything else isn't a fit for the NAFTA market.  The big pushes will continue to be the Mach E, Lightning, and Maverick in their truck spaces.  They are likely better positioned than GM and Stellantis but we'll see.  GM has a massive internal push to electrification and the Ultium drive swap kits are already available for sale.   

TIL that GM turned the Lordstown factory where they used to make Cobalts into a battery plant.

jwagner (Forum Supporter) said:

Hmmm...  I presented Ford as a potential buy at our stock club meeting last night.  Reasons:  Ford has a number of hot vehicles they are selling now - Mustang Mach E (stupid marketing name, but they can't build enough of them), Bronco, Maverick, F-150, etc.  The electric Transit should be shipping this month.  The electric F150 demand has them sold out for a long time.  Ford is planning on ramping to 600K/yr electric cars next year, which should put them second to Tesla (which shipped 800K this year IIRC).  They have invested big time in an electric future, and I'm betting that's the way things are going.

From an investment perspective, Ford's price/earnings is under FOUR (TSLA is at 175), which unless I'm missing something, makes the stock a helluva buy if it even comes close to executing on it's future plans.  I'm not a Ford fan boy, but I think they're beating GM and Toyota and the rest of the old school auto companies at moving forward into the next generation of cars and trucks.

Having watched 30 years of Wall St reactions to Ford news, I would not really take investment cues as any indicator of health.  The only time I see the stock price rise is when workers were laid off.  Strong quarters leading to profits never did anything positive to the stock valuation.

Which is to say, it may be a good value, but WS never sees it as that.

In reply to yupididit :

My buddy who ordered his F150?   XL with the 8' bed, vinyl seats and floors.$40k.  

Get ready to get your checkbook out.  

In the grand scheme of things gas prices don't really matter much.  Unless you are truly living shoestring to shoestring and literally don't have enough cash or credit to fill your tank, doesn't matter. Its sort of a self-policing problem, where if you dont have money for gas, well, you dont have money to spend anywhere you would go either.  If you need to decide between some Starbs or some Marbs and some gas, then you are not really destitute, just gotta make a decision.  

The 2021 F150 I have gets 20MPG in mixed winter driving with the 3.5 Ecoboost.  For a vehicle that large and powerful to have that level of economy is insane.  Mathing it out, the delta between 20MPG (F150) and 40MPG (little sushi barge) is $1250/year at 10000 miles driven and $5/gallon gas.  Thats small potatoes at 12.5 cents/mile. 

One could even make the flimsy rationalization that the decreased depreciation, added utility, and reasonable insurance rates of an F150 vs an economy car would offset the $12.500 dollars in increased gas consumption over 100,000 miles, making the actual cost per mile essentially even money.  

Need to rent a truck or pay for a delivery on something 2x a year?  Thats a few hundred bones each time.  Now that $1250 is $850.  Rent a larger vehicle for a road trip because you want comfort or have to take your 3 screaming children?  75 bucks a day right there.    Doesn't take too long to offset the $1250 per annum.  

All I see here is a USA-centric discussion about a Global Corporation.

How many F-150's do you think Ford sells outside the USA?

In reply to NOHOME :

No Ford isn't in trouble and their efforts to diversify outside if automotive was started over a decade ago. It is a company that used to sell the most popular airplane of a time as well as houses and a bunch of other stuff. They tried grass roofs before LEED. I am not worried about them as long as the Ford family have special stock and control. That way they seek success versus profit.

frenchyd said:

Datsun310Guy said:

I just toured the Ford F150 River Rouge plant last December. 

This is what the tour guides told me:

1. They are only making F150's with an order.  Nothing is being built for dealer stock. 

2. Ford's ten hour shifts give you 300 trucks X 2 shifts a day.  The weekend is a single shift and nets 300 a day so the total is about 3,600 trucks a week.

3. My buddy ordered one last year and just got it in January - he said it was a 5 month wait and he paid sticker.

I'm not convinced there is trouble unless we start hitting $5-$7 a gallon........

I don't think $5-$7 or even higher will kill sales. Not at $40,000 for a F150 EV. 
in fact I think if oil prices keep going up. There will be more and more EV's sold.  
 What's you break even number?  
 How many miles would you be willing to pay for gas at $5-$7 dollars  @ 25 gallons per fill.  That' $125-$175 a tank full. 
 How many fill ups  per week?  1?  So your monthly gas bill is going to be somewhere around $600 per month plus payment insurance and maintenance?  
  I'll bet an EV is going to be significantly  cheaper. 

Well in 2008 $4/gas caused trucks to become dirt cheap. So inflation puts that about $6/gas?

I really don't understand how people are paying for this stuff. Even with ultra long loans. Especially housing, there is a new edition of homes going up in north OKC (right next to a really crummy apartment complex).

3/2.5/2, 1500-1600sq ft 2 story homes so they are on REALLY tiny lots. $355-400k. We make about 3x the average household income in OKC, and I could never imagine having that kind of mortgage and a brand new $60k truck outside.