Friday morning’s email included one titled “Ford – Ford Motor Company Board Declares Dividend for Fourth-Quarter 2023.” It even included a link to a nonexistent press release.

The “Page Not Found” error message was a dead giveaway.

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Page Not Found

Interestingly, the email showed up only a few minutes after U.S. equity markets closed on Thursday. Yet, there is no press release on the site, and no SEC filing has been recorded in more than a week.

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Even ‌Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) executives may have figured out that announcing a dividend payment as it faces further work stoppages is a poor idea.

Ford has paid out almost $3.8 billion in cash dividends for the first half of 2023. In the 2022 fiscal year, Ford paid a total of $2.01 billion in cash dividends. Looks like investors got a nice raise this year. (These 20 American companies have the worst reputations.)

If the company were to follow its recent pattern, Ford would make a dividend payment of $0.15 per share sometime in mid-November. Maybe the company has decided to hold on to its cash, or maybe it understands what a bad look it is to pay its investors while fighting with its workers.

The Strike Marches On

On Wednesday, United Auto Workers (UAW) members walked off the job at Ford’s Louisville, Kentucky, truck plant. The walkout came after at the end of a brief in-person meeting just an hour before the Kentucky workers walked out. The Detroit Free Press reported what happened next, according to sources from Ford:

Ford negotiators told the UAW that there wasn’t much additional room on economics and that they didn’t have an immediate updated offer. At that point, the Ford source said, ‘[UAW President] Shawn (Fain) stood up and said, “If that’s all you got, you just lost KTP (Kentucky Truck Plant).”‘

And that was the end of the meeting, which lasted less than 10 minutes, the Ford source said.

A union source had a somewhat different take:

President Fain said, ‘If this is all you have for us, our members’ lives and my handshake are worth more than this. This just cost you Kentucky Truck Plant. We’ll take this under advisement. [UAW Vice-President] Chuck (Browning) and I have a call to make.’ … Fain and Browning left to call local UAW leaders, including Dunn.

What Ford Has Lost and What It May Lose Next

Ford’s Kentucky truck plant is the company’s largest and one of the largest in the world. It generates $25 billion a year in revenue, one-sixth of Ford’s global total, the Free Press reports.

The plant builds the Ford F-Series Super Duty, Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator. Super Duty is among the most profitable products the Dearborn automaker sells.

A Ford assembly plant in Louisville and another in Ohio may have to close soon as a consequence of Wednesday’s walkout. Ford released a list of 13 plants from Canada to Mexico that are directly affected by the Kentucky truck plant’s strike.

UAW President Shawn Fain has called a press conference for 10:00 a.m. ET Friday morning, “to give bargaining updates and take further action if needed.”

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