Analysts Worried About Ford

[ehaase]

http://www.thecarconnection.com/pf/Auto_Ne...173.A11943.html

[silvrsvt]

Same ones thinking that Ford should buy Chrysler? This has been the expecations for months now that they would shrink down to 10-12% then grow back up to 14%

[DCK]

Same ones thinking that Ford should buy Chrysler? This has been the expecations for months now that they would shrink down to 10-12% then grow back up to 14%

The last thing anyone should be expecting is Ford to recover any market share they will loose.

 

 

They are totally lost as far as what to do product wise and they need to start making decisions.

[Roadrunner]

Analysts need to realize Ford is willing to lose market share because they don't want to fight for the "lofty" fleet sales.

 

It's for the better overall, although it makes the company "look" weak.

[eddiehaskell]

So basically Ford would be number 4. If GM buys Chrysler, Ford would still be part of the "Big 3"

 

1. GM

2. Toyota

3. Ford

[kpc655]

Market share is irrelevant...before jumping down my throat, let me explain. Ford has 100% of its own market today. meaning, that its current pricing, technology level, advertising etc..so to simply chase a number like 15%, or 20% is essentially having a goal but no strategy to get there. When some ford exec comes out and says our target is 20% or whatever, thats useless. whats more important is the roadmap to get there, but we rarely see the details of that. We just here "way forward" and "get back market share" and the analysts love it. at least until the next earnings report.

[bystander]

Analysts need to realize Ford is willing to lose market share because they don't want to fight for the "lofty" fleet sales.

 

It's for the better overall, although it makes the company "look" weak.

 

Ford cannot afford to shrink indefinitely, even if it means hanging on to some fleet business. Fleet sales may not generate much profit, but at least they fill plant capacity and make it possible to operate so that profitable retail sales are possible. Ford has its debt payments to meet as well as its retiree pension and health care obligations. As its market share shrinks, the remaining sales have to grow substantially in contribution margin to cover these largely fixed costs. At some point, total sales or market share will drop irretreivably below the break-even point. A Ford with 12-14% share will find it awfully tough to keep paying legacy costs from when it had 25% market share.

Edited February 24, 2007 by bystander

[bystander]

Market share is irrelevant...before jumping down my throat, let me explain. Ford has 100% of its own market today. meaning, that its current pricing, technology level, advertising etc..so to simply chase a number like 15%, or 20% is essentially having a goal but no strategy to get there. When some ford exec comes out and says our target is 20% or whatever, thats useless. whats more important is the roadmap to get there, but we rarely see the details of that. We just here "way forward" and "get back market share" and the analysts love it. at least until the next earnings report.

 

Market share is most certainly not irrelevant. Ford could not continue to meet its legacy and debt obligations with a market share of 1%, could it? I don't remember hearing analysts in love with a Ford restructuring plan for many years now. That's because they have failed to deliver time after time and have a significant credibility problem.

[eddiehaskell]

Getting down to 10-12% is scary - could that be the breaking point where if vehicles don't start selling Ford would cease to exist?

[jpd80]

Getting down to 10-12% is scary - could that be the breaking point where if vehicles don't start selling Ford would cease to exist?

 

For those of us watching the carnage, how do we know when Ford bottoms out?

 

Please don't say when the cash runs out

Edited February 24, 2007 by jpd80

[Edstock]

Getting down to 10-12% is scary - could that be the breaking point where if vehicles don't start selling Ford would cease to exist?

 

In an absolute melt-down, Ford could become an import, I guess, for whatever dealers were left.

 

But that's not going to happen.

 

Why? Because Ford's latest product has more value to the consumer. Plus, the next 24-36 months will have more new product.

 

It's not perfect, as the retention of 4-speed automatics in the Focus and the Escape, while the competition moves to 5 and 6-speed automatics shows, but overall, Ford is moving in the right direction.

 

Compared to when Ford had the Contour and the oval Taurus with no fix in sight, and a Focus launch from Hell, things are working a lot better. You ain't seen nuthin', yet.

