Ford Motor Company makes its money in three distinct ways: selling vehicles under the Ford and Lincoln brands through a network of roughly 8,226 dealerships worldwide, providing commercial fleet customers with trucks, vans, and related services through a division called Ford Pro, and financing car purchases and leases through its lending arm, Ford Motor Credit. The vehicle side of the business is split further into Ford Blue, which covers gasoline and hybrid models, and Ford Model e, which covers electric vehicles. In 2025, Ford sold approximately 4,395,000 vehicles at wholesale across the globe, generating $187.3 billion in revenue. The diagram below traces where the money goes.

Five years of financial data tell a complicated story. Revenue climbed steadily from $136.3 billion in 2021 to $187.3 billion in 2025, which looks like growth. But gross margin moved in the opposite direction, falling from roughly 15.9% in 2021 to just 6.8% in 2025. That means Ford is making far less profit on each dollar of sales than it did four years ago. The company still generated $21.3 billion in cash from operations in 2025, which is its strongest operating cash flow in the five-year window. Free cash flow, the money left after capital spending, came in at $12.5 billion in 2025, also an improvement. So the cash engine still runs. The problem shows up on the bottom line.

The net loss in 2025 was $8.2 billion. That loss was driven almost entirely by one decision: Ford wrote down roughly $13.8 billion in charges in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, mostly because its electric vehicle strategy failed to deliver. Ford cancelled three planned electric vehicles, ended production of the current F-150 Lightning electric truck, and recorded an $8.4 billion impairment charge on the assets of its Ford Model e division. It also wrote down its investment in a battery joint venture called BlueOval SK. These are called special items, and they are real cash or value losses even if the accounting labels them as one-time events.

While the electric vehicle division kept losing money, the other two main business units held up. Ford Pro, the commercial truck and van business, earned $6.8 billion in operating profit in 2025, even though that was down from $9.0 billion in 2024, hurt by softer fleet pricing and higher tariff costs. Ford Blue, the gasoline and hybrid vehicle business, earned $3.0 billion in operating profit. Ford Credit, the lending arm, actually improved, earning $2.6 billion, up from $1.7 billion a year earlier. The business is not uniformly broken. It has a profitable core that is being dragged down by the cost of an EV transition that has not gone to plan.

The risk picture at Ford is specific and documented, not just the usual business warnings. Start with the supply chain. In September and November 2025, fires at a Novelis plant in New York disrupted aluminum supply to Ford. Aluminum goes directly into trucks, including the high-volume F-150. Production dropped in the fourth quarter of 2025 as a result. Ford also depends on lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth minerals for EV batteries. China has restricted exports of some rare earth minerals, creating a sourcing vulnerability that Ford cannot easily resolve on its own.

Tariffs are a second specific threat. Ford's own filings state that gross tariff costs in 2025 were about $3 billion, with a net operating profit impact of about $2 billion after partial offsets. As of December 31, 2025, Ford had a $974 million receivable on its books for tariffs it had already paid but not yet been refunded. The timing and reliability of those refunds is uncertain. If tariffs on auto parts for U.S. assembly are sustained for an extended period, Ford's own filings say this will have a significant adverse effect on U.S. production.

There is also a safety compliance risk that is already active, not hypothetical. Ford is operating under a consent order with NHTSA, the U.S. government agency that oversees vehicle safety. An independent third party monitors Ford's safety processes under this order. Separately, approximately 3.5 million vehicles have Takata airbag inflators that may be unsafe, and another 2.5 million vehicles have inflators from ARC Automotive and Delphi that also carry potential recall risk. Recall costs are unpredictable and can be very large.

Ford also locked itself into long-term supply contracts to buy raw materials for EV batteries at fixed prices. If EV demand stays lower than planned, Ford still owes those suppliers. The filing acknowledges that if EV demand undershoots, Ford could be forced to pay for materials it does not need, or pay penalty costs for breaking the contracts. That is a real financial overhang, not a future risk, because EV demand has already come in below what Ford expected when it signed those agreements.

The profitable part of Ford right now is Ford Pro, the commercial division that sells Super Duty trucks and Transit vans to businesses and governments. Ford Pro earned $6.8 billion in operating profit in 2025 on $66.3 billion in revenue, an operating margin of 10.3%. That is the healthiest margin in the company. Ford Blue's hybrid vehicle sales also grew in the U.S., with hybrid wholesales rising to 216,599 units in 2025. The gasoline and hybrid business is what is funding everything else.