Morningstar

Ford Doing What it Takes to Stay Competitive

The auto maker's management is doing the right thing by investing for a future focused on selling vehicles as well as selling miles, even if it means some losses for the next few years.

Securities In This Article
Ford Motor Co
(F)

We are not changing our fair value estimate for Ford after an informative analyst day we attended at

We think management is doing the right thing by investing for a future focused on selling vehicles as well as selling miles, even if it means some losses for the next few years. The world is moving to more electrified and autonomous vehicles, and Ford needs to remain competitive. Autonomous is especially interesting to us, especially with Ford in August stepping out among automakers to say it will have a Level 4 autonomous vehicle with no pedals or steering wheel, selling over 100,000 units to fleet customers by 2021 and autonomous sales to consumers by 2025. Ford sees autonomous vehicles as 20% of U.S. industry sales in 2030 and these vehicles constituting 10% of U.S. miles traveled by then, up from about 2%-3% in 2025. Chariot and bike sharing are about data collection for routes in dense cities.

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About the Author

David Whiston, CFA, CPA, CFE

Strategist
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David Whiston, CFA, CPA, CFE, is a strategist, AM Industrials, for Morningstar*. He covers stocks in the automotive industry, including dealerships, parts manufacturers, and automakers. He has covered the automotive industry since joining Morningstar in 2007. He writes stock reports, ad hoc reports, stock analyst notes, and builds discounted cash flow models for each company covered. He also assesses their economic moat and makes frequent television and print media appearances in local, national, and international news outlets. Key stocks covered include GM, Ford, CarMax, and all six publicly traded franchise auto dealers, such as AutoNation and Penske Automotive Group.

Before joining Morningstar in 2007, Whiston spent four years in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ New York real estate audit practice and one year in its Chicago office working on real estate acquisition due diligence, gaining experience around assessing an asset’s cash flow.

Whiston holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting from the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business. He also holds a master’s degree in business administration with concentrations in finance, economics, and organizational behavior from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation, and he is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Fraud Examiner.

In 2012, he ranked first in the specialty retailers and services industry in The Wall Street Journal’s annual “Best on the Street” analysts survey. He ranked first in the same industry in 2011 .

* Morningstar Research Services LLC (“Morningstar”) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc

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