Ford expects lower profit in 2017
DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. said Wednesday a plan to embrace “mobility” and spend billions on electric and autonomous vehicles will hurt its bottom line in the short term but lead to frothier profit margins in the future.
Ford said profit from its core business of selling cars and trucks will improve over the next three years. But its ambitious plan to invest in emerging businesses will dampen pretax profit next year before it rebounds in 2018.
The maker of the best-selling F-150 pickup truck and the iconic Mustang muscle car has said it will invest $4.5 billion to bring 13 new electric and hybrid vehicles to market by 2020. Ford has also promised to put a fully autonomous vehicle into ride-hailing or car-sharing fleets by 2021.
“We are making choices: Where to play, where not to play and how we’re going to win,” Ford CEO Mark Fields told investors and Wall Street analysts who gathered at the company’s headquarters for a day-long presentation.
Fields said Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford has a unique opportunity to remake its business at a time when it’s healthy and profitable.
“Usually when we had to do it, our backs were up against the hot pipes and we were in crisis,” Fields said.
The company recently bought Chariot, a crowdsourced shuttle service in San Francisco, and is partnering with bike-share company Motivate. It’s also investing in companies that make sensors and maps for autonomous cars.
Ford says 30 vehicles are sold each minute in the U.S., but 9 million miles are traveled. If people want to travel by autonomous taxi or shared rides, Ford wants to provide the cars, the service or both. The company believes autonomous cars could make up 20 percent of global vehicle sales by 2030.
“This is very different thinking for us. For years, we have thought about the thing and how many things we sold,” Fields said.
Ford is projecting an adjusted pretax profit of $10.2 billion this year, lower than the record $10.8 billion it booked last year. The deficit is largely due to a recall of 2.4 million vehicles for defective door latches that will cost Ford $640 million.