Blue Margins Rising, Charger Collab, Empty Foot Lockers

The Automotive Troublemaker w/ Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier

It’s Tuesday and we’re talking about combustion margins rising at Ford, a government led charging collab, as well as Foot Locker’s Q1 woes.

• Ford expects its internal combustion engine volume and profits to continue their growth until 2025. At Ford Capital Markets Day 2023, executives outlined their projections for Ford Blue, the company's gasoline-powered business, According to Kumar Galhotra, head of Ford Blue, profit margins from combustion vehicles will grow from 7.2 percent today to at least 10 percent by 2026
  • Reductions in complexity are a primary driver of margin improvements
    • Ford has successfully reduced the number of parts per vehicle over the past two years.
    • F-150 pickup model has 2,400 fewer parts compared to the previous version.
    • Total orderable combinations on the Explorer have been reduced from 1,900 to 23, and on the Expedition from 800 to 32
  • CEO Jim Farley said Monday that his leadership team meets once a month to focus on material and supplier cost-cut opportunities.
    • “I’m starting to see an excitement around waste elimination; it’s not task-assigned,” Farley said.
  • The company restated a targeted 8% margin on EVs by 2026 and plans to introduce an affordable three-row EV with a 350-mile range in 2025, as part of its Model e unit.
    
• ChargeX, a newly formed EV industry consortium announced and led by the Department of Energy, aims to enhance the reliability and usability of public EV charging infrastructure in the US by June 2025.
  • Including 30 companies, including Tesla, Electrify America, and ChargePoint, the consortium will work together to define the charging experience, address charging reliability and usability issues, and develop solutions for scaling reliability.
  • Charge X aims to tackle three primary issues with public EV chargers:
    • defining and improving the customer charging experience, addressing reliability and usability problems, and developing solutions for scaling reliability as EV adoption grows.
      
• Foot Locker's shares plummeted by 27 percent as the retailer adjusted its 2023 guidance due to a surprising decline in sneaker sales citing external factors like inflation and a shift towards discretionary spending as key contributors to the downturn.
  • Stronger than expected holiday sales followed by a steep drop of 7-9% YoY per store sales
  • Discretionary spending is dropping with a trend toward spending on services
  • Tax returns are an average of 10% lower
  • To counteract the situation, Foot Locker plans to increase promotional activities throughout the year as well as targeting sales toward the ‘active athlete’
  • Nike online sneaker sales are up in Q1

Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
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