Ford Cuts Earnings Outlook; Announces More Reductions
21 June 2005
Ford Motor today cut its outlook for earnings this year and indicated it planned further job cuts to offset slumping sales in North America.
The Company reduced its expectation for 2005 full-year earnings to a range of $1.00 to $1.25 per share, down from April’s revised guidance of $1.25 to $1.50 per share, each excluding special items and discontinued operations. The April figures were a reduction from the original expectations of $1.75 to $1.95 per share.
That is, to take the extremes of $1.00 and $1.95, a potential hit on earnings of 49%.
In partial response to its financial situation, Ford announced:
A 5% reduction in salaried positions in Ford’s North America operations by October 1, 2005 and a 10% reduction in the operation’s use of agency and purchased services by July 1, 2005. This is in addition to the elimination of about 1,000 salaried positions in April.
The elimination of 2005 bonuses for salaried management employees worldwide.
The suspension of the Company’s 401(k) matching grant for salaried employees, effective July 1, 2005.
One of the excluded special items from the guidance above is Ford’s projected 2005 investment in fuel cell technologies, which will trim another full $0.05 from earnings per share—or in the range of $97.6 million for the full year.
As long as the government continues to stymie innovation by not forcing these companies' hands via increased CAFE standards, we'll continue to see US Auto decline, losing share to the Far East.
H2 is a pipe dream at this point. With all the talk of ethanol lately, a bio-based diesel plug-in hybrid seems like the mid-range solution at this point. Why expend the energy to convert to H2 and back to electricity rather than just transmitting the electricity over the grid?
Posted by: Joe Adiletta | 22 June 2005 at 05:35 AM
"Freedom from Oil"
Hey everybody,
please have a look at http://www.freedomfromoil.com, a campaign set off by a number of US-environmental groups to call on Ford Motor Company to lead the development of reliable LEV's and ZEV by 2020.
Please sign Declaration of Independence from Oil.
Posted by: Flo | 27 June 2005 at 02:52 PM
Now if Ford would only bring in the following:
(It looks neat)
Have any of you seen the EU Ford Focus. It is a 2.1 ton FORD Focus 4 door Estate wagon, 1.6l Duratorg TDCi diesel, that gets a combined 50 mpg (US) emissions rated Euro Step IV. The only problem is that it is not available in North America. It should be noted that the domestic gasoline “green” (California) equivalent gets 26 mpg(US).
Reference:
http://www.ford.co.uk/ie/foc_c307/-/-
and http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/focus/features/specs/#per
Posted by: FHS | 14 August 2005 at 08:34 AM