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Those shares higher in after hours, trading up about four percent. Adjusted EPs beating estimates at forty nine cents a share, total revenue beating estimates at roughly about forty three billion dollars in the company standing behind it's full year forecast. John Lawler joining us right now, the chief financial officer over at Ford and John, on the surface, these numbers look pretty good, as you know, still a lot of
questions and concerns about cost cutting. How much more should investors expect?
Well, we had a really solid quarter, and you know, we didn't expand our guidance range of justiny bit between ten and twelve billion, but we have indicated that we're our trajectory is towards the high end of that guidance. So you know, it looks like we're on track for a really solid year this year.
I'd be remiss in not asking you about a lot of the concerns right now going on in the EV space. The model E business at Ford was at least the worst performing of the major businesses. We got earnings out of a couple of your competitors, including GM and Tesla, and at least on the EV side, things weren't much better. Do you see any hope of improvement in that business this year?
Well, you know, we're segmented, so we're different than many of our competitors, at least the traditional OEM. So you have the transparency about where we're at with our electric vehicle business relative to our commercial business in our internal combustion engine business, So you have the transparency. Look, we know that we need to have the electric business stand on its own. It needs to be profitable, it needs to provide a return on the invested capital, and we're
working diligently to get there. And you know, we have a lot of hopes, and we know that our second generation in vehicles that will be coming out in a couple of years are going to be a big step forward and bring us to the point where we will be profitable. So we won't launch them if we're not profitable. So you know, we've got to make the best of it through this period here until we get to the second generation vehicles, and we'll continue to manage that and optimize across the company.
Well, John, I mean, hypothetically speaking, what would it take for you to maybe say, okay, we're going to make this segment much smaller than it was. We know that EV adoption has been really slowing down and really below what a lot of people, especially.
The automakers, had expected.
How committed are you to the EV space when you look five ten years out, Well.
Look EV's. You know, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of how fast they are. The future. We will be going there, the industry will be going there. It's just I don't think we should question that. It's the pace of change, in the pace of adoption, and so we're going to write size in the near term to match our capacity and the investments to where the consumer is, and then we'll accelerate as the consumer accelerates.
But make no mistake that evs are important because they're a big part of what all automotive companies need to do to meet compliance for greenhouse gases and zero emission vehicles. So they're a big part of what we all need to do to hit those compliance regulation requirements that we have.
Let's talk about the price tag, because I think a lot of consumers, in addition to maybe some range anxieties, the perception is that EV's are a lot more expensive than what I could get from some of those traditional engines.
So when it comes to your plans for that twenty.
Five thousand dollars more affordable EV, it seems like it's going to take until late twenty twenty six.
Why is it going to take that long to develop?
Well, it's a completely new platform and it's a new way and a new approach of how you develop a vehicle. We have a team out in California. We call it our skunk works team. Individuals that have designed EV's, successful EV's, profitable evs with other companies are there. It's a whole new approach. It's a brand new, ground up platform and they're taking you know, they're taking those learnings and they're
applying it here. And it takes a couple of years to develop a complex vehicle like that, and that's what they're doing.
All right. Well, there's a lot of work, certainly to do on the EV side. I am curious John, if you can talk a little bit about the commercial line that you have over there Ford Pro, that unit that appeared to be kind of the standout in the most recent quarter. What exactly is driving that? And more importantly, John, is any of that going to be transferable to the consumer side of the business.
Well, it's an incredible business in Ford Pro. We have motes from our products. We have motes from the fact that we provide software services that help our commercial customers improve productivity and uptime and it makes their business stronger. And the learnings that we have there are transferable to the retail side, and we're doing that today, especially around service and the conveniences that we've learned about from the
commercial customers. So it's a really strong business. We've talked about it being a strong business, and we've talked about the earnings potential and I think you see that clearly in the first quarter with a print of adjusted EBIT of three billion dollars.
And that gets to this idea too, because I mean, when you look at some of the features that go into a lot of the commercial vehicles and the idea that at some point, at least when the cost is feasible, that could transfer there. There's been a lot of discussion here about Ford kind of upping its software game, basically getting beyond just obviously what you do best, which is the actual building up the cars themselves. When it comes to the software and the tech side of this year.
Have you done hiring in that space, Have you done any sort of made so, any sort of attempt to actually beef up that business if you will. I know it's not technically a standalone business.
But you know what I mean absolutely, Over the last few years, we've been hiring. We've been bringing in experts from the outside, consumer product software experts, etc. And that's a real big part of what we've seen with the Ford Pro story. If you look at it over the last twelve months, about thirteen percent of their EBITs come from software and physical services, and we expect that to grow to twenty percent of their adjusted EBIT in a
few years. So we have a team in place. We have a great team we've recruited from the outside with some folks that we had inside building out those services that are pro customers love because make some more productive, it improves their business.
And I also want to.
Talk about some of your other models, specifically your gas powered models. I'm thinking about the Bronco for example. I'm thinking about the Maverick in addition to the.
F one fifties.
But I feel like I've seen so many Broncos on the road. How are you thinking about output levels in those areas. Again, those gas powered vehicles.
Well, we have incredible brands across our company between F Series, Bronco, Mustang, you name it, and demand's very strong. Demand's very strong for all of those vehicles. So we're meeting that demand. We're continuing to produce. We're working on, you know, getting as much out of our factors as we can, and you see that in our results. We just launched the brand new F one fifty in the first quarter here.
It's now selling very well, so there's a lot of upside there in the blue business through the rest of the year.
All right, John, really appreciate your time today. On the heels of that earnings release are thanks of course.
To John Lawler. He is Ford's chief financial officer.