I don't follow Ford's lease arrangement closely enough to offer a strong opinion. Most legacy car companies have ownership of their leasing companies, but I don't claim to know how the books work for reporting income or claiming liabilities.
@jbcarioca had some relevant comments earlier today, perhaps he'd be in a better position to answer your questions.
Seems to me on the face of it that if the hundreds of billion of dollars in long-term debt that Ford is carrying likely does include its car finance loans, but if not then they are really SOL...
Cheers!
Auto leases are fairly arcane topics and very few people understand all the rules. The accounting has changed quite significantly in recent years. If you really want to know, here is the definitive rule set for the USA, for leases of land, plant and equipment. It is this standard that establishes how accounting for GF Shanghai is handled for Tesla, and also for all the manufacturing gear that is leases rather than purchased. I give that reference first because few of us understand much of this
@The Accountant has a background in both US domestic and international applications of US domiciled entities. this is most important because GF Shanghai, GF Grüneheide, global Supercharger network, stores and nearly all other non-US facilities may be subject to these rules:
www.fasb.org
So, back to auto issues. This topic is still somewhat bizarre:
First, for loans. The rule established treats loans pretty much as it traditionally did for credit loss reserving. The primary distinction, is that is now called Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) and requires establishing a loss reserve upon loan origination. That is simple and traditional but...the methodologies are still being refined. Thus far the apparent expectation is that the traditional concepts of Probability of Default(POD) and Loss Given Default (LGD) are in effect combined to establish loan loss reserves. Summary: Tesla will benefit greatly from the new standard because of the combination of superb consumer creditworthiness and high Tesla resale values. Many credit unions and community banks will benefit too. Bluntly: the higher the credit quality and collateral quality the lower will be CECL.
For Tesla this topic is particularly positive because POD for Tesla loans is the lowest in the industry. LGD is among the lowest also. Even totaled Tesla vehicles are usually more valuable than are most tother brands. Thus the credit rating agencies have been penalizing Tesla since the beginning for presumed higher risk which has been contrary to fact. (if any of us are really anal-compulsive enough to go through this most of it is public record.).
Smaller banks and credit unions now have until 2023 to comply with the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s new credit loss accounting rule. The standard, called Current Expected Credit Losses — or CECL, for short — requires lenders to record expected future losses as soon as loans are...
www.autofinancenews.net
The differences between the former lease accounting rules and the new ones are most easily seen here, in my opinion:
Learn about the differences between ASC 840, the old lease accounting standard, and the current standard, ASC 842.
leasequery.com
The is a fairly superficial look, but useful.
Then, most auto leases made though OEM programs are held in special purpose entities which are referred to generically as 'securitizations'. The key difference between loans and leases in this respect is the tax and accounting consequences of vehicle ownership. CECL appears to apply to both. between them the lease issue to that residual value risk remains almost always with the OEM, thus they end out somewhere in the balance sheet. From a credit risk and residual loss perspective the securitizations have collateral substitution requirements to maintain the specified securitization risk ratings.
One easy way to understand all this without losing too much sanity is this Deloitte article from 2017. It is not quite up to date, fo course, but it is quite clear and easy to read for those not enamored of fine print:
frequently-asked-questions-about-fasb-s
In summary, almost all OEM's are 'on the hook' for their leasing risks and nearly all are securitized. Tesla is similar, and uses Special Purpose Vehicles for the purpose. Earlier this year Tesla issued their largest yet:
The $1.18 billion deal is also the first to include Tesla’s mid-range Model Y vehicle (with an MSRP of $54, 119) that makes up 36% of the securitized value of the TALT 2021-A pool, according to a presale report from Moody’s Investors Service.
asreport.americanbanker.com
If anyone is desperate to go deeper just search for 'Tesla ABS' and you can reach fine print enough to resolve any problem with insomnia.
FWIW, I have been on the origination side and the distribution side of these thing in years past. I remain more or less up-to-date by habit but I am definitely no longer an authoritative source on issues like FASB/IASB reconciliation nor the detailed implementation of CECL
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