Ford Advances South America Restructuring; Will Cease Manufacturing in Brazil, Serve Customers With New Lineup - Seite 2

Ford is actively evaluating its businesses around the world, including in South America, making choices and allocating capital in ways that advance Ford’s plan to achieve an 8% company adjusted

EBIT margin and generate consistently strong adjusted free cash flow. Ford’s plan calls for developing and delivering high-quality, high-value, connected vehicles – increasingly electric vehicles – and services that are affordable to an even broader range of customers and profitable for Ford. The company is moving quickly to:

• Turn around its automotive business – competing like a challenger while simplifying and modernizing all aspects of the company, and
• Grow by capitalizing on existing strengths, disrupting the conventional automotive business, and partnering with others to gain expertise and efficiency.

“We will work earnestly with unions, employees and other stakeholders to develop measures to help deal with the difficult impact of this announcement,” Watters continued. “I want to emphasize that we are committed to the region for the long-term and will continue to offer customers full sales, service and warranty support. This is especially true as we bring to market a robust lineup of exciting connected and electrified SUVs, pickups and commercial vehicles from within and outside of the region.”

Watters added that, in addition to the recently confirmed production of the next-generation of Ranger and the arrival of the Bronco, Mustang Mach 1 and Transit van, Ford plans to announce other all-new models, including a new plug-in vehicle. This includes expanding connected services and introducing new automated and electrified technologies to South America.

Production will cease immediately at Camaçari and Taubaté in Brazil, with some parts production continuing for a few months to support inventories for aftermarket sales. The Troller plant in Horizonte, Brazil, will continue to operate until the fourth quarter of 2021. As a result, the company will end sales of EcoSport, Ka and T4 once inventories are sold. Manufacturing operations in Argentina and Uruguay and the sales companies in other South America markets are not affected.

Ford will continue to facilitate possible reasonable alternatives for interested parties to take over available production facilities.

In connection with this announcement, Ford currently expects to record pre-tax special item charges of about $4.1 billion, including about $2.5 billion in 2020 and about $1.6 billion in 2021. The charges will include about $1.6 billion of non-cash charges related to writing-off certain tax receivables and for accelerated depreciation and amortization. The remaining charges of about $2.5 billion will be paid in cash, primarily in 2021, and are attributable to separation, termination, settlement and other payments.