October 8, 2015 
Ford Motor Company (F) is an American-based, multinational car and truck manufacturer. Ford Motor Company was launched in 1903 with $28,000 in cash from twelve investors, including John and Horace Dodge. By 1919, approximately 50% of the cars sold in the United States were made by Ford.
In 2014, Ford generated sales of approximately $144 billion. Recent quarterly financial results show that 2015 is shaping up to be a good year for Ford since its sales have been strong so far in 2015. Its fiscal year ends on December 31 each year, so its most recent financial statements are for 2014.
See the excerpted Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows from Ford’s 2014 Form 10-K.
Questions
- Has Ford Motor Company’s cash balance decreased or increased over the past year?
- Which type of activity (operating, investing, or financing) is Ford’s largest source of cash inflow? Cash outflow?
- Which type of activity has changed the most drastically over the past year?
- What did Ford use the majority of its cash for in 2014?
Instructor Resources
These resources are provided to give the instructor flexibility for use of Accounting in the Headlines articles in the classroom. The blog posting itself can be assigned via a link to this site OR by distributing the student handout below. Alternatively, the PowerPoint file below contains a bullet point overview of the article and the discussion questions.
- Student handout (pdf) (word) (contains entire blog posting + discussion questions)
- PowerPoint file (brief article overview + discussion questions)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Accounting in the Headlines 
Hi Dr. Tietz,
This is Chirag Desai. I am an accountant by profession. I just read an article on “Bringing real life to the classroom” in Strategic Finance. The article is really impressive and very useful for students as well as professors & accounting practitioners. As a student in various colleges as a student as well as a working professional at office, I have been following similar approach of using simple real life examples.
I joined your blog today and was browsing through the Statement of Cash Flow section within Financial Accounting wherein Ford Motor Company is used as an example. I was wondering if 5th question could be added to the list as below:
5. What is the meaning of Net cash provided by/(used in) operating activities of $14,507 million dollars for Ford Motor Company, Investors, & Lenders? What are major drivers of increase in 2014 versus 2013?
Thanks again for this blog and reinforcing the teaching and learning practical side of accounting!
Thanks for the feedback! Excellent suggestion, thanks.
do you have the answer sheet to these questions?
Hello! I do not provide solutions for two main reasons. One, many of the questions can have differing answers and I want the questions to stimulate discussion and critical thinking. The second reason is that I have no way to control who would get the solutions – many instructors use some variation of particular blog postings as graded assignments. Have a nice day!