Ford CEO Jim Farley is frustrated.
The company’s fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday missed analyst expectations by a wide margin, as costs and supply chain issues again hurt Ford’s bottom line, Farley knows his company needs to change.
“We have to change our cost profile,” Farley told CNBC after a call with analysts to discuss the quarter’s results. “We know what we have to go after. I’d love to give you all the metrics and all the specific gaps we see. But you know, whether it’s absenteeism, the number of sequencing centers, the number of wiring harnesses we have, we know what it is.”
In short, Farley wants Ford to become a far more efficient company, and he needs it to happen quickly.
The push to transform Ford is taking on greater urgency after the automaker reported 2022 adjusted earnings of $10.4 billion, just three months after the company told analysts it expected to make $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion in that year.
How did Ford fall more than a billion dollars shy of hitting a profit target it gave Wall Street at the end of October?
Blame it on poor execution and higher-than-expected costs. Last quarter, Ford said, overcoming supply chain challenges, including a shortage of semiconductor chips, increased costs by $1 billion more than planned. Ford production was 100,000 vehicles shy of what the automaker expected to build.
Ford workers produce the electric F-150 Lightning pickup on Dec. 13, 2022, at the automaker’s Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.
Michael Wayland | CNBC
Supply chain and cost issues hurt Ford over the last two years. Last September, Ford warned third-quarter costs would be $1 billion greater than expected. For the last two years, high warranty costs — from recalls and troubled launches of new vehicles — were a problem that Farley and his team have been unable to fix.
Farley said Ford’s complexity is part of the problem.
“We have a lot of complexity relative to the customer and also inside our company. And we can cut the…
Read the full article here
