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OEM profit forecasts are crumbling under tariff pressures
Forecasting has become a gamble. (3 min. read)
Ash Savage
May 01, 2025
We’re two days out from tariffs on imported auto parts taking hold—and while no one’s necessarily hitting the panic button, guidance is crumbling, pricing is shifting by the hour, and even the most buttoned-up automakers are admitting they’re flying blind.
For context: We’ve been covering this moment in real time inside our CDG Tariff Tracker. And now, with Q1 (and April) behind us—the pressure is steadily spilling into the open.
The latest: Stellantis $STLA ( ▼ 3.23% ) and Mercedes-Benz $MBGYY ( ▼ 3.07% ) just kicked full-year financial guidance down the road.
Stellantis’ reason: “With tariff policies evolving continually, the wide range of potential implications for the marketplaces we operate in and the company's response and mitigation actions still underway, it is not possible at this time to ensure a forecast with adequate accuracy,” CFO Doug Ostermann said on the company’s Q1 earnings call yesterday.
He said that guidance will return when Stellantis can offer it “in a high-quality way.”
Translation: Probably not anytime soon.
Mercedes-Benz echoed similar barriers in its Q1 report.
According to Mercedes: “At this point in time, we are unable to estimate the following reporting figures for the rest of the year, which we normally forecast, in the usual level of detail and specificity: we assume that EBIT and free cash flow of the industrial business, as well as the adjusted returns on sales of Mercedes-Benz Cars and Mercedes-Benz Vans, will be negatively impacted,” according to yesterday’s Q1 report.
Oh—and GM’s $GM ( ▼ 3.62% ) initial estimate that profits of $13.7 billion could climb to $15.7 billion this year?
In the words of CFO Paul Jacobson, via the Detroit News, “You shouldn’t rely on that.”
Worth noting: GM also delayed its Q1 earnings call from earlier this week to today.
Meanwhile, Volkswagen shared guidance—but failed to mention tariffs, leaving UBS’s Patrick Hummel to believe it was “essentially a withdrawal of guidance.”
Digging deeper: Pricing pressure is also building.
Ford $F ( ▼ 1.38% ) , for example, is buying time by extending its “From America, For America” employee pricing campaign through July 4.
Initially, the campaign was set to close on June 2.
What they’re saying: “I think we’re in the first or second inning here, of a nine inning game,” CEO Jim Farley said yesterday.
Worth noting: Mazda’s holding the line too—and it’s not cheap.
According to one district manager at Mazda North American operations, the company is spending $175 million per month to absorb tariff costs.
“No MSRP change is the goal for at least through May,” he told CDG News.
Why this matters: Forecasting has become a gamble. Or, as Stellantis put it—essentially impossible. And with pricing guidance shifting by the day—we’re basically in the early stages of a larger shakeout.
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