Automaker Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) made headlines on Thursday after reaching a market capitalization of over $100 billion for the first time in its history.
After hitting a 20-year high of $25.87, shares of the company ended the day up 2.3% at $25.02 on Thursday.
Investors seem to be optimistic about Ford CEO Jim Farley’s aggressive electrification strategy. Ford shares have performed well over the past year, increasing in value by 155.8%.
Ford Motor is a global automobile company and is the third-largest car manufacturer in the United States. The company is engaged in designing, manufacturing, and selling cars, trucks, and automobile parts.
EV Push
Flooded with reservations for its new electric version of the hugely popular F-150 Lightning pickup truck, Ford recently revealed its plans to double production to 150,000 trucks annually.
Along with ramping up production of the Lightning, Ford plans to triple Mustang Mach-E (electric version of Mustang sports car) production and expects to reach over 200,000 units per year by 2023. Also, Ford’s all-electric van, the 2022 E-Transit, will be available for sale early this year.
In a recent release, Ford committed to invest over $30 billion in electric vehicles through 2025. Over the next two years, the automaker aims to build up its global capacity with huge investments in battery and electric vehicle manufacturing to produce 600,000 electric vehicles annually.
Markedly, Ford will also modernize some of its auto production facilities, with a total investment of $11.4 billion.
Peers
Ford has performed well recently and is among the top-rated EV stocks on TipRanks. With the new milestone achieved, Ford’s market cap surpassed those of both General Motors (GM) and electric vehicle start-up Rivian Automotive (RIVN), which are valued at approximately $90 billion and $72 billion, respectively. Meanwhile, Ford continues to lag behind Tesla (TSLA), which has a market cap of over $1 trillion.
Wall Street’s Take
Yesterday, Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner maintained a Hold rating on Ford but raised the price target to $24 (4.08% downside potential) from $18.
Rosner said, “We see room for Ford’s fourth quarter performance to come in above consensus expectations, based on continued strong pricing offsetting growing raw materials headwinds.”
The rest of the Street is cautiously optimistic about the stock, with a Moderate Buy consensus rating based on 11 Buys, 5 Holds, and 3 Sells. The average Ford price target of $22.22 implies 11.2% downside potential.
Website Traffic
TipRanks’ Website Traffic Tool, which uses data from SEMrush Holdings (NYSE: SEMR), the world’s biggest website usage monitoring service, offers insight into Ford’s performance this quarter.
According to the tool, the Ford website recorded a 1.62% increase in global visits in December compared to the same period last year. Also, year-to-date website traffic growth stands at 10.7%.
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