Ford Motor Company held its annual shareholder meeting on Thursday. CFACT, which owns shares in Ford, used the occasion to challenge the company’s CEO, Jim Farley, about Ford’s reckless venture into the electric vehicle (EV) market.
During the shareholder question and answer period, CFACT’s staffer Greg Neff asked Farley this question: “Despite the CEO’s assurances that the next generation of EVs will be profitable, the fact is Ford’s EV Unit lost $1.3 Billion in the first quarter of 2024. How is this not putting good money after bad when the American people have clearly shown that most have no interest in transitioning to electric?”
This line of questioning caused clear discomfort in the company’s CEO, who proceeded to spend a significant amount of time attempting to justify Ford’s plans. Mr. Farley admitted, “The adoption of EVs is a bit slower in the industry than we expected,” but mollified this by adding, “But we continue to see more and more customers interested in EVs.”
He then went on to assure the stockholders, as he did with their press release earlier in the year, saying, “We’re currently in the market with our first-gen products: the Mach E and the F150 Lightning e-transit. Our breakthrough from a profitability standpoint will come with our next generation of EVs, which are in the middle of development now and will be launching in the next couple of years.” These are new designs are coming from the ground up, he explained, but never made any real connection with how these new vehicles should be able to fare better in the market than the past vehicles did. In any event, Farley also stated it will take at least two years before these new designs are available.
Does this mean the company is content to continue to lose money on each of its EVs until then? He didn’t say. From our perspective, it does not seem that Ford Motor Company is acting in the best interests of its stockholders, whom they have a fiduciary duty to serve.
The company also had a series of proposals shareholders were expected to vote on. One of these was of particular interest to CFACT. It was written by our ally, the National Center for Public Policy Research, and was posed as follows: “Shareholders request that beginning in 2025, Ford report to shareholders (at a reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information) on the extent to which its business plans with respect to electric vehicles and their charging stations may in practice involve, rely, or depend on child labor outside the United States. The report would optimally be fully transparent regarding sources relied on and their reliability, and any instances in which Ford has failed to determine whether child labor is implicated and the causes of those failures.”
While this proposal did not pass on this go-round, it did obtain surprisingly strong support — enough, in fact, to continue being proposed at future meetings.
CFACT has many more corporate meetings it will be attending this year. Stay tuned for future reports regarding those meetings.