[Joe771476]

First, EVERY car in the employee parking lots at Ford should be Fords, Mercurys, Lincolns, Volvos, Jags etc. The employee must show their neighbors and relatives that they have pride and confidence in Ford-made/owned brands! Let me know when that has been achieved and I'll tell you the next step. By the way, if this is not achieved, you can kiss Ford and GM goodbye. It starts HERE!

[630land]

The biggest loss is the BOF trucks are way down from the 90's heyday, F-150 is down like 36%. SO, no it's not just because of loss of rental sales nor it is because they don't sell more BOF cars.

[J-150]

Market share is irrelevant...before jumping down my throat, let me explain. Ford has 100% of its own market today. meaning, that its current pricing, technology level, advertising etc..so to simply chase a number like 15%, or 20% is essentially having a goal but no strategy to get there. When some ford exec comes out and says our target is 20% or whatever, thats useless. whats more important is the roadmap to get there, but we rarely see the details of that. We just here "way forward" and "get back market share" and the analysts love it. at least until the next earnings report.

 

 

 

well said

[Noah Harbinger]

Market share is most certainly not irrelevant. Ford could not continue to meet its legacy and debt obligations with a market share of 1%, could it?

 

I have to agree with this. If Ford sells half as many cars, the various fixed costs - debt servicing, retirement, retiree health care - stay the same, but they are amortized over half as many vehicles, thus doubling legacy costs per vehicle.

Edited February 25, 2007 by Noah Harbinger

[Savetheplanet]

Goodbye Ford, don't let the door hit you in the ---

[NLPRacing]

Goodbye Ford, don't let the door hit you in the ---

 

Why would say that? Name a manufacture that does more for the environment then Ford? Who has more PZEV cars then Ford?

[RichardJensen]

Why would say that? Name a manufacture that does more for the environment then Ford? Who has more PZEV cars then Ford?

You silly monkey!

 

It's not that no other company does more.

 

It's that it's still not enough!

[NLPRacing]

You silly monkey!

 

It's not that no other company does more.

 

It's that it's still not enough!

 

Silly me...

[Savetheplanet]

Ford is fighting federal and state efforts to improve emissions standards and implement fuel efficiency market incentives.

Ford is supporting the filing of a federal lawsuit to overturn California's popular new vehicle emissions standards, the nation's first-ever law of any kind to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions linked to global warming and the most advanced automotive GHG reduction targets in the world

 

Ford lobbied to keep oil-reducing fuel efficiency standards out of the 2005 Energy Bill, and they won; the bill says it aims to end our dependence on foreign oil but doesn't require the automakers to lift a finger to help.

Ford has the worst greenhouse gas pollution performance of all the Big Six Automakers. (From Automaker Rankings 2004, a recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists)

The overall average fuel efficiency of Ford's fleet today is 19.3mpg, dead last among the major automakers according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Since the oil crisis of the 1970s, Ford has ranked worst in overall fuel efficiency of all major automakers for 20 out of the last 30 years.

From subcompacts to SUVs, Ford's current car and truck fleet gets fewer miles per gallon on average today than its Model-T did 80 years ago

The Dearborn Truck Plant may be an environmental dream, but the products coming out of it are an environmental nightmare. The palnt makes the gas-guzzling F-150 pickup trucks. Each of these vehicles generates an estimated 100 tons of atmospheric carbon during their lifetimes, and the plant builds some 280,000 trucks a year (U.S PIRG). Do the math: That's a quarter billion tons of carbon emissions rolling off the assembly line.

 

I could go on and on, but we have had this debate before. But just so you know, I hold the consumer more responsabile for GCC than the auto industry.

 

carry on

Edited February 25, 2007 by Savetheplanet

[RichardJensen]

Ford isn't fighting CARB. The Auto Manufacturers Alliance is.

 

There's a big difference there.

 

Oh, and so far only Honda has said they support moves to increase CAFE standards.

 

---

 

The rest of your rant is hopelessly one-sided, and it's twice as long as it should be. Why? Because the company with the worst aggregate fuel economy is, ipso facto, going to have the worst greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Unless you know of some way of burning hydrocarbons that DOESN'T lead to CO2 production.

