Thread regarding Ford layoffs

@1aww+1hLeeQ3D The family sits Bill down and says- Listen dear this has gone on far too long, change is required. Show us your plan to fix this or extend an offer for our shares. Then bye-bye Farley, bye-bye all the pipe-dream projects, hello austerity and hello new leadership.

@1uvb+1hLeeQ3D

Well put! And what happens to a 100-year old company now that is chasing that stock price? It dismantles itself?

A number of factors: over ambitious diversification and internationalization, a decline in product quality and reliability, miscalculation of the marketplace for high end (or perhaps more aptly put, high priced) vehicles, assumption of massive debt and year to year red ink in some divisions, adoption of creative accounting and valuations to transform red ink to black ink all played a role. Perhaps it can all be summed up as a company that went from putting product quality first to one that put short-term profits and executive compensation first.

The stock market used to reward profitability. It was a pretty simple equation...if you were able to beat Wall Street earnings estimates your stock price was rewarded. The downside of this was that it rewarded short-term thinking and profitability (GE failed by cooking their revenues to show short term profitability), but the model was fairly stable and predictable.

Ever since the tech bo-m Wall Street now rewards only the potential for growth. And not just slow, steady growth but "exponential growth." They are all looking to get in early on the next Facebook, Apple or Google. So instead of investing in stable blue chip stocks the large funds all spread their bets around on companies that can't turn a profit but have lofty goals of "disrupting" their industry. That's how Tesla became more valuable than every other OEM combined despite puny volume and years of losses.

Here's another one: Ford must do the bidding of the woke global EV push to put all people in a govt. controlled electric surveillance pod. . ... you know - for your safety and to ensure you are tuned into the correct information. This may not be a problem if Ford were planning on pivoting back to ICE if ever free of tyranny, but I do believe Billy is way to woke for that and actually believes that 'the windmills of his woke mind' are the future.
We will witness so many others making HUGE money on ICE in the future if the current regime cannot maintain their coup d'état . . . OR - Ford will survive and thrive as a pseudo-arm of the government to supply 'EVs for everyone'. (yes there's a definition for that, but I do not wat to say it here . . .)

@1agg:

The point is that chasing stock market value alone is the culprit. Share price does not usually reward building a great company. The stock market has its own "rules" which are greed, panic selling, earning a quick dollar or believing the false prophets.

Ask anybody on Wall Street and they will tell you that Ford stock will be stuck in quick sand as long as the Ford family continues to own the majority of preferred (voting) shares. A share of Ford stock is worth exactly 50% of what it was worth 25 years ago, not counting dividends. WTF!

Ford is failing because of the failures of the management team. Lay off 80% of salary staff and results would improve.

I’ve watched the MBA and stock market pleasers ruin just about every good company they get their hooks in.
Early in my career I worked for one of the best software houses (quality products and atmosphere). The leadership was software developers. Then they got greedy and wanted to rapidly expand into areas that were not their core competency. They brought in a CEO from a food manufacturing company (kid you not). The first thing he did was say hey all these product authors are making way too much money. He capped their salaries and removed their product commissions and divide the author’s commissions up between sales,marketing and leadership. You guessed it all the product authors and great software developers left and started their own companies. Fake profits were reported as they continually cut developers benefits and salaries. The chase to the bottom ensued with continual layoffs and off-shoring The company kept frantically buying all the startup companies as they could no longer create their own products. In the end the company was acquired by group of old developers (ex-employees) who took the company private to heal itself - and rid itself of the non-contributors.

Ford is failing because it is chasing woke. Everything woke turns to s___t.