FNYSEThe short version
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is a 122-year-old American automaker that sells about 4.4 million vehicles a year through its Blue, Model e, and Pro segments, and finances those sales through captive lender Ford Credit.
Ford fell 24% to $8.69 in April 2025 on the tariff shock, then round-tripped and kept rising — at $14.68 it now trades 29% above its pre-fall peak.
Mkt cap $59.0BNet debt $142.4BEV $201.4BP/E FY27E 7.7×ND/EBITDA FY27E 9.9×
$14.68
Share price
$58B
Market cap
9.0%
Adj FCF yield (3-yr avg)
13.2%
US market share
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Snapshot
Ford Motor Company in numbers
Price
$14.68as of 2026-07-31
Mkt cap
$59.0B
Net debt
$142.4B
EV
$201.4B
12m perf
+32.6%
3m ADV
$913.0M
| Year to Dec (USD) | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026E | 2027E | 2028E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 176.2B | 185.0B | 187.3B | 175.4B | 178.8B | 184.1B |
| EBITDA | 13.1B | 12.8B | 6.8B | 13.7B | 14.4B | 15.9B |
| EBIT | 5.5B | 5.2B | −9.2B | 9.9B | 10.5B | 11.7B |
| EBIT margin | 3.1% | 2.8% | −4.9% | 5.6% | 5.8% | 6.3% |
| EPS | 1.08 | 1.46 | −2.06 | 1.86 | 1.90 | 2.15 |
| EV/EBITDA | 15.3× | 15.8× | 29.6× | 14.7× | 14.0× | 12.6× |
| EV/EBIT | 36.9× | 38.6× | n/a | 20.3× | 19.3× | 17.3× |
| P/E | 13.6× | 10.1× | n/a | 7.9× | 7.7× | 6.8× |
| FCF yield | – | – | – | 10.1% | 12.1% | 13.5% |
Consensus: S&P Capital IQ (CapIQ) · as of 2026-08-01Derived from run data; ratios use the latest price.
IThe business
The business
Ford sells 4.4 million vehicles a year; the profit pools in fleet and finance, not the EV arm
FY2025 segment revenue vs adjusted EBIT ($B)
One segment loses money; two carry the group.
- Three vehicle segments plus a captive lender. Ford Blue sells gas and hybrid vehicles, Model e sells EVs, Ford Pro sells to commercial fleets, and Ford Credit finances the sales — $187.3B of revenue in 2025.
- The profit sits in Pro and Credit. Ford Pro earned $6.8B of EBIT at a 10.3% margin and Ford Credit added $2.6B, subsidising a legacy retail arm whose margin fell to 3.0%.
- Model e bleeds. The EV segment lost $4.8B in 2025 even as volumes rose — nearly $5B drained from a profitable core that earned about $12B.
The exclusion
A price-taker in the one industry the framework excludes
0.31x
Price / sales
13.2%
US market share
$4.8B
Model e 2025 loss
- A car company, by name. Automakers are the framework's single named industry exclusion — undifferentiated, capital-intensive, with installed capacity that generally exceeds demand.
- A price-taker, not a price-setter. Ford holds 13.2% of a fragmented US market and, in its own words, cannot always set prices to offset incentives — the opposite of pricing power.
- Cheap on the screen, for a reason. At 0.31x sales it looks inexpensive, but this is exactly the profile the exclusion guards against: a low-return industry that competes its returns away.
IIIThe story now
The fit
Does not fit the framework (P1 not met); contested: X2
The pillar ledger
| Pillar | Where Ford sits |
|---|---|
| Year-10 gate (P1) | Not met — unanimous; no moat, no pricing power at 13% share |
| Car-company exclusion (X1) | Hit — the one industry the framework names |
| Adjusted FCF yield vs bar | 9.0% 3-yr avg vs a 10% bar; clears it in no year |
| Diagnosis (temporary?) | 0.64 — leans temporary, but no price to act on |
| Confidence | Low — the promotion test (X2) is contested |
- The gate decides it. The year-10 durability test asks whether revenue and free cash flow will be higher in a decade with high conviction; all four jurors said no, and that gate alone forces the outcome.
- The exclusion compounds it. Ford is a car company — the one industry named in the framework's exclusion list — so the setup is blocked on two independent counts.
- What survives. Ford Pro earns a 10.3% margin, revenue is at a record, and adjusted FCF is still positive — real, but not enough to lift the gate to high conviction. Confidence is low; the promotion test (X2) is contested.
Dislocation
The dislocation was real in 2025 — and it has fully round-tripped
Peak to trough to a full recovery, and beyond.
- A real fall, on a real trigger. Ford dropped 24% from $11.40 (Nov 2024) to $8.69 (Apr 2025) on the April 2025 auto-tariff shock, which forced a suspended full-year outlook.
- Emotion, but not a washout. Volume ran 3.05x its pre-fall median — genuine selling, well short of Ford's 6–10x panic history in 2008–09.
- The fear has drained. At $14.68 the stock trades 29% above the pre-fall peak, with forward estimates rising — the entry condition the framework needs is gone.