 

---

 

Also, why aren't you more supportive of biofuel efforts that Ford has generously supported? Biofuel CO2 is not the same as 'fossil' fuel CO2.

 

In fact, burning biodiesel or ethanol returns less CO2 to the environment than the corn/soybean plants take in.

 

From an environmental standpoint, in fact, eating beef raised on corn is probably worse than driving an E85 vehicle.

Edited February 25, 2007 by RichardJensen

[Savetheplanet]

It seems to me that raising CAFE or a higher tax on oil would do more to sustain our planet than biofuels. Not everybody livres in the midwest, so you have to account for the shipping of the fuel, the cost of nitrate runoff(google the dead zone in the gulf of mexico), the cost increase for the poor ppl thruout the world for corn, like in Mexico, the damage to eycosytems from mono plant growing, and most important, water!

If water were a globally traded commodity, with unmet demand in China and India reflectted in its price, the world might shed its new-found craze for biofuels.

It is bad enough that some of us need ethanol distilled in Scotland to lubricate our evenings. Growing maize to make ethanol to run 4x4 vehicles is downright silly, nowhere more so than in China and India.

 

As many as 400 Chinnese cities are facing water shortages; farmers in the most populous nation are forgoing millions of tons of grain production every year. Per-capita availability of water is expected to shrink to alarming levels by 2030.

 

 

Wait, there is more--

 

 

How serious is the shortage?

"If China cannot solve the water problem, that could be the end of the story."

Amid this water scarcity, China has become the world's third-largest bio-ethanol producer after Brazil and the US, using kilolitres of water to irrigate each ton of maize, and then using more water to turn the maize into ethanol. What a waste.

In December, Beijing put controls on maize to ethanol projects so as not to lose more precious water to producing fuel at the expense of food.

The trade-off between water and biofuels may also be crucial for India. A sixth of India's food output is being supported by pumping groundwater, which is depleting rapidly. In the state of Tamil Nadu, more than a third of aquifers are overexploited, meaning the rate at which water is being extractd is more than the pace of recharge.

According to World Bank estimates, by 2050 demand for water in India will exceed all available supplies. India passed a law in May last year requiring petrol to be mixed with 5 percent ethanol. The saving grace, from the point of view of water conservation, is that India does not yet allow sugar cane juice to be converted directly into ethanol. Th fuel can only be produced from molasses, as a by-product of sugar.

 

Sugar cane growers, some of the biggest water guzzlers, are drraming of biofuel riches when the world, following Brazil's lead, moves to cars that run on both petrol and ethanol.

Just because there is not a global market in water, it doesn't mean the price of wasting it won't have to be paid. The adjustment will come in food prices. And it will be severe.

China and India will import more food. When two of the world's top three grain producers become importers, it will have a big impact on prices internationally.

 

Global wheat prices climbed to a 10 year high in October, partly because India resumed imports in February last year after a six year gap. Now there's a possibility that China may become a net importer of maize, the price of which rose to its highest levels in a decade in January, thanks to the biofuel frenzy.

Neither China nor India wants to contemplate a future without agriculture. The governments in both countries have an avowed preference for self-sufficiency in staple food. Chinese see falling grain output as a threat to national food security. The sentiment in India is the same.

 

The world is gasping with wonder at the fast-growing economies of China and India and betting that fossil fuels won't be enough to meet the burgeoning demand for energy.

Alarmed by the tripling of crude oil prices in five years, policy makers in Beijing and New Delhi have begun rooting for biofuels.

 

Ethanol plants in Minnesota use between 13.2 litres and 22.7 litres of water to produce 3.8 litres of ethanol from maize, says the state's Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

For the US as a whole, there will be a 254 percent increase in the volume of water used in ethanol production from 1998 to 2008, according to the institute. The US has plenty of water; the world as a whole doesn't.

 

Perhapss we will only know the true price of water only when corn syrup is more expensive than oil.

 

 

Also, if all the corn went over to ethanol it would meet only 12% of the US petrol demands, and if all soy went over to biodiesel it would meet only 6% of the US diesel demands. And then there wouldn't be any to eat.

 

 

 

Disclaimer----all of the above is just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

Edited February 25, 2007 by Savetheplanet

[RichardJensen]

Actually, you can skip the 'could be' part. In several areas you are wrong.

