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Morgan Stanley 12th Annual Laguna Conference

Sep 12, 2024

Summary

Leadership transition sets the stage for continued growth, with strong market leadership in commercial vehicles and rapid expansion in software and services. EV adoption is led by government and large business customers, while financial performance remains robust and diversified.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay, I'm very delighted to have representing Ford Motor Company, Navin Kumar, Chief Financial Officer of Ford Pro. We have the Ford Investor Relations team as well. We got Lynn Tyson. We have Tony Ballesteros and Melanie joining us here in the front row as well, so you can catch them in the hallway afterwards. Navin, thanks for joining us. You want to kick off with any k ind of key messages for investors, including maybe some of the personnel changes today, would be great.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Absolutely. Thank you, Adam, for having me. Good morning, everyone. So I'll take a moment to talk about the announcement from this morning, along with a few key points on Pro, which will also come up through the fireside chat. So earlier this morning, we announced that Ted Cannis, the CEO of Ford Pro, has elected to retire after a tremendous thirty-five-year career at Ford. Ted's leadership, customer focus, passion for building Pro and its leadership team, has set a really great foundation for our next stage of innovation and growth. I know, Adam, you know Ted really well. Many of you in this audience probably interface with Ted. He launched the Mach-E. He led multiple regions, including Turkey and South America, and probably importantly for this audience, he led Investor Relations before Lynn. So that's where you probably got to interface with him.

It's actually where I met Ted. When I joined Ford, my office was placed right next to Ted, so I met him on day two, and I know that Ted is rooting and cheering for Pro's continued success, sustaining our vehicle market leadership, growing our software and services ecosystem, and most importantly, continuing to improve vehicle uptime and productivity for our customers, so a few key points on Pro. First, we serve commercial customers. They are a little bit different from retail customers. They're focused on total cost of ownership, vehicle uptime, and getting the right vehicle to get the job done, and that can include factors like payload, towing, as well as flexibility to be modified for upfits for use cases. Second, we're the market leader in commercial in North America and in Europe by brand, and we have the widest and most flexible vehicle lineup.

If you look around where you live, look around where we are right now, you're going to see our vehicles everywhere. Trucks at a job site, ambulances and first response fleets, and often it's going to have a Ford badge on that vehicle. Third, the integration of vehicle hardware, software, and cloud-based applications is really materially improving our customers' uptime and productivity with these vehicles, and it's improving their bottom line. They can do more with the vehicles, they can operate them more efficiently, and leveraging that data and insights, we're able to more proactively service those vehicles, minimizing vehicle downtime. Like I said, for our customers, it improves their bottom line. For us, it's growing and diversifying our business into higher-margin software and service parts, earning streams that are more durable. We've made great progress with our leadership team.

We have over 600,000 software subscriptions, and we've been growing our physical service, and we're really starting to see use cases emerge with customers where they're seeing real material benefits.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

So yesterday, you were at a competitor conference in San Francisco, and I believe the theme of your discussion was on the physical services and the software opportunity. Kind of remind this audience, why is this a needle mover now?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah, that, that's a great question. So let me unpack what is in Pro software-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Yeah

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... how we've grown that to date, how we plan to grow that, and what customers are getting benefits from, because that's the most material important thing to this. We have over six hundred thousand paid software subscriptions.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

That's been growing 40% first half, versus last year. It's mostly telematics. Telematics includes real-time fleet and vehicle tracking, fuel analysis, vehicle diagnostics. We go to market with it in two specific ways: dashboards, where the data and the analytics are in a customer-friendly dashboard, and the second way is through data services, which is APIs that integrate the data into a customer's existing software systems.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Our average ARPU, so average revenue per subscription per month, is about $7-$8.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

That has grown historically. We started the business a few years ago with data services for rental companies, so that was more like a data pipe. And then we got into more data curation and telematics dashboards for small businesses. Our present growth and our near-term growth, both in subscriptions and ARPU, is coming from a combination of market and product expansion. On the market side, we're now getting more traction with larger businesses as well as government. And the reason for that is actually just the historical differentiation of what we do. We are leveraging data right off the vehicles through an embedded modem, and so customers don't have to purchase a plug-in device from a third party, and that's how this historically worked. They don't have to install it, they don't have to service it, so it's higher quality data at lower risk.

