Ford Returns to Monthly Sales Reporting
Over the last few years, the brunt of the automotive industry gradually swapped to quarterly sales reporting. This includes Ford Motor Co., which claimed ditching the monthly model helped smooth out variances caused by fleet orders. Most automakers gave similar answers, suggesting quarterly updates would actually paint a more accurate picture of their overall health — likely hoping this would discourage investors from being scared away during a particularly rough month.
But Ford has reportedly had a change of heart and is moving back to monthly updates. While we’re happy to see it bucking the trend, it’s curious to see any automaker doing so while the industry is so vulnerable to anomalies created by government lockdowns.
“My commitment to each of you is transparency, including purposeful, measurable key performance indicators so you can objectively track our progress,” Farley told market analysts late last month.
Unfortunately, Ford’s U.S. sales fell 6.1 percent in October vs the same period in 2019. But some of that can be attributed to retooling facilities for the F-Series pickup, which remains the company’s best-selling model. Truck sales were extremely healthy for the brand prior to October, especially compared to sedans (which Ford has intentionally been moving away from) and a noteworthy decline in van sales — the latter of which saw a 24 percent drop in October.
It’s not a great showing for the company when the industry as a whole enjoyed a slight 0.9-percent uptick in volume from a year earlier. But we now have more context as to why Ford’s numbers could have been better. More importantly for the company, so do investors.
While Honda, Hyundai/Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Toyota, and Volvo have been rocking monthly reports through 2020, the rest of the industry is running quarterly updates and none seemed interested in changing after we asked. But these kinds of things have a way of catching on. Ford wasn’t the first company to swap to quarterly reports in 2019. It was just following General Motors as the industry jumped onto a new trend. Maybe going back to monthlies will become the next industrial craze after rivals realize everyone now likes Ford a little more for having blazed the trail back toward genuine transparency.
[Image: Image: Ford Motor Co.]
A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.
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Very interesting. Seems like we know the mission of Farley....make wallstreet happy. Hackett did such a good job of not having a plan and not delivering results. The stock price reflects that. Thing is tho Jimbo, a better route to take would be to look at making quality vehicles. Manufacturing junk and then reporting monthly how much junk you sold isn’t going to get you far. Fix your major quality issues that are prevalent across your entire company, stop wasting money on the train station and buyers will come back and wall street will be happy. It’s pretty simple
he has made a number of moves that are positive. could we finally have a leader at Ford that gets it?