Wall Street Does Not Believe Ford

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 24, 7:30AM EDT

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Wall Street Does Not Believe Ford — © Shattered (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Bill Burris

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) has started to break out the numbers for its electric vehicle (EV) unit. It calls the unit Model e (while the gasoline-powered vehicle unit has been dubbed Ford Blue). Ford e will have an EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) margin of 8% by late 2026. The figure is based on “ambitious scaling of EV production run rates,” whatever this means. Several prominent Wall Street analysts rejected the idea that the plan was viable. If Ford’s EV past is any indication, the skepticism is warranted. (Here is every major automaker’s plan to go electric.)
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Two comments reflected a broad sentiment. One came from Wells Fargo analyst Colin Langan: “It’s unclear how Ford expects to get to its 8% 2026 target margin for Model e” based on sales forecasts. And Barclays’ Dan Levy said, “We believe investors are likely to remain skeptical on the path to appropriate margins, especially amid inflationary headwinds and price declines.”
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Analysts did not comment on how badly Ford has bungled its early EV product launches. If Ford cannot overcome its challenges, these forecasts have little meaning.

The Ford F-150 Lightning has been priced and then repriced, confusing consumers. The Lightning Pro had a price of $46.975 until October 5. That rose to $51.975 in a single day. The Ford F-150 EXT, which is gas-powered, has a base price of $41,800. Why buy the EV version?
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Ford said it mispriced the Lightning because it got the price of components wrong.

Ford cannot get the Lightning off the production line. It closed the line when Ford found problems with the truck’s battery, the heart of the vehicle. Who wants a vehicle that Ford has trouble building? In August of last year, Ford’s quality czar, Chris Spears, said its warranty problems, which are a broad measure of quality, would go away in two to three years, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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If Ford had shown a mediocre record with vehicle launches and quality, its 2026 Ford e EBIT margin might be believable. As the situation stands now, it is not.

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.