With an all-new model comes new updates for its facilities. This means that the all-new 2015 Ford F-150 will cause the Dearborn, Michigan truck plant to have 11 weeks of downtime for retooling. The Kansas City, Missouri plant will be down for two weeks this year, and “additional” downtime in 2015. This may or may not lead to a new sales leader in the truck market for 2014 when it’s all over.
The F-Series along has accounted for 31 percent of Ford’s U.S. light-vehicle sales in 2013, and Morgan Stanley is estimating it generates about 90 percent of the automaker’s global profits. Yet, Efraim Levy, an analyist with S&P Capital IQ, told Automotive News, that they expect to see sales of other Ford products increase to replace the short-term loss of their most viable F-Series.
“We see ’14 profit pressure from extended truck production downtime for the transition to the new aluminum F-150 pickup truck and increased sales of smaller vehicles that have narrower margins,” Levy said.
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