Can Ford Sell Enough EVs to Impress Wall Street?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 23, 6:45AM EDT

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Can Ford Sell Enough EVs to Impress Wall Street? — © PeopleImages / Getty Images

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) has a dilemma when it comes to its next quarterly report.
Will strong electric vehicle sales equate to success in investors’ minds?

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) stock has put in a mediocre showing so far this year. Its improvement is just shy of the rise in the S&P 500, as the car company’s shares are up slightly more than 15%. That is well shy of the shares of crosstown rival General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), which are about 37% higher.

Oddly, Ford has to show two things that clash with one another. If earnings are strong, it must sell large numbers of its gasoline-powered cars, particularly its pickups and sport utility vehicles. It also has to show that its $30 billion planned investment in electric vehicles (EVs) has yielded more than promises.

In the second quarter, Ford’s gas-hungry flagship, the F-150, had sales of 199,463, which was 37% of the period’s total company sales. The F-150 Lightning EV sales totaled only 7,902, up 77%, but it was a minimal number. Sales of its Mustang Mach-E rose by a considerable 47% but only to 12,645.

Ford is caught in a vice. The company said it would be able to have a 600,000 EV production run rate by the end of last year. Instead, its production is moving in the opposite direction. It will spend $3 billion to convert an EV plant to making the F-series Super Duty. The big pickup gets about 16 miles per gallon.

If Ford shows it has sold too many EVs when it releases earnings, it will create a concern about margins. If it has been unusually successful in selling conventional cars, many investors will be thrilled.

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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.