5 Auto Companies Facing Worst Declines Amid Global Chip Shortage

3. Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 55  

Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) is a Michigan-based company that makes and sells a range of automobiles, including cars and trucks. It is ranked third on our list of 10 auto companies facing the worst declines amid global chip shortage. In April, at the height of the chip shortage crisis, the president of the company, Jim Farley, said that the full recovery of the auto chip supply would stretch into the fourth quarter of this financial year, and possibly even into 2022. He added that making industry volume recovery in the second half of this year was challenging. 

On July 16, investment advisory Bank of America maintained a Buy rating on Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) stock and raised the price target to $18 from $17. John Murphy, an analyst at the advisory, issued the ratings update. 

At the end of the second quarter of 2021, 55 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $2.10 billion in Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), up from 49 in the preceding quarter worth $2.19 billion.

In its Q1 2020 investor letter, Greenlight Capital Fund, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“General Motors (GM) was a disappointment. The damage from last year’s strike consumed most of the cash flow GM would have otherwise generated in 2019. We had expected a strong bounce back in earnings and cash flow in 2020, but the annual guidance, while meeting Wall Street expectations, was worse than we expected. Further, the cash burned during the strike needed to be re-earned in order to protect GM’s investment grade rating. Pre-crisis, there would have been, at best, a minimal share repurchase late in the year. At the analyst day, our hopes that 2020 would finally be the year were dashed. We sold our stock. Over our five-year holding period, we made a 9.6% IRR on GM. In the difficult environment, its most comparable peer, Ford, lost about half its value.”