 

1) Nitrate pollution of groundwater and surface water in SD, as in most farming states is far from out of control. Google the destruction of the Louisiana delta before you blame the Gulf's dead zone strictly on nitrate runoff.

 

2) For years 3rd world governments have lobbied the WTO against U.S. ag subsidies. They feel that ag subsidies result in a flooded global market which drives down prices for their cash farmers.

 

3) There are few farmers in this country stupid enough to plant their acreage with corn year after year, despite the price, and despite better fertilizers, corn is still hard on the soil, and is rotated out by any farmer bent on keeping his land. The dangers of 'mono culture' exist independent of bio-fuel production anyway.

 

4) Consumption of expensive bottled water has caused spot shortages in places like India (dasani).

 

5) Water required for ethanol production largely returns to the environment---ethanol production doesn't USE water as anything other than a catalyst. Almost as much water exits a plant as enters it.

 

6) If India and China are unable to properly manage their resources, just what exactly is Ford (or the U.S.) supposed to do?

 

7) As far as ethanol (or diesel) being the SOLE source of fuel--that's ridiculous.

 

8) The U.S. aggregate fleet runs on about 5% ethanol right now, with roughly 20% of the nation's corn production going to ethanol. As far as the 'only meet 12%' figure, that's from a study that is pure nonsense, as it assumes that the nation's ethanol plants would continue to increase in number (at present rates) until they were using up 100% of annual corn production. As Wolfgang Pauli famously said, that's not right, it's not even wrong.

 

9) And regardless of what it's used for: arable land is going to be used.

Edited February 25, 2007 by RichardJensen

[triton-boy]

It seems to me that raising CAFE or a higher tax on oil would do more to sustain our planet than biofuels. Not everybody livres in the midwest, so you have to account for the shipping of the fuel, the cost of nitrate runoff(google the dead zone in the gulf of mexico), the cost increase for the poor ppl thruout the world for corn, like in Mexico, the damage to eycosytems from mono plant growing, and most important, water!

If water were a globally traded commodity, with unmet demand in China and India reflectted in its price, the world might shed its new-found craze for biofuels.

It is bad enough that some of us need ethanol distilled in Scotland to lubricate our evenings. Growing maize to make ethanol to run 4x4 vehicles is downright silly, nowhere more so than in China and India.

 

As many as 400 Chinnese cities are facing water shortages; farmers in the most populous nation are forgoing millions of tons of grain production every year. Per-capita availability of water is expected to shrink to alarming levels by 2030.

Wait, there is more--

How serious is the shortage?

"If China cannot solve the water problem, that could be the end of the story."

Amid this water scarcity, China has become the world's third-largest bio-ethanol producer after Brazil and the US, using kilolitres of water to irrigate each ton of maize, and then using more water to turn the maize into ethanol. What a waste.

In December, Beijing put controls on maize to ethanol projects so as not to lose more precious water to producing fuel at the expense of food.

The trade-off between water and biofuels may also be crucial for India. A sixth of India's food output is being supported by pumping groundwater, which is depleting rapidly. In the state of Tamil Nadu, more than a third of aquifers are overexploited, meaning the rate at which water is being extractd is more than the pace of recharge.

According to World Bank estimates, by 2050 demand for water in India will exceed all available supplies. India passed a law in May last year requiring petrol to be mixed with 5 percent ethanol. The saving grace, from the point of view of water conservation, is that India does not yet allow sugar cane juice to be converted directly into ethanol. Th fuel can only be produced from molasses, as a by-product of sugar.

 

Sugar cane growers, some of the biggest water guzzlers, are drraming of biofuel riches when the world, following Brazil's lead, moves to cars that run on both petrol and ethanol.

Just because there is not a global market in water, it doesn't mean the price of wasting it won't have to be paid. The adjustment will come in food prices. And it will be severe.

China and India will import more food. When two of the world's top three grain producers become importers, it will have a big impact on prices internationally.