We're now getting customer pull for these solutions as more customers are realizing the benefit of leveraging this embedded vehicle data.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

And then we're expanding our product lineup. We launched video telematics earlier this year, and that includes more robust driver monitoring, driver coaching, and optimizing incident reporting and claims management. One of the other differentiators is more command and control functionality, remote command and control functionality of these vehicles. So, for example, a fleet manager can now set permissions on enabling or disabling vehicles, so they can operate these fleets more efficiently. And we have expanded into a fleet management software solutions for small businesses to automate tasks like driver dispatch management, vehicle inventory, scheduling of service, as well as expense management for maintenance and repairs. And when you put it all together, the customer benefits have been material.

We've seen with some of our customers a 10%-20% improvement in total cost of ownership, just being able to run fleets more efficiently, generate fuel savings, and more robust vehicle maintenance and management. A couple specific examples to your question, Adam. We have, you know, one customer with a specific job site where they took the software, combined it with our mobile service, which can service all fleets at a job site, and they took downtime from an average of a couple of days to a couple hours.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

So you can imagine those material savings and then think about the scale as we apply it to other customers. We found efficiencies where using vehicle diagnostics as well as the fleet coordination software, some customers are saying: "Okay, we now have a better sense of when we want to procure new vehicles," and they were historically just using the age of the vehicle. So now they can extend vehicle life, they can be much more efficient with procurement, and that's also saving time as well as money. Where we take this, we are gonna have more advanced telematics leveraging you know, next-generation architecture, more safety and security functionality. As we grow electric vehicles, we're gonna have more depot charging solutions. We're gonna go from fleet management software into more managed maintenance and other productivity solutions.

So that's gonna start growing the attach rate, subscription growth, as well as our ARPU.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

You nailed the question I was gonna ask was the evidence that these are improving customer outcomes. I just wanna make sure I got my math right. 600,000 paid subscribers, $8 a month, I'm just rounding, or $100 a year. So that's, like, $60 million in revenue. Maybe it's 1.5% of your revenue.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

This is pretty profitable stuff, though. Maybe more than 1.5% of profit. But just make sure I'm right here on just in terms of the contribution now. Growing 40%, so this is gonna compound. So maybe not a huge part of the revenue, not so much a disclosable, you know, segment, but it's... Is it just more the strategic value and the growth? Is this the relevance?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Adam, you're very good at doing math on the fly.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Oh.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Not to-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

No, I'm not. Actually, my team is right here. They can attest, no.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Second, directionally, you're right. There's a few other elements in our paid software business that aren't, call it subscription-based-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... and ARR-based.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

For example, we provide connectivity for these vehicles when they're in the dealer lots.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Yeah

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... which has quality benefits and, helps us better understand just logistics and things like that. So we have some adjacencies-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Let me-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

But you're generally right.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

But of the 40% growth, that's the subscribers, is-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah, exactly.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

And then the ARPU, is that kind of-- What's that going?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

That's tied to the subscribers.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay, so that-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

So that math all links up.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay. All right.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

So where I was gonna go with that is, you're right on the growth trajectory, and you're right on the ecosystem because this is about driving loyalty on the vehicle side.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... growing our service parts business, growing our attach rate of that. And it's really all about that loyalty and uptime. And of course, we are growing a software business at a healthy clip. And at that competitor conference you mentioned, your competitor asked me a question of: "What do you prioritize? Do you prioritize ARPU and subscriptions?" Well, with the way we organize, and I have a great partner, Dave Przewoznik, who is our Chief Revenue Officer on the software side, he is holding them to ARR targets, margin targets, ARPU targets-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... products and features to deliver. But then from an enterprise standpoint, because I put on the enterprise hat, we absolutely prioritize subscriptions because the more vehicles are connected, the more data and insights, and that builds for us an intelligence mode, to drive more proactive service, to deliver better uptime, to grow our service parts business, and that really sustains us, longer- term.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Great. All right, so, Ford in an August press release mentioned that the commercial customers, I don't know if they mentioned Ford Pro specifically, but mentioned that your commercial customers are converting to EVs at a faster clip than non-commercial. Can you give us some data to back that up within Ford Pro?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah, let me unpack that. As I mentioned, commercial customers focus on total cost of ownership and uptime. Additionally, when it comes to powertrain, it has to fit their use cases. Now, with electric vehicles, what we've seen historically is interest, and that's been driven by carbon targets.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... for government fleets-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Uh-huh

