Ford CEO Warns Employees

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 10, 9:30AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Ford CEO Warns Employees — © Spencer Platt / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Embattled Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) CEO Jim Farley had a town hall meeting. According to The Wall Street Journal, he is reworking performance metrics. As Ford has increasing financial troubles, it should be considered a warning: Our reputation for quality is under siege. Get better at what you do, or these new metrics may cost you your job.
[in-text-ad]
Ford finds itself in a terrible position. Farley said it had “left $2 billion on the table” as the company announced earnings. Earlier in the year, Ford missed expense estimates by $1 billion. Farley also said Ford needed 25% more engineers to do the work competitors do. If that is not a warning about layoffs, what is? (Click here for the American tech companies that laid off the most people last year.)
[nativounit]
Ford has raised and then lowered electric vehicle (EV) prices. First, component prices were too high, which meant increasing prices to maintain margins. Later, it cut the price of the Mustang Mach-E, likely because the EV market had been hit by a price war started by Tesla. Presumably, that means margins on the Ford car will be compressed.
[wallst_email_signup]
Farley needs to get his tenure restarted. The Ford family is known for dumping CEOs when results turn poor. This means employees will need to take the brunt of whatever he does as he tries to turn Ford from a poorly run company to one with mediocre results.
[recirclink id=1188573]
Ford wants to catch Tesla in sales. That will be nearly impossible, at least in the next few years. Tesla may sell as many as 2 million cars this year. Ford will be lucky for its EV sales to hit the hundreds of thousands.

Soon, Ford will have fewer employees than it does today.

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.