 

Global wheat prices climbed to a 10 year high in October, partly because India resumed imports in February last year after a six year gap. Now there's a possibility that China may become a net importer of maize, the price of which rose to its highest levels in a decade in January, thanks to the biofuel frenzy.

Neither China nor India wants to contemplate a future without agriculture. The governments in both countries have an avowed preference for self-sufficiency in staple food. Chinese see falling grain output as a threat to national food security. The sentiment in India is the same.

 

The world is gasping with wonder at the fast-growing economies of China and India and betting that fossil fuels won't be enough to meet the burgeoning demand for energy.

Alarmed by the tripling of crude oil prices in five years, policy makers in Beijing and New Delhi have begun rooting for biofuels.

 

Ethanol plants in Minnesota use between 13.2 litres and 22.7 litres of water to produce 3.8 litres of ethanol from maize, says the state's Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

For the US as a whole, there will be a 254 percent increase in the volume of water used in ethanol production from 1998 to 2008, according to the institute. The US has plenty of water; the world as a whole doesn't.

 

Perhapss we will only know the true price of water only when corn syrup is more expensive than oil.

Also, if all the corn went over to ethanol it would meet only 12% of the US petrol demands, and if all soy went over to biodiesel it would meet only 6% of the US diesel demands. And then there wouldn't be any to eat.

Disclaimer----all of the above is just my opinion, and I could be wrong.this is funny mexico and china hurting yet there own countries dont have enviromental or human right laws,treat there people like crap and iam suppost to worry and feel guilty???????give your head a shake and smell the roses.........why are all these liberals fanatics???

[Savetheplanet]

In the United States more public water supplies have been closed due to the violation of drinking water standards for nitrate than from any other contaminant. Presently, groundwater in the United States is utilized approximately four times fasterr than it is naturally replaced.The public pays at least $200 million per year to protect infants from nitrate pollution in drinking water, by digging new wells, blending contaminated water with cleaner water, or paying for expensive treatment facilities.

So nitrate pollution is a problem.

 

Irrigation of crops is a huge problem!

The entire Colorado River basin has been appropriated, mostly for irrigation. The Colorado no longer flows to Mexico’s sea of Cortez.

The Ogalalla (sp?)Aquifer, which is under a few states, is nearly gone. So it's not just China and India that can't manage their resources.I googled the Lou. Delta, dosn't look like we managed that one very well. I could give many examples of the US being poor stewards of our land but I will spare you.

 

 

 

Irrigation takes up 70% of the freshwater used by humans.

This is a modern phenomenon. During the last 40 years irrigated acreage in the world has doubled.

Modern farming dewaters the rest of the land.

Like esturies, gulfs, rivers, lakes, and the atmosphere itself. We no longer grow crops just on the land, we have plowed up the biosphere.

 

I went to Ford's website and read their environmental statement, like a lot of companies these day's, I feel that they just want to appear "green" for the consumer. Their main concern is for the share holders. I don't have a problem with making a profit, but at who's expense? Ford has vehicles that get great mpg. almost all of them are not sold in NA.

 

As far as me supporting biofuels and ethanol, I feel that the dammage it takes to create them is not worth it.You pointed out that-- "burning biodiesel or ethanol returns less CO2 to the environment than the corn/soybean plants take in"-- You left out the hidden cost of producing them.

 

 

Hidden cost-----

Throughout most of recorded history, the indirect costs of economic activity were so small that they were rarely an issue and, even then, only at the local level. But wit the sevenfold global economic expansion since 1950, the failure to address these market shortcomings and the irrational economic distortions they create could be fatal. It is also something that has been proposed by ecologists and economists alike, and, when real costs are included in the pricing of goods, it is the greener, alternative energy sources - like wind, solar, and geothermal - that emerge as the cheapest, most viable solutions to our current model.

A new system of accounting is becoming more popular, this is not the old Keynes system you learned back in the day. That system was precise in it's ability to account for capitol goods, it was inprecise in it's ability to acccount for natural and human resources.

Keyne's national accounts are directly affecting a company's ability to generate revenues, manage risks, and sustain competitive advantage

 

The notion of taxing products to include their entire cost to society is something that is being put into practice here in the United States in the form of tobacco taxes.

