Thus, to hear Jackson's version of history, the only way America's automakers could be saved was by government rescue. And that was necessary to preserve jobs and technology.
Well, as I've written in several prior posts, a conventional Chapter 11 filing by GM and Chrysler would have provided both with the time and opportunity to reorganize, group healthy units together and refloat them independently, or sell them to bidders. Further, neither company had to cease operations to do this.
Why Jackson seems ignorant of this fact is beyond me. I guess he's either not creative or simply not well-versed in the very real and frequent occurrence of business death or dismemberment.
So, to hear Jackson sing the praises of GM and Ford and the coming high volume vehicle unit sales years is to listen to someone tell half of a story. Give any business free government help to an extreme and you'll get the same happy ending. Jackson failed to discuss government-mandated purchases of hybrids and other unholy consequences of the excessive intervention.
The one- and only- thing which Jackson got right in this morning's auto fairy tale is that Alan Mulally rescued Ford by better leadership, focus and management, not wholesale reinvention- yet. Because it's way too soon, despite the views of many sector cheerleaders with agendas, to declare Ford a medium- to long-term shareholder winner.
The chart above displays the lone US automaker with a continuous price history, Ford, and, for good measure, Jackson's Autonation, along with the S&P500 Index.
If you have a technical inclination, you might notice that both firms' recent rapid price gains don't have long term sustainable precedents. In Ford's case, it's pretty clearly just a function of the rebound from the nadir of the 2008-2009 market bottom. Of the three series, anemic as its last decade has been, the S&P is the least volatile, ending with a much better performance than either company.
Of perhaps more import is how both Ford and Autonation have current share prices below their 1990s-era tops. Autonation peaked a few years before Ford, but both had either a flattening or multi-year decline for most of the past 12+ years. Jackson became CEO of Autonation in 1999, so he owns most of that performance.
What Jackson chooses not to explain, or perhaps genuinely doesn't realize, is that automaking is, for the most part, an unattractive commodity business over the long term. He railed about how China is the real 'Government Motors,' but, if true, this simply proves my point. It's hardly the sort of industry in which you'd invest a billion dollar fortune, if you had one to invest.
For what it's worth, you don't hear this analysis on CNBC during the day, either, when they prominently showcase all those analysts singing GM's praise. There wouldn't be any agenda there, either, would there? Say, for pieces of future underwriting?
Holman Jenkins, Jr., of the Wall Street Journal, has written many times how US auto manufacturing, especially of small cars, has been legislated onshore to appease unions, thus hurting profitability of the assemblers. When you consider where most of the so-called innovations in vehicles originate, it's typically with vendor-supplied assemblies or devices, e.g., anti-lock brakes, airbags, and, now, so famously touted by Ford's Mulally, all manner of wireless communications devices. Thus, most of the profit for the automakers would seem to be sourced in design, rather than manufacture. Otherwise, the smart, value-adding components are available from sector vendors to any assembler.
Doesn't sound very attractive as an investible sector to me. Rather, it sounds more like a case of advanced Schumpeterian dynamics, wherein the value-added growth has long since left the sector's auto assemblers. The entry of Korean and Chinese automakers, and near-exits of GM and Chrysler fits the description of an industry with low barriers to entry and exit.
Hardly your choicest sector for long term investing.
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