Ford to Resume Making Cash-Cow F-Series After Supplier Fire

(Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. will resume building its biggest moneymaker, the F-150 pickup, two weeks after a fire at a supplier’s factory halted production of trucks at three plants.

Production of F-Series pickups will restart first at Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan, factory on Friday, then at plants in Kentucky and Missouri on Monday. The automaker said all three factories will be at full production by Monday and rebuilt its supply chain for key magnesium parts used in the trucks and sport utility vehicles including the Lincoln Navigator and Ford Explorer.

“The situation is still changing hour-by-hour and we could still encounter some obstacles, but I’m confident the team will continue to charge ahead and find ways to deliver,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of global operations, said on a conference call with reporters. “Returning our plants to production ahead of our initial estimated timing means less of an adverse effect on the company’s near-term results.”

Ford expects the loss of F-Series production will lower second-quarter earnings by as much as 14 cents a share, but didn’t reduce its full-year adjusted profit forecast of $1.45 to $1.70 a share.

Hinrichs declined to say how many trucks Ford expects to lose from the disruption. James Albertine, an analyst with Consumer Edge Research, estimated Thursday that Ford will have lost output of 30,000 to 35,000 pickups due to the shutdown. With F-Series trucks selling for an average price of about $46,900 in April, that suggests the company may miss out on about $1.6 billion in revenue.

Ford is trying to make up the lost production by asking workers in Dearborn and Kansas City to give up one week of a planned two-week vacation shutdown in July.

“We already told the workers they were having two weeks off,” Hinrichs said. “So we’re going back and asking them to work the second week of the July shutdown.”

The May 2 explosion and fire at the Chinese-owned Meridian Magnesium Products plant in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, disrupted output for Ford and several other automakers, including General Motors Co., Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz.

The pain has been felt most acutely at Ford, since F-Series generates most of the company’s profit. The company had shut down F-150 assembly at the plants in Dearborn and near Kansas City and also stopped building bigger Super Duty pickups at a factory in Louisville.

F-Series is the top-selling vehicle line in America, hauling in about $40 billion in annual revenue. Morgan Stanley values the franchise as worth more than the entire company.

“It’s no secret the F-Series trucks are a big contributor to our bottom line,” Hinrichs said on Bloomberg Television. “That’s why we’re so excited to have production starting up tomorrow.”

Ford shares rose 0.4 percent to $11.44 at 10:44 a.m. in New York trading. The stock has declined more than 8 percent this year.

To get production up as quickly as possible, Ford airlifted an 87,000-pound die to a Meridian plant in the U.K. on a Russian-built Antonov An-124 Ruslan, one of the world’s largest cargo planes. The massive die, used for stamping parts, made the trip from Eaton Rapids to Nottingham, England, in 30 hours, with necessary import documents secured two hours before the plane touched down. Normally, it would take 10 days for such a move, according to the company.

“We were working around the clock, across the ocean, with the teams there to really get the facilities back up and running,” Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s head of purchasing and product development, said on the call. “We were able to do that in just under 12 days.”

--With assistance from David Westin

To contact the reporter on this story: Keith Naughton in Southfield, Michigan at knaughton3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Trudell at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net, Jamie Butters

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