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... business sustainability targets. And in some markets, like we're in California, there's actually fleet regulation, like Advanced Clean Fleets, which for many fleets is setting targets for a percentage of their fleet being zero-emission vehicles, and that percentage is growing. In our business, the core electric vehicle products are the E-Transit and the F-150 Lightning for commercial customers.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

I will unpack your question with the E-Transit, and go into those numbers and go into by customer channel, the nuances that are happening in terms of EV adoption and growth. So on our investor website, we report U.S. sales monthly. Year- to- date, for August, we had a little over 8,000 E-Transit sold in the U.S. Within our Transit population, that's about 7.7%, and if you look at retail and do the comparable analysis, that's in the range of 3.5%-4%. So you can see a higher mix of EVs in from an E-Transit standpoint, so to your earlier question. But I'm gonna go unpack that further. We grew year- to- date relative to last year, about 76% in terms of E-Transit sales volume.

But within that, about two-thirds of it is local, municipal, state, and USPS, so government. One-third of that is a plethora of businesses, mostly skewed to general services and delivery. And unpacking that further, we see adoption with governments, state and local, because they're localized to a geo zone, and we went out deliberately with a multi-energy vehicle, 120 miles of range, so there's a good use case fit. They're able to monetize and realize state and local incentives, as well as the Federal Inflation Reduction Act.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

So it hits the nail on the use case, total cost of ownership, and that's why we've been seeing adoption there. When you go into larger corporates, we have hundreds of customers, but overall, what we've learned is that a more deliberate, methodical pace of adoption, Adam. And one of the big reasons for that is charging. We've been on this journey for years, and what we've learned is every job site is very unique, from how it's set up, to the power requirements, to unique installation requirements, maybe like underground cabling, to the availability of installers. That has been a much more slower and deliberate pace for many of our customers and clients.

At the same time, they are testing these vehicles, ensuring use case fit, durability cycles, operational seasons, but they're coming back and saying, "We wanna really just de-risk charging before we scale." Some customers, it's such a great proposition that they're accelerating. Ecolab is a big partner of us. They're procuring F-150 Lightnings, and, they're getting up to 50% savings in fuel each year, so it's a very compelling value proposition. When you look at small business, you can't really modify a small business to meet an EV, so it really has to work for their use case and for charging. And we know our EVs don't work for all use cases presently, and we're working on that technology-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

-to drive more use case adoption. Rental is a little bit more of a challenge.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

How much is rental of the 19,000 EVs in Pro in the first half? And I get that from backing out your total wholesale deliveries of 55,000 units, and then backing out the 36,000 of Model Y. I got the 19,000 Pro EVs in the first half, of which you said 8,000 through August, but let's say, you know, we can-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

How much is rental?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah, great question, so not sure if you're doing North America, Europe, but let me just do it on the 8,000 E-Transits.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Rental is, like, not a material-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... volume for that.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

In rental, just like in the retail space, you're seeing challenges with charging because you need not just depot charging and home charging, you need access to public charging, and you need high public charging uptime. So that's gonna take a longer period of time-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... and, more investment. But building on that, what are we doing about it? We have a comprehensive set of solutions, vehicles, and we're improving the range on the E-Transit, charging, financing, consultative services to work with larger customers to integrate-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Got it

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... EVs into their fleets. We're doing a lot more dealer training, dealer education, simplifying the message, leveraging our data from our software and insights to help them understand what use cases these EVs work for, versus what may be more of a challenge. And versus three years ago, we're in more partnerships. We're partnering with utility companies like Xcel, as well as local municipalities like the City of Dallas, to really bring electrification-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

from a commercial standpoint.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

I mean, that, that's great.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

But also, according to August press release, Ford's kind of pushed out a lot of the new EV product to twenty twenty-seven. So over the next two or three years, you're not gonna have anything new. So you gotta work with this. This is what you're gonna work with, the Lightning. You gotta work with the Transit. We'll see what happens, you know. We'll see what the Mach-E does. So without new product for the next, you know, two or three years, should investors really expect that much more momentum in the EV uptake within Ford Pro?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah, it's a good question. Couple of things. One addition to what you just said.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Sure.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

We did go public with a new next-generation van coming out, electric, in 2026.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

