LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — As usual, Louisville-made F-Series Super Duty pickups are carrying the load for Ford Motor Co.
Ford’s six-figure, gas guzzling trucks helped deliver fat profits in its commercial customer division in the first quarter, as the automaker scrambles to stem the bleeding in its nascent electric vehicle division while ramping up its gas-electric hybrid options.
Sales of the latest-version Super Duty that Ford began making last year at Kentucky Truck Plant helped Ford’s commercial division, Ford Pro, post a 36% gain in revenue and a doubling of operating income in the first quarter of 2024, the Dearborn, Michigan company reported Wednesday.
Ford Pro sells big pickups and commercial vans, including Ford’s EV transit van, to fleet customers such as governments, small businesses and corporations. Those buyers use the vehicles to build roads, upgrade cellular infrastructure and operate ambulance fleets, Ford CEO Jim Farley said.
Farley said Ford is “oversubscribed” by a 2-to-1 margin in terms of Ford Pro customer demand for Super Duty pickups.
“I wish I could say we got that right. We didn't, but we are expanding capacity,” Farley said on the company’s quarterly earnings call Wednesday.
At Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, workers churned out just shy of 95,000 Super Duty pickups in the January-March quarter, the most for that period in five years, according to company production figures tracked by WDRB News.
All told, Ford posted net income of $1.3 billion, down from $1.7 billion a year earlier, on revenue of about $43 billion during the first quarter.
The operating income in Ford Pro as well as in Ford Blue, the company’s gas car segment, helped offset a loss of $1.3 billion in Ford’s EV division.
Ford gave no indication during Wednesday's call that the company is ready to move forward with EV plans that have been delayed — for example, the second of the two BlueOval SK battery plants being built in Glendale, Ky.
In fact, Ford Chief Financial Officer Jim Lawler said the company is tightening its projected capital spending for 2024.
Ford executives have said its EV business must eventually generate profits, even excluding benefits the company receives toward vehicle emissions standards from selling EVs. For now, the company expects to lose $5 billion on EVs in 2024.
“I think that is the main drag on the company right now, as it will be for our whole industry,” Farley said Wednesday.
Lawler, Ford’s CFO, said the company has made progress wringing costs from its EV production, but those gains have been wiped out by plunging prices for electric cars.
“The last 12 to 18 months, it’s just been a continuous march down on the top line, which is offsetting any of the savings we've had,” he said.
Ford is targeting profitability in its “second generation” of EVs that will be introduced in the next couple of years. That’s partly why the company recently pushed back a planned three-row electric SUV to 2027, Lawler said.
“We need more cost to come out of that (SUV) for that to be at the margin levels we expect,” he said.
