Enlarge image
200,000 pre-orders:
The electric F-150 Lightning (left) is developing into
a successful model for Ford boss
Jim Farley (right).
Photo:
REBECCA COOK / REUTERS
The market value of the US automaker Ford, which had almost been written off, exceeded the threshold of 100 billion US dollars for the first time on Thursday. The group was only that valuable for a short period from the end of the 1990s. In the past decade in particular, things had gone steadily downhill, and Ford, like its long-time rival General Motors, seemed to have missed the transition to the electric age. But since
Jim Farley
(59) took over the CEO position
in October 2020 , things have been looking up.
The former head of production – a declared admirer of Tesla boss
Elon Musk
(50) – is pursuing an aggressive electrification strategy, like almost all car bosses. Compared to other traditional groups, Ford doesn't even sell that many electric cars - and yet Farley in particular seems to inspire the fantasies of investors. Since he took office, the share price has risen by around 270 percent.
"The appeal of Ford's electric car story in the stock market continues to surprise us," Morgan Stanley analyst
Adam Jonas
wrote on Thursday. Volkswagen boss
Herbert Diess
(63) or GM boss
Mary Barra
(60) or Daimler boss
Ola Källenius
(52) are also trying to convince investors of their path, sometimes with significant price increases. But they don't succeed as well as Farley. Why is that?
Ford has had many difficult years. CEO
Alan Mulally
(76), who came from Boeing, was supposed to revive the group from 2006 onwards. Unlike the big US rivals GM and Chrysler, he was able to avoid bankruptcy during the financial crisis of 2008, but he did not initiate the transformation. Just as little as his successors
Mark Fields
(60) or
Jim Hackett
(66), who should make a convincing comeback from 2017 in vain. Farley created a new momentum - also through his constant fire on Twitter.
Ford should one day become the largest electric car manufacturer in the world, he confidently announced in November. By 2023, the group is to build 600,000 purely electric cars per year, doubling the previous goals. Ford will not present exact figures for 2021 until the beginning of February - but the way to the top of the world is still a long way off. For comparison: Tesla already produced more than 936,000 cars in 2021, and Volkswagen was able to double group-wide sales of purely electric cars to 453,000.
Farley's best argument are the models that his predecessors had developed. With the electric Mustang Mach E and the electric pick-up F-150 Lightning, he has two attractive vehicles that appeal to both customers' tastes and investors' imaginations. "While many manufacturers are developing and selling a whole range of electric cars, Ford has launched a product with the Mustang Mach-E that is considered a real rival for Tesla's Model Y," said analyst Jonas. The car was sold a good 27,000 times in the USA in 2021 - which made Ford (far behind Tesla) the second largest electric car manufacturer in the country.
The F-150 Lightning, in particular, is likely to become a bestseller in 2022, and will only be delivered from this spring.
For 40 years in a row, the combustion variant of the pick-up has been the best-selling car in the USA.
The model, which is popular with craftsmen, will now be launched as an electric car with a range of around 370 kilometers - in the cheapest version for less than $40,000.
According to Farley, there are 200,000 pre-orders.
Only at the beginning of this week did he announce that he would increase production capacity again from 80,000 to 150,000 models per year.
This triggered the most recent price jump on the stock exchange.
For the F-150, Ford did not design a new electric platform, but converted the existing one.
This may have technical disadvantages - but it enabled a high speed.
While rival GM still needs time with its announced electric pickups and even Tesla has apparently postponed the launch of the Cybertruck to 2023, Ford is already there.
Another factor that may have driven the Ford course recently is its stake in the US newcomer Rivian.
In a secret bidding war, Ford outdid rival GM as a partner - and now holds 12 percent of Rivian's shares.
Due to the fabulous stock market price of the pure electric car company, which delivered just 920 cars in 2021, this block of shares alone is worth more than 8.5 billion dollars.
The price is supported by the current business figures.
In the first three quarters of 2021, Ford had sales of $98.5 billion.
The EBIT margin was 9 percent.
No figures are available for the fourth quarter.
But in the US they were the best-selling car company, Ford explained. While the industry had shrunk by 3 percent, they were able to grow by almost 27 percent.
The fourth quarter could have been above general expectations, says analyst Emmanuel Rosner from Deutsche Bank.
To stay the course, Farley has announced the largest investments in the company's history.
By 2030, a total of 30 billion dollars will flow into the electric strategy, including battery development.
New plants are to be built in the US states of Tennessee and Kentucky.
That's a lot of money - but manageable in an industry comparison.
Volkswagen is counting on such sums for the planned gigafactories alone;
In total, the VW supervisors released around 90 billion euros for investments in electrification and digitization in December up to 2026.
And Daimler wants to invest around 60 billion euros in the future by December 2026, according to the decision.
A multiple.
In a recent interview with an American trade magazine, Ford boss Jim Farley explained that they themselves were surprised by their success.
But clearly his story is catching.
