The sales totals were a clear miss and Ford stock is in for a beating Monday. Analysts at Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds.com were looking for sales of around 225,000.
Sales of Ford’s best-selling F-Series pickups were down 1.3% in 2014, from 763,402 a year ago to 753,851.
Other top-selling Ford vehicles, the Fusion and the Focus, experienced sales declines of 5.1% and 4.4%, respectively, in December. The bright spot for car sales was the all-new Mustang, which saw sales jump 66% to 9,511 units. For the year to date, Mustang sales are up 7.1% to 82,635, not an awful lot more than a good month’s pickup sales. Unfortunately for Ford, Mustang cannot carry the company.
Ford’s car sales fell 3.8% for the year. Utility vehicle sales were up 3.5% for the year, and truck sales were up 4% for the month and down 0.7% for the year.
The aluminum-bodied F-150 has been shipping to dealers for the past six weeks or so, and Ford’s U.S. marketing vice-president had this to say about the new pickups: “Demand for the all-new F-150 also is very high, and it now is the fastest-turning vehicle in Ford showrooms, averaging just five days on dealer lots in December.”
The new pickups are hugely important for Ford, but some of its other high-volume vehicles — Fusion, Focus, Escape and Explorer come to mind — have got to perform better as well. December was not a good ending to Ford’s 2014 sales year.
Ford’s shares traded lower by about 3.6% Monday morning, at $14.81 in a 52-week range of $13.26 to $18.12.
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