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Market Update : 
Ford Motor Q3 Earnings Call Transcript
Author: 123jump.com Staff
123jump.com
Last Update: 11:03 PM ET December 02 2008


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Lewis Booth

John this is Lewis. Let me answer the payables piece of the question. They did come down significantly because of a lot of production and we do expect some further reductions in the fourth quarter because of the lower production for Ford in the fourth quarter around the world. We would expect to see that begin to flatten out as we look forward to 2009 as production begins to settle, and perhaps grow it towards the backend of the year as we begin to see a very modest recovery.

Alan Mulally

John we are going to ask K.R. Kent to discuss the other one.

K. R. Kent

John, on the receivables, this is K.R. Kent of the Credit Company, generally the receivables are paid off by the credit company really short-term. I think it’s like two and a half days or so that we put them on to our books and then it would be wholesaled out to the dealers obviously and payables are a much longer term.

John Murphy - Merrill Lynch

Okay, so we should assume there would potentially be another hit in the fourth quarter and then we’re flat. That step function has changed going into next year.

Lewis Booth

There will be some in the fourth quarter, yes.

John Murphy - Merrill Lynch

Got it and okay second, one thing that we struggle with in looking at the company is trying to understand manned capacity, installed capacity, and capacity utilization and you didn’t touch on that in this quarter. And it’s clearly a big issue for the company going forward as far as right sizing. I just wanted to know, can you give us an update on where you stand on capacity actions and sort of highlight a little bit the delta between your sort of structural capacity and your manned capacity and how cost savings might develop as you cut capacity going forward.

Lewis Booth

Sure. John, we’re not going to give you specific numbers today. In the very, very near-term we’re obviously going to have some down production weeks, particularly in the U.S. in the fourth quarter as we continue to lower production to make sure we don’t build stocks. We did that in the third quarter. What we really try to do is make sure we keep production in balance with demand because we don’t want to build dealer stocks in this period. Longer term it is very much going to depend on what happens to the economic outlook in 2009 around the world.

Alan Mulally

And John, I might just add that we continue with our plan to make the best economic decisions in the near-term because clearly some of the plants, we’re not using to full utilization. But we have great contribution from the products that are there and we are absolutely going to tie the changes that we make to increase the utilization and the efficiency to when it makes sense economically with our product cycle plan with the product strategy going forward. And we feel we really have improved that over the long-term and so as we go forward we will share more of that with you with the cycle plan.

John Murphy - Merrill Lynch

No new capacity actions?

Lewis Booth

No, with the buyouts we achieved in the third quarter we’ve got minimal surplus people in North America.


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