Shares of Ford Motor (F) were one of the few stocks closing in the green today with a gain of 1.20% to $14.33 a share.
Yesterday, September 27, Ford announced that it looking to hire 11,000 new workers and that it would spend an additional $11.4 billion to build factories to produce batteries for its new electric vehicles with its partner South Korea’s SK Innovation.
Oh, and feeding all this is news that Ford has received 150,000 reservations for the new electric F-150 Lighting pickup. That’s for a car that won’t go on sale until next spring. Reservations have surged from 120,000 at the end of July. Ford has been taking reservations since May when it announced plans for the electric pickup
Ford had said that it expects to hit capacity of 80,000 electric F150s during 2023. It now looks like Ford is pulling out all the stops to increase production capacity for the electric pickup.
Just for reference sales of the conventional gasoline powered F150 hit 896,526 during the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Sales dipped to 789,372 in 2020.
Ford’s shares are up 61.09% for 2021 to the close on September 27. The stock has struggled recently along with the shares of other automakers as it looks like the chip shortages that have led to curtailed production across the industry have been forecast to extend well into next year or longer.
Ford Motor is a member of my Jubak Picks portfolio. The position is down 8.45% since I initiated it on June 9, 2021.
