A good news / bad news situation recently emerged at legacy automaker Ford (F), as it revealed plans to bring back its passenger car line. That was the good news. The bad news, meanwhile, is that most of these plans focus on Europe, at least for now. The news left investors a bit nonplussed, and they gave Ford shares a fractional boost in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
Meet Samuel – Your Personal Investing Prophet
- Start a conversation with TipRanks’ trusted, data-backed investment intelligence
- Ask Samuel about stocks, your portfolio, or the market and get instant, personalized insights in seconds
United States customers have not seen a passenger car for sale from Ford since 2020, aside from the Mustang. In Europe, there are still passenger cars available, though not in the numbers they once were. And Ford CEO Jim Farley made it clear that the passenger car concept has not been permanently abandoned.
Farley noted, “We also have plans, exciting plans for Europe, on our passenger cars, but we will play very carefully in specific segments to our strengths, to make sure that not only do we build a profitable passenger car business, but we also support our dealer’s profitability.” New partnerships and plans are going into this process, and Ford may well have new, and more profitable, passenger car lines available in the near future.
Updating the Bronco
Meanwhile, a vehicle that spent a long time connected to O.J. Simpson recently made a comeback, and even more recently got some new updates announced for it. The Bronco is poised to see some new additions and improvements, sticking to small changes as opposed to larger-scale ones. This is mostly due to owner feedback, which preferred smaller changes.
Considering that the Bronco has recently hit record highs in sales figures, it is not surprising that Ford is sticking with a plan of slow, simple upgrades. Still, Ford has noted that the next update will be “obvious,” if not necessarily particularly large-scale.
Is Ford Stock a Good Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on F stock based on two Buys, 12 Holds and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 49.95% rally in its share price over the past year, the average F price target of $13.88 per share implies 3.51% downside risk.