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States calculated the social costs of smoking cigarettes at $7.18 per pack. As a result, prices for cigarettes in many states across the country are rising toward this number - a result of increased taxes intended to offset the social costs.

 

When it comes to energy, the International Center for Technology Assessment has done a detailed analysis, entitled "The Real Price of Gasoline." The group calculates several indirect costs, including oil industry tax breaks, oil supply protection costs, oil industry subsidies, and health care costs of treating auto exhaust-related respiratory illnesses. The total of these indirect costs centers around $9 per gallon, somewhat higher than the social cost of smoking a pack of cigarettes. Add this external or social cost to the roughly $2 per gallon average price of gasoline in the United States in early 2005, and gas would cost $11 a gallon (this does not include projected costs of climate change). These costs are real; someone bears them.

Now I don't know if I really believe the $11 a gallon figure, but you get the idea.

 

Our modern economic prosperity is achieved in part by running up "ecological deficits", costs that do not show up on the books, but costs that someone will eventually pay. including shrinking forests, expanding deserts, falling water tables, eroding soils, collapsing fisheries, rising temperatures, melting ice, rising seas, and increasingly destructive storms

We need to ween ourselves off these mono crops, which WAS slowly happening until the price of oil went up awhile back, now corn is in great demand.

Corn is part of a family of "annual catastorphe colonizing plants".

Which means they only grow in nature after a catastorphe such as a flood.

most of their power is in the seeds not in the roots,the seeds last for years in the graound waithing for another flood.

corn can not compete with normal plants,corn is a short term plant.

 

Once the colonizers gain a foothold and provid shade and cover and organic matter in the soil,a more permanent community of plants dominated by PERENNIALS develops.

The colonizing annual's stratagy in investing its energy in seed does not pay off in the mature community,because there is no unocupied ground in which it can grow.

The strategy dissappears in the mature communities.

Loss of biodiversity, pesticide pollution Nitrogen pollution, soil depletion, erosion, siltation, desertification, salinization, the list goes on. I point all this out because the DOE new policy is to promote Ethonal, and Ford's move towrad Etonal and bio-fuels requires more mega farming of corn and soybeans. Granted, most of the arable land in the US is used up for farming, but it promote more farmers around the US, and around the world to grow more of these crops when we should be trying diversify our crops.

One issue most democrats and republicans is to discontinue some of the farm subsides, somehow this never happens.

After 1972 when farmers committed to a mono crop, the U.S. made farmers and the population even more dependent on mono crops by subsidizing wheat and corn to try and balance trade.

Farming today is Capitol intensive, not labor intensive.

These subsides have converted American agriculture to one big commodity factory.

Corn our biggest crop, 42% of processed corn goes to swetners, mostly high fructose corn syrup, the food of the poor!!

With subsidies, farmers worldwide operate in an economic never-never land, where governments escalate subsidies and other protectionist measures as sort of a arms race, a system that has taken on a logic of it's own.

I am sure some will holler about foreign competition and preserving family farms from farm bill to farm bill, but the very existence of the subsidy means that the market values that extra bushel of corn at less than what it costs to produce it.

Farming has evolved its own inertia.

 

Two thirds of the corn grown in the U.S. goes to cattle. America's northeast was once U.S. agriculture's major force, the northeast now does very little farming.

Unlike the western grasslands the northeast gets rain, enough to grow crops. The decline in the N.E. faming came from one form of subsidy, Federal irrigation projects.

But we are all corn fed now, we eat identical products off identical trucks at identical strip malls coast to coast.?

 

So no, I don't support the whole ethanol/ Bio-fuel surge from corn, soybeans, chicken grease, etc. The hidden cost is tooooo high.

 

It really would be cool if Ford made some majot effort to improve mpg. and not just talk about it. If not for the planet, (and when I say planet I really mean our children) then they should do it for their own future. Because you do know that CAFE is bound to increase, just as the price of oil will this summer, throw in a little mideast crissis and Ford with thier 19ft. Navigator is in trouble.

 

I do like their change a lightbulb campaign though

http://media.ford.com/newsroom/release_dis...m?release=24503

Edited February 25, 2007 by Savetheplanet