Bloomberg article says GM is ahead of Ford re Costcutting

[fuzzymoomoo]

39 minutes ago, theoldwizard said:

What is bothering "analysts" about Ford is they still have not seen a "clear plan forward" from Hackett !  Like, why is Ford buying bicycle and scooter companies ?

That, and they realize, that even though Hackett is the CEO, Billy is still the Chairman of the Board.  Over 1 BILLION $ committed to the R&E re-build (two new buildings related to this have been "thrown in" since it that was announced; a computing center behind the current FMCC/WHQ building and another computing center on the campus of the Flat Rock plant).  Related to the R&E rebuild, they have gotten the city (county?) to spend hundreds of million on infrastructure (water, sewer, roads, etc.) around R&E.  (Oakwood has been ripped up for about 1 year.)

Then Billy buys the train station (to leave his personal stamp/legacy in Detroit) with a close to another BILLION $ required to make it really usable.  Medium/long term cash flow is a serious issue !

I can tell you first hand they haven't had to do a lot of infrastructure around the new building in Flat Rock. There is a few sections torn up on the road behind it where I assume new water and sewage mains are going in (on top of them needing replacement anyway). They just repaved Gibraltar Road between I-75 and the plant entrance last summer which was desperately needed, but they need to completely rebuild it between the plant entrance all the way about a mile west of there, and Vreeland road needs to be completely torn up and rebuilt from I-75 and the grade crossing at CN Flat Rock hard. The trucks heading in and out of the plant have absolutely destroyed both roads and it's about a decade overdue. 

[mackinaw]

Of more concern is the money pit called Europe.  From a Morgan Stanley:

"We estimate a large portion of Ford’s restructuring actions will be focused on Ford Europe, a business we currently value at negative $7 billion," Jonas wrote. "But we also expect a significant restructuring effort in North America, involving significant numbers of both salaried and hourly UAW and CAW workers."

If the seven billion dollar number is true, that's a staggering amount of money.  Europe and South America are Ford's biggest problems, not NA.

[theoldwizard]

22 hours ago, mackinaw said:

If the seven billion dollar number is true, that's a staggering amount of money.  Europe and South America are Ford's biggest problems, not NA.

It has been that way for over 50 years !  Take the total profits of Ford "Rest of World" for the past 50 years.  I'll bet it is less than a couple of billion.