No specifics to share at this time.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

But-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

The next-gen Transit or Ranger or-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

The next-generation electric van.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Van. Okay.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Exactly.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Got that.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Just an addition.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Right

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... to what you're saying.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

I'm not trying to be cute, Lynn, okay? I swear. All right. Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

So, um-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Maybe I am, but keep going.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

A couple of things. So there is some product changes and advancements to your comment.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

In the Pro space, it is about getting that adoption of electric vehicles, growing customers in our ecosystem. And electric vehicles have a potential for a higher attach of software solutions as well, because you have the telematics, but you have charging, which you don't have with an internal combustion engine vehicle. And it's not just the attach, it helps run those vehicles more effectively. For example, we've mentioned for a few years, preconditioning the vehicle to have optimal range at the start of a day, but there's other-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... features as well. The thing I'd add, Adam, is that we're managing compliance. We have EPA compliance. Our vehicles in our heavy-duty space are in, like, three compliance programs. California has over 8,500 . You've been reporting on this. That's been adopted by other states. And so there's a calculus for serving customers, right use case fit, TCO-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Right

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... and threading the needle on being compliant with these-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Super Duty is what it is.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Mm-hmm.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Now, you said that you claim that EVs are contribution margin positive in Pro, correct?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

I believe that... Yeah, that message-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Transit.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

That was Transit. Okay.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

All right. Thanks.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Historically, up to recently, we only had the E-Transit van-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... in North America and Europe. We haven't really talked about Europe-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... but we're expanding our lineup, including the E-Transit Custom and the E-Transit Courier coming in 2025.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

And that calculus for how we go forward also factors in, to your point, compliance.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... profit optimization, use case expansion, working with customers, and growing lifetime value on the services.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay. All right. Here we go. Here we go, Kumar. All right, you ready? Deep breath, deep breath. Year to date, Ford Pro's first half EBIT is $5.6 billion. Ford total company EBIT is $5.5 billion. Ford Pro, and again, I'm brilliant at math, is over 100% of total company EBIT. A common criticism from investors, including many in this room, is that Ford Pro generates all the damn cash, all the cash of the company, and that that money is going to pay for loss-making EVs and warranty costs. Is that fair?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

I think I understand the gist of your question, just for everyone in the audience-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

I know you understand.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Great. So just for everybody, we have electric vehicles in Model E and Ford Pro. And as Jim Farley, John Lawler, Marin have said, the leadership is committed to making Model E possible and sustainable profitability. So I'm gonna focus the question on Pro, 'cause building on the last question, Pro has to invest in electric vehicles. Pro has to invest in quality to sustain our vehicle market leadership, be compliant, and grow in services. So we have to invest to stay competitive, of course. So we're not deliberately planning to maintain a near-term margin umbrella. We have to make those investments. And the portfolio of vehicles is strong, including the Transit and the Super Duty, but we got to grow EVs, and that's in both North America and Europe. We had overall demand strong.

That was investment, you know, infrastructure investment, telecom, utilities, and persistent pent-up demand for variants like chassis cabs and transit wagons, but we're seeing weakness in areas like rental, as you've reported on as well. So for us, it's really important to be investing to grow this long-term services and software ecosystem. Like I mentioned, we're seeing real benefits for customers. It's helping their bottom line. It's diversifying us into higher margin, software and physical service parts, which makes the business more durable and helps sustain that margin longer- term.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay. Companies kind of somewhere between, I think, closer to 16% operating margin. Let's see, Ford Pro is closer to 16%, adjusted EBIT margin than 15%. That's your long-term target is mid-teens.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Mm-hmm.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

I think you'd agree that it is a cyclical business. Even though it's a wonderful business and there's a lot of recurring revenue, it's still cyclical. So some years it'll be higher than that, some years it'll be lower than that. If I asked you, are we entering a period where we're going higher than that, or are we entering a period where we might need to go lower than that, where would you say we are?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah. I think I'll answer that from a customer standpoint, right? There are some customers where the demand is really robust because these tailwinds, like I mentioned, in infrastructure, utilities, energy, and oil and gas, are persisting, and we still have persistent pent-up demand for certain variants of our vehicles. That's structural, chassis cabs, wagons. So while there may be other macro elements, there are these structural elements that are in the business that are unique. So I just wanted to point that out. You're absolutely right for certain channels like rental and motor homes. We're getting into this period, and I'm sure you've heard it from some of our partners, and you know, that is something we manage. That's the beauty of Pro. We're a highly diversified business. Hundreds of thousands of customers, relationships built over decades, serving all channels, serving all industries-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... which gives us the ability to make decisions on vehicle mix and for profit optimization-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... supporting our customers. Now, sometimes there'll be some lag seasonally, but, the diversity and diversification of this business gives us a lot of levers to work with.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

