24/7 Wall St. 2007 Price Forecasts: Ford, $6.50

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 30, 11:06AM EST · Published Jan 10, 11:25AM EST

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Over the next week 24/7 Wall St. will set mid-year price targets (June, 30, 2007) for the sixty most widely traded stocks. These targets will be based on past price performance, industry activity, forward projections of financial performance, outside analyst opinions, and research conducted for doing past articles on these firms. The price targets assume flat markets over the next six months. In other words, if the Nasdaq moved up 25% between now and mid-year, the target share price targets would probably be too low. If the market moved down by 20%, they would probably be too high.

Ford Motor Company. (F) Unlike cross-town rival GM, Ford’s shares did not stage a furious rally over the last year. As a matter of fact they dropped about 10%. And, that trend may well continue. Ford has made a series of odd decisions. One is to keep losing units like Jaquar. The other was to take on a debt load that drove some of the common shareholders out of the stock.

Several brokerage firms have upgraded the stock. They like the new CEO and think that the cash Ford brought in will allow it to hang tough in negotiations with the UAW in the event that talks break down and this leads to a strike. But, quite the opposite may be true. The UAW like companies with cash. When Ford looked like a potential Chapter 11 candidate the big (but shrinking) union was more likely to play ball instead of losing massive numbers of workers in a bankruptcy court.

Even Ford sees it share of the US market dropping as low as 14%. That’s a tough way to make a living.

Factors that could move stock above forecast: Ford is bleeding share, especially with its most profitable products like the F-series pick-up. If better product of lower gas prices bring buyer back, Ford shares could turn North.

Factors that could move the stock below forecasts: Wall St. is very, very concerned with Ford’s cash consumption. If that picture darkens a lot of shareholders will head for the doors.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies the he writes about.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.