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Before passing this off as another "Doom and Gloom" article, read it in full (actually, I had to cut a lot out, this is a very long article). The optimism regarding the potential of the Volt is heartening. - Ming
Company that once provided half of all the vehicles in North America finds itself in perilous state
Jul 13, 2008
David Olive
The Toronto Star
Last Monday, the Wall Street Journal shook up the auto world with a front-page report on GM's woes, and the radical steps the firm is contemplating to ensure its survival.
Little in the report was new. Wall Street long ago factored into GM's share price its litany of woes: The billions of dollars in losses GM has accumulated in recent years, and the continuing losses so far this year; the firm's effective negative net value in balance-sheet terms; GM's steady loss in market share, to a lowly 23 per cent or so; the desperate cash position of a firm that burns through some $3 billion (U.S.) each quarter and must raise at least $10 billion in a hostile stock market to make it through to 2010. And looming cuts in GM's white-collar workforce, after the company threw tens of thousands of workers on the street with plant closures including four announced last month alone, in Oshawa, the U.S. and Mexico.
That's why GM stock is trading at about $10, a 54-year low. And why its shareholder value is a pitiful $5.73 billion, which makes what was the world's biggest automaker less valuable than the larger video-game makers.
For investors in GM bonds and stock, the big shocker last week was a Merrill Lynch analyst's report asserting the possibility of a GM bankruptcy could no longer be dismissed. GM critics have long argued that the firm is on a glide path to insolvency and a bankruptcy-court administered breakup.
The Journal shocker, more internal to the industry, was that GM insiders were talking to the paper along nearly the same lines. The GM officials in the Journal piece were quoted anonymously, but for the first time were going outside the company to admit that the idea of selling or killing most of GM's eight brands was at least "on the table." Which means some of the global industry's most venerable brands – conspicuously Buick and Pontiac, and the younger Saturn – could soon join Oldsmobile, closed down by GM a few years ago with few tears shed even if the legacy of Ransom Olds was Olds' status as the world's oldest auto brand.
Thus GM's top North American sales executive quickly fired off a memo this week to the dealers assuring them the Journal piece had no substance. And CEO Rick Wagoner himself informed GM employees the firm was not skating toward insolvency.
But the media reports and Wall Street's assessment come closer to the truth. Some realities are difficult to hide. North American auto sales are down 10 per cent so far this year. GM's are down 16 per cent. And GM sales of the only vehicles it makes money from – large trucks and sport utilities – are down 25 per cent.
GM has little credibility with Wall Street, having failed with a succession of promised turