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2020 Q4 and full year U.S. sales results for Ford


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https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North America/US/2021/01/06/ford-sales-release-dec2020.pdf

 

Quote

"Truck Customers Make F-Series America’s Best-Selling Pickup For 44 Straight Years; Ford Brand Achieves 11 Straight Years as America’s Best-Selling Brand; Ford Explorer Claims Top Spot in 2020; Luxury Customers Propel Lincoln SUVs to Highest Sales in 17 Years"

 

Though F-Series was the best-selling pickup model for calendar year 2020, Ford lost its position as the automaker selling the most pickup trucks overall to GM. GM's lead for calendar year 2020 was just under 80,000 units.

Edited by rperez817
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Not a good quarter no matter what the reason. Lincoln down even with two new CUVs. Just again and again shows how dependent Ford is on F-Series for a good month or quarter. Bronco can't come soon enough as another iconic nameplate that Ford can depend on for consistent sales numbers and profits. 

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9 minutes ago, FordBuyer said:

Not a good quarter no matter what the reason. Lincoln down even with two new CUVs. Just again and again shows how dependent Ford is on F-Series for a good month or quarter. Bronco can't come soon enough as another iconic nameplate that Ford can depend on for consistent sales numbers and profits. 

 

Yes sir FordBuyer, it's unfortunate that Ford could not achieve a sales increase in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019 like both its U.S. domestic competitors, GM and Tesla, did. 

 

Hopefully 2021 will be the year in which Ford finally gets "fit".

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11 minutes ago, FordBuyer said:

Not a good quarter no matter what the reason. Lincoln down even with two new CUVs. Just again and again shows how dependent Ford is on F-Series for a good month or quarter. Bronco can't come soon enough as another iconic nameplate that Ford can depend on for consistent sales numbers and profits. 

 

You shouldn't look at MKT, MKZ or Continental since those are discontinued.

 

Looking at Corsair/Nautilus/Aviator/Navigator for the quarter you have 27,062 vs 27,155 a year ago.   That's not great but it's not bad either.  Nautilus refresh and Corsair GT should help considerably.

 

The real key will be profits not sales volume.  This year they'll be adding Mach-E, Bronco Sport, Bronco and either late this year or next year Maverick which will be mostly if not all incremental volume and profits and they look to be in decent shape.

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1 minute ago, rperez817 said:

 

Yes sir FordBuyer, it's unfortunate that Ford could not achieve a sales increase in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019 like both its U.S. domestic competitors, GM and Tesla, did.

 

Keeping a sales increase would have been easy - just keep Fusion, MKZ, Fiesta and import Focus and don't refresh F150.  They would have lost more money but hey look at that sales volume!

 

2020 is a transition year where they lost old products before the new ones launch.  2021 will show us if they made the right decisions in 2020.

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32 minutes ago, akirby said:

The real key will be profits not sales volume.  This year they'll be adding Mach-E, Bronco Sport, Bronco and either late this year or next year Maverick which will be mostly if not all incremental volume and profits and they look to be in decent shape.

 

While the ideal situation for Ford would be both increased profits and increased sales volume, improved profitability should be the higher priority. And it looks like Ford is on track for that. The link in the original post indicates that fleet sales (which are low or no profit) declined much more than retail sales. That's good news for sure.

 

 

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1 hour ago, FordBuyer said:

Not a good quarter no matter what the reason. Lincoln down even with two new CUVs. Just again and again shows how dependent Ford is on F-Series for a good month or quarter. Bronco can't come soon enough as another iconic nameplate that Ford can depend on for consistent sales numbers and profits. 

 

Lincoln's numbers (like Ford's that matter) are heavily skewed because of discontinued products.  Ford has 5 and Lincoln has 3 (of 7).

 

Looking at Lincoln specifically, if you ignore MKZ, Continental, and MKT (because that's what the lineup will be going forward), here's what you have.  A 93 unit drop for the month, and a 2,796 unit gain for the year.  Considering the circumstances of this year, I'd consider that pretty good.  Not great, of course, but I think they'll take it.  Not to mention they're selling 2-3 times MKT's sales for the YEAR each month with Aviator, at higher prices.

 

image.thumb.png.f7497dec88548d0825349971de485b4e.png

 

As I suspected, Nautilus is getting sandwiched by the better/newer Aviator above and Corsair below.  The new interior will help Nautilus surely, but I'm not quite as bullish on it as akirby is (my concern is whether enough people will notice the inside was revised since the exterior wasn't changed much), though would be happy to be proven wrong.

 

Navigator is also approaching its refresh, which I imagine we'll see sometime this year.

Edited by rmc523
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1 hour ago, rperez817 said:

 

Yes sir FordBuyer, it's unfortunate that Ford could not achieve a sales increase in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019 like both its U.S. domestic competitors, GM and Tesla, did. 

 

Hopefully 2021 will be the year in which Ford finally gets "fit".

Wasn’t there a strike in 2019 that impacted GM’s 4th quarter sales?

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45 minutes ago, rperez817 said:

 

While the ideal situation for Ford would be both increased profits and increased sales volume, improved profitability should be the higher priority. And it looks like Ford is on track for that. The link in the original post indicates that fleet sales (which are low or no profit) declined much more than retail sales. That's good news for sure.

 

The way to grow both sales volume and profits are with great vehicles in new market segments like Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mach-E and Maverick.

 

Fleet sales are down mainly because fleet buyers have scaled back due to the pandemic, although discontinuing Focus and Fusion probably contributed some.  Ford is still dependent on good profitable fleet sales.

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20 minutes ago, rmc523 said:

As I suspected, Nautilus is getting sandwiched by the better/newer Aviator above and Corsair below.  The new interior will help Nautilus surely, but I'm not quite as bullish on it as akirby is (my concern is whether enough people will notice the inside was revised since the exterior wasn't changed much), though would be happy to be proven wrong.

 

I'm starting to think Nautilus is in limbo where the Corsair is almost the same size ( I sat in them back to back and there isn't a huge difference) and a base Aviator is more appealing for a lot of buyers especially when Nautilus doesn't offer a hybrid.

 

I think a cheaper SWB 2 row Aviator with regular hybrid options for better MPG at a lower price point than the Aviator GT would work just as well.   This is probably why they're looking at other options for the next Gen.   Edge is probably in the same boat.

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10 minutes ago, akirby said:

 

The way to grow both sales volume and profits are with great vehicles in new market segments like Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mach-E and Maverick.

 

Fleet sales are down mainly because fleet buyers have scaled back due to the pandemic, although discontinuing Focus and Fusion probably contributed some.  Ford is still dependent on good profitable fleet sales.

 

That makes me optimistic that 2021 will be a turnaround year at Ford, when both sales and profitability improve.

 

Regarding fleet sales, if Ford can get fleet sales percentage to approximately 12% or less of total sales for non-commercial vehicles (which may already be the case), they should be in good shape.

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1 hour ago, rperez817 said:

 

While the ideal situation for Ford would be both increased profits and increased sales volume, improved profitability should be the higher priority. And it looks like Ford is on track for that. The link in the original post indicates that fleet sales (which are low or no profit) declined much more than retail sales. That's good news for sure.

 

 

How about building high quality cars and trucks. Then the sales will come. Until they do that it will be the same old same old.

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4 hours ago, fuzzymoomoo said:


They've already reported to be operating at nearly 10% margin, which is already a HUGE margin in this industry. There's no way they can get any higher than that. 


I don’t think it was at 10%.  Do you have a source?

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25 minutes ago, fuzzymoomoo said:


we were both wrong, it's 12.5% operating margin as of October 2020. 

 

https://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2020/10/ford-turns-2-4-billion-net-profit-for-q3-2020/


That was only in North America and it’s the adjusted basis - not sure what was adjusted.  Overall it was a lot lower.  And I think Q3 was an anomaly with a lot of makeup sales from Q2.  They also said Q4 was going to be a lot worse.  Let’s see where they end up for the entire year.  It won’t be above 10% but it may be a lot higher than I expected.

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16 hours ago, CurtisH said:

I believe Tacoma sales were over 200,000 for the year.  The Ranger won’t get close to that. 

 

It was 239k so Ranger is not going to catch Tacoma in 2021. Won't even come close.

 

Also, it's official, Toyota outsold Ford in the US. Ford is now #3 in its home market.

 

Toyota 2,112,941 vs. Ford 2,044,744 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Trailhiker said:

 

Ford is still the best selling vehicle brand, beating the Toyota brand by 100K sales.

 

Ford brand beat Toyota brand by 207k: 2,045k vs. 1,838k, down significantly from 2019 when Ford beat Toyota by 338k.

 

 

The real difference in 2020 is Lexus vs. Lincoln: 275k vs. 105k

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2 hours ago, bzcat said:

 

It was 239k so Ranger is not going to catch Tacoma in 2021. Won't even come close.

 

Also, it's official, Toyota outsold Ford in the US. Ford is now #3 in its home market.

 

Toyota 2,112,941 vs. Ford 2,044,744 

 

 

 Page-1.png

Their Cuv/SUV market weathered the covid storm this year, but I'm shocked their car lineup is such a dumpster fire!

Edited by atomcat68
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