As Ford China Sales Fall 43%, Questions About CEO Hackett’s Tenure Grow

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 4:27PM EST · Published Oct 14, 7:20AM EDT

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.

As Ford China Sales Fall 43%, Questions About CEO Hackett’s Tenure Grow — © courtesy of Ford Motor Co.

China is the world’s largest car market, and almost all car industry experts believe that no global manufacturer can flourish without strong sales in the country that has a population of 1.4 billion people, well over four times the number of people in the United States. Ford Motor Co.’s (NYSE: F) sales fell 43% in China in September, a blow to the already reeling company and a threat to the tenure of its embattled CEO James Patrick “Jim” Hackett.

Ford’s sales in China in September were only 64,383. For the first nine months of the year, sales are off 30% to 585,171. Hackett’s man in China, Peter Fleet, president of Ford Asia Pacific and board chair and CEO of Ford China, made the extraordinary statement as he commented on China sales:

We are intensely focused on our sales turnaround plan in China, which includes an aggressive cadence of product introductions to meet the needs of our Chinese customers, including the launch of the highly anticipated all-new Ford Focus. We believe the new products, which have been custom-designed and developed with Chinese customers in mind, will help us to regain momentum in the world’s largest auto market.

This is said as if all the global manufacturers that compete in China are not employing the same tactics but from stronger positions.

[nativounit]

Hackett has two other strikes on him. The first is that Ford’s U.S. sales dropped 11.3% in September to 197,404. For the first nine months, sales were off 2.4% to 1,887,625. Ford will eliminate most of the cars it sells in America because their sales are so poor. The drop in sales when that happens will be even steeper.

Hackett also has promised a detailed description of Ford’s future, which includes the company’s path forward in the electric and autonomous sectors. He also promised to lay out a restructuring that will cut billions of dollars in expenses and likely cost thousands of workers their jobs. He has not made any progress on these goals, at least in so far as he has not announced them to Ford’s workforce or Wall Street.

Ford’s share price is down 32% so far this year. Hackett has no short-term way out of his difficult position. China results have just made that even more difficult.

[wallst_email_signup]

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.