What would you say would be the biggest moat then, as to how you could defend that over time, notwithstanding the volatility? What would be top of the list in terms of the moat?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah, I'll get-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

'Cause a lot of your competitors are thinking, "Hey, we have our pro," called something else. Sometimes, I think maybe one of your competitors might even call it a pro. But, you know, they're trying to get in on this, and, probably not gonna happen overnight. So why do you maintain the advantage?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah. Well, I'll start with our historical moats. As I mentioned, our deep customer relationships, breadth of customer relationships-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... the widest and most flexible vehicle lineup in the space, an industry-leading, dealer footprint and outfitter partnership network, and they're investing alongside us to bring Pro solutions-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... to customers. Building on that with the investment in great products, software and services ecosystem expansion-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... bringing our customers into electrification. We're the market leader in commercial vehicles for electric. That's key to sustaining that market leadership. But the software and services ecosystem is super important, and that builds a data and intelligence moat.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

As we get more subscriptions, we get more insights, it optimizes the software, and it helps us drive much more proactive service, so.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Stickiness.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Stickiness, exactly.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Higher switching costs.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah, it's a virtuous cycle.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

So then to answer this question specifically, now, I read what, you know, our competitors say, and I see an emphasis on software growth and an entry point into electrification with last-mile delivery, and we're focused on software and electrification for all our customers to improve their economics. And it's the linkage of that to your earlier question of: What do we prioritize with the physical service and the proactive service, managed maintenance, that really drives that unlock in value creation for our customers? And that takes time, investment years-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... in physical infrastructure, in mobile service, in data structures, in CRMs, and this is where we built a really great team in Pro. The people in Ford who knew those commercial customers, they were in different teams. We brought them together with a common purpose and vision on continuing to improve our customers' productivity and uptime, with people from the outside who've had experience in other sectors like media, where you've made a transition from a transactional arrangement with a customer to a lifetime arrangement, and these continual digital touch points are important. And culture. When we recruited, and I was a big part of this in recruiting a lot of our Ford Pro leadership, as you know, as we have some mutual friends, it's, are they gonna attract talent and build a culture around them?

So, like our CEO, our CRO, Dave Przewoznik, that I mentioned, he brought in a lot of software sales talent, revenue ops talent, to build that infrastructure effectively, like acquihiring, without having to pay an acquisition fee. And so we have this great stability in our verticals, as well as the overall organization, because we brought in not just experts in the space and what we're trying to execute, but they're pulled to bring in talent.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay. I do wanna go to the audience before we run out of time. But just on the divisional accounting here, and obviously, you know, Ford Pro is more than just a segment or a reporting segment. It's it's how you run... It's changed how you run the business.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Mm-hmm.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

I think your teams, you know, emphasize that a lot in the communication. But let me just kind of give you some numbers here. So Ford Pro, I'm rounding, Ford Pro, EBIT margin, 16%. Blue, year to date, around 4%, a little over four. Model E, -195%. These are your numbers, okay? -195%, EBIT margin. So Blue and E have the assets, though. Blue and E have assets that they must depreciate. Ford Pro has no assets. I mean, they have people, there's costs, there's marketing, some marketing and sales-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Mm-hmm

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

... and the customer engagement organization, but no assets. So therefore, it would have no D&A. Okay, you don't report it that way, but if you don't have assets, you don't have D&A. So remind us of how the intercompany markup, because I think that you show this great business with great stickiness, and is it John Deere, Caterpillar, it could account for 200% of the market cap of the company. But then people are like, you know, the criticism is: this is just like a kind of a, you know... How do you handle that transfer price? Why is Ford Pro's margins not overstated? How is that kind of intercompany... Like, where is Blue- how are Blue and E compensated?

