News flies fast and furious in the financial world, and sometimes, reports emerge that turn out to be a little, well, less than you might think. One such report emerged over the weekend, which suggested that Elon Musk had bought legacy automaker Ford (F). That turned out not to be the case, but investors still sent Ford shares up nearly 3% in Monday afternoon’s trading.
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Quartz revealed that the reports of Musk buying Ford were refuted as early as last Friday and that the whole thing was simply a made-up rumor. A report from the Houston Chronicle noted that the whole thing started as more of a what-if exercise that apparently spiraled out of control. There is, after all—Quartz noted—a “mini-cottage industry of fake Tesla news and gossip all over YouTube and likely other corners of the internet.”
This is not the first time Musk has found himself the subject of such rumor, either; some sites have advanced the notion that Tesla (TSLA) was offering everything from $500 laptops to the “Tesla Home.” So, in the end, Ford will not become part of Tesla’s lineup of products, and that seems to be a relief for shareholders right now.
Ford Pulls Features and GM Outperforms
But without Musk running the show, Ford has issues of its own to address. For instance, anyone who liked the Active Park Assist concept in some Ford vehicles will be sad to note that it is about to be removed for good. Ford Director of Operations Kumar Galhotra noted that Active Park Assist is out of future models simply because it was not put to work very often.
Meanwhile, Ford is facing increasing challenges from General Motors (GM), and it shows. Not only is Ford underperforming the market right now, but it is also lagging GM. As recently as 2021, Ford had a larger market cap than GM, but now, GM is ahead by a healthy margin, up around $60 billion, while Ford languishes at $44 billion.
Is Ford Stock a Good Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on F stock based on five Buys, 10 Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 22.49% rally in its share price over the past year, the average F price target of $11.75 per share implies 4.4% upside potential.
