Ford Collapses, CEO Needs to Be Fired

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 7, 10:45AM EST

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) stock is down 22% in the past year, and the automaker’s outlook is concerning.
It is time to replace CEO Jim Farley.

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Ford Collapses, CEO Needs to Be Fired — © TennesseePhotographer / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Recent Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) earnings were slightly better than expected, but the guidance for this year was wanting. Management and the Ford family cannot continue to disguise the fact that the company has run out of excuses. CEO Jim Farley has to be fired and replaced by a rock star. Otherwise, there is no single reason for shares to recover.

The stock is down 22% in the past year, against a 22% gain by the S&P 500. Crosstown rival General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) has seen its share price increase 22% in that time. The difference between GM and Ford tells the entire story.

Ford has had a warranty problem, which has caused it to write off hundreds of millions of dollars in the past year. Its electric vehicle (EV) business, in which it invested tens of billions of dollars, did not work because it could not figure out what it cost to build and then how to price them correctly.

The other EV excuse sounds something like “Tesla owns the market.” Ford will take a long time to make major inroads, it says. That was not the way Farley was talking two years ago. The company was going to rule the U.S. EV industry.

Now, there is trouble in China. Its business there has fallen apart, mostly because of gains in the sales of China-based companies’ EV products. Ford’s business in Europe, South America, and Asia is not strong enough to pull it out of a tailspin.

The company has no “green shoots.” It is simply a disaster. The Ford family is ultimately to blame, but they could find a competent chief executive who actually has a chance to fix the company.

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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.