Is it at cost, or do they kind of earn a margin at a transfer price, and how is that set? Because a critic could say, "Oh, you're just juicing it to show your jewel and make it look better than it is.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah. So luckily, I worked on this, so

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay. I'm asking the right person.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yes, and off the bat, I can hit the high points on the accounting. The margins are not overstated.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

But for anyone who wants to go through the details, it's on our-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

But does that mean they're not overstated because you do even though you don't have depreciation, you bake it in, you're compensating the other units within that margin for what it would be?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Actually, we do pick up the depreciation. So the way it works-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Oh, okay.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

So the way it works is.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Wow

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... for every vehicle in our perimeter, we pick up all the direct costs at a Vehicle Identification Number level.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

So that's material costs and warranty. We pick up all the product costs, labor and overhead, depreciation and amortization for everything-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... and direct engineering, and then we share on SG&A and indirect engineering on volume. Furthermore, we do pay a markup to Blue and Model E.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

.. in the range of 1%-2%, depending on the vehicles. Now, there's actually historical precedent for this in Ford. Jim Farley, when he led our European operations years ago, segmented Europe into commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Wow!

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Hans Schep, who leads Pro Europe, has done a great job growing that business. We've been the market leader by brand for many years, and we've continued to grow share.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Part of that is because of great product, the Transit lineup. And how we procured the Transits is through a partnership with a joint venture called Ford Otosan. It's publicly traded, it's co-owned by Koç and Ford, and that is a external purchase vehicle arrangement where we pick up all those costs, like I described, plus the markup. So, and I was a banker, so you got external comparables. We didn't just look at that. We looked at the external market and comparables, so we're confident in the accounting. It's very fair. The margins are not overstated, and we have a historical precedent, and that's what we use to structure Ford Pro.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Great. Thanks, Navin. All right, got a couple minutes left. Any questions for Navin from the audience? I had a long list. You've tackled a lot of them. All right, then maybe before we wrap up, I think investors. I've described Ford Pro as the, you know, Ford's Ferrari. I hope that didn't upset you. But people struggle, I find, and frankly, we find we struggle modeling it, the end markets.

So imagine, since you are a former banker and I hear your spreadsheets are fire, your Excel skills are total fire, if you imagine you're in front of a blank Excel model with someone who's trying to kind of conceive of how to start with, like, the revenue tab of where your end markets are, whether it's ag or energy, oil and gas, resi, non-resi, small business, kind of how would you start to do that revenue build with them, just to understand what we track? I know you're not like...

I'm just asking for order of magnitude, just so that as people see the economy develop and see oil and gas does this, and infrastructure here, and we're onshoring this, and they have an understanding of where that pie is for the end market, that would really help.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah. So first, I like the Ferrari analogy because they've diversified with their brand and their retail streams, and that builds that loyalty for, you know, that user base on the vehicle side, and they repeat business. And so you could use those analogies on the Pro side. It's just our software and services ecosystem. Then to answer your question-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

I think also Super Duty margins might rival a lot of-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

... Ferrari product, like flat out EBITDA margin.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Exactly. You break out vehicles-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Yeah

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... software, and we're giving you those typical-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

You're touching 40%. I'm guessing you're touching 40% EBITDA margin on some of those products, but you don't have to comment on that. All right.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Well, back to your question, right?

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Like, you got your vehicles, and you mentioned cyclicality. You got how, the progression of how we grow our service parts business, and we've been sharing financials around that and how we're growing mobile service-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... how we're growing commercial service base. Jim has talked about that. We're starting to share vehicles, as you can see, on the software side. So kind of to break it out into those three chunks, and then it comes down to risk, right? Like, if you grow those other two, is it de-risking the vehicle side and that market leadership? So-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

But-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... at a high level, that's what I'd-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

So you're not gonna give me end market, vocational markets?

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

I did at a high level give the splits on-

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

... on, volume by channel. But, you know, like, a third of our business goes into small business and retail.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

A third goes into larger corporates.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

This is on a sales standpoint. 18% into government, so state, local, federal, and 15% into rental, and that's more U.S.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Okay. We'll leave it there. Navin, thank you so much-

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Thank you

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

... and the team for joining us, and thanks for spending the day with us.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Yeah.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Appreciate it.

Navin Kumar
CFO, Ford Pro

Great to see you.

Adam Jonas
Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research, Morgan Stanley

Thank you.