These 5 Companies Recently Announced Layoffs, Hiring Freeze Amid Recession Fears

3. Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 46

Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) manufactures and sells Ford trucks, sport utility vehicles, electrified vehicles, and Lincoln luxury vehicles worldwide. The company operates through Automotive, Mobility, and Ford Credit segments. 

At the end of April, Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) let go of 580 U.S. salaried and contract employees as part of its Ford+ turnaround plan, where the company switches focus on electric vehicles from traditional Ford vehicles. The staff was fired from the engineering departments so the company could add on employees with critical skills needed for the Ford+ initiative. 

On June 1, Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney lowered the price target on Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) to $14 from $18 and maintained a Neutral rating on the stock. In U.S. autos and industrial technology, he broadly slashed estimates and price targets to better reflect ongoing supply chain challenges in the short-term and weaker demand in the medium-term, the analyst told investors. 

According to Insider Monkey’s first quarter database, 46 hedge funds were bullish on Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), down from 53 funds in the prior quarter. D E Shaw is the biggest shareholder of the company, with 31.2 million shares worth $528.3 million. 

In its Q1 2020 investor letter, Greenlight Capital Fund highlighted a few stocks and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“General Motors (GM) was a disappointment. The damage from last year’s strike consumed most of the cash flow GM would have otherwise generated in 2019. We had expected a strong bounce back in earnings and cash flow in 2020, but the annual guidance, while meeting Wall Street expectations, was worse than we expected. Further, the cash burned during the strike needed to be re-earned in order to protect GM’s investment grade rating. Pre-crisis, there would have been, at best, a minimal share repurchase late in the year. At the analyst day, our hopes that 2020 would finally be the year were dashed. We sold our stock. Over our five-year holding period, we made a 9.6% IRR on GM. In the difficult environment, its most comparable peer, Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), lost about half its value.”