Today marked a big day for legacy automaker Ford (F), as its CEO, Jim Farley, celebrated five years with the company. A lot of changes came with that legacy, and several of them have been quite positive. Ford investors seem pretty happy as well, and sent Ford shares gaining over 2% in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
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Farley has been working diligently to improve Ford’s capital efficiency, as well as improve quality in production, which has been a bit hit-or-miss of late, judging by how many news items about recalls we have covered right here. Throw in fundamental shifts to the industry itself—fuel efficiency changes, supply chain problems, tariffs, and more—and things are getting tough to manage.
But Farley, though he notes there were “…certainly a lot of surprises,” is eager to carry on. The No Boring Cars principle certainly seems to be running at full-tilt, even if the lack of some boring cars is starting to be felt by the broader market. Farley wants to further improve Ford’s capital efficiency, improving margins beyond 4% or 5%, and making the company less susceptible to economic cycles.
How a Card Game Changed the Expedition
Meanwhile, in keeping with that No Boring Cars credo, new reports came out about the Ford Expedition, and how a card game turned into one of the biggest changes to the product line. The Ford Expedition now includes flood lighting, reports note, in four zones—front, back, left side and right side—and all of that came about because engineers wanted to be sure that they could carry on a game of cards with that lighting.
In fact, reports note, that was the key metric. Rather than going with lumens to measure brightness, the team played cards with the zone lights for illumination. If the card game was difficult to follow, reports note, they increased the brightness on the zone lighting.
Is Ford Stock a Good Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on F stock based on three Buys, eight Holds and three Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 14.12% rally in its share price over the past year, the average F price target of $10.84 per share implies 11.33% downside risk.