Damage math
A $19.5 billion charge that the share price simply ignored
~$0
Price damage from the charge
$5–20B
Plausible value (NPV) damage
+29%
Above the pre-fall peak
- A GAAP crater over intact cash. The December 2025 EV reset booked ~$19.5B of pre-tax charges, but about $14B was a non-cash write-off; operating cash flow actually rose to $21.3B.
- The price never flinched. The stock rose through the charge and sits 29% above its pre-fall peak, so price damage from the reset is essentially zero.
- The gap runs backwards. Plausible value damage is about $5B if temporary, $15–20B if permanent — more than the market took off, so there is no overreaction to harvest.
Year-10 durability
No monopoly, no pricing power, and free cash flow that halved in 2025
Company adjusted free cash flow ($B)
Revenue rose every year; the cash did not follow.
- No structural moat. At 13.2% US share in an over-supplied market, Ford is a fragmented price-taker; Chinese EV makers now export into its markets, so capital intensity has not walled out entry.
- Cash conversion is thin and falling. Company adjusted free cash flow halved to $3.5B in 2025 and converts under 2 cents on the revenue dollar — the automaker value-trap signature.
- The counter-fact. Ford Pro's sticky fleet and service revenue ($66B at a 10.3% margin) is genuine durability — but not enough to make higher year-10 cash flow high-conviction.
Self-help
The buyback flywheel the setup depends on does not exist here
Cash spent on share buybacks ($M)
Small, sporadic, and none at all in 2025.
- No flywheel. The setup's payoff is buybacks turning a high yield into per-share compounding; Ford repurchased roughly $1.9B in a decade, all to offset dilution, and none in 2025.
- A flat share count. Shares went from 3,999M in 2016 to 3,979M in 2025 — stasis, not the shrinking denominator the pattern needs.
- Dividend-first, and cut before. Cash returns run entirely through a ~4% dividend that Ford suspended in 2020 and reinstated only in late 2021 — first to go in stress.
Diagnosis
The EV charge reads as temporary — but there is no price to act on
The ~$19.5B December 2025 charge
Non-cash write-off$14B72%
Cash cost (mostly 2026)$5.5B28%
An amputation of loss-making capacity, not a cash burn.
- An amputation, not a cash burn. Of the ~$19.5B charge, about $14B is a non-cash write-off of loss-making EV capacity; only ~$5.5B is cash, most of it in 2026.
- The trial leans temporary. Three independent judges put the probability the reset is temporary at 0.64, with Model e losses already narrowing toward a 2029 breakeven target.
- But it is moot. Because the price never repriced the charge, neither the temporary nor the permanent reading produces a mispricing to act on.
IVThe price
Yield vs the bar
The yield reaches the fortress band only on average, and clears 10% in no year
Adjusted FCF yield vs the framework bar
FY2025
5.3%
3-yr avg
9%
FY2024
10.7%
- Short of the bar. Framework-adjusted FCF yield was 5.3% in 2025 and 9.0% on the three-year average, against a 10% bar for a business like this — cleared in no single year.
- Compression, not capitulation. The yield fell from ~11% because free cash flow halved and the price recovered — the opposite of a fear-driven spike.
- The sell side already agrees. Consensus models forward FCF yields of 10.2% (2026) and 12.2% (2027) — but with the stock near its highs, that is fair value, not fear.
What you pay
At today's price it takes a decade of cash flow to retire the float
10–17 yrs
FCF to retire the whole float
~3 yrs
The absurdity signal it would need
10.2%
Consensus FY2026 FCF yield
- Not absurdly cheap. At today's price it takes 10 to 17 years of adjusted free cash flow to retire the whole float; the framework's mispricing signal fires near 3 years.
- A modest yield on a low-return business. The price is valuing a capital-intensive automaker at a fair yield, not a compounding machine trading at a fear discount.
- Re-rating math unavailable. With adjusted-FCF features not computable from the captive-finance feed, no normalized price-at-bar target could be published.
The clock
Every past peak set a lower base Ford never regained
Ford's drawdown history
| Episode | Drawdown | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 peak $18.79 | −53% | Lower base, never regained |
| 2014 peak $17.84 | −78% | Never regained |
| 2022 peak $25.19 | −56% | Still ~42% below |
| 2024 peak $14.55 | −40% | Recovered only to prior peak |
- History rhymes downward. Ford's 2011, 2014 and 2022 peaks were each followed by 53–78% falls that set lower bases it never regained; today's $14.68 is still ~42% below the 2022 high.
- The one recovery was a round-trip. The 2024–25 drop from $14.55 to $8.69 recovered — but only back to its prior local peak, a range-trade, not a new high.
- Instruments price calm. Long-dated options run to January 2028 and 30-day implied volatility sits at 34%, below the framework's reference lines — a market with the fear already behind it.
What to watch
A cash-generative automaker at a fair yield — but a car company with no live dislocation and no buyback flywheel.
- 01revenue declines for a third consecutive year
- 02share count inflects upward
- 03capital allocation pivots to debt paydown over repurchases
- 04Model e losses persist near $4-5B beyond 2026 instead of shrinking toward breakeven
This distills a fixed fit test built tab by tab — one investor's framework, applied to Ford in arithmetic.
Compiled from the full report · 2026-08-01 · For information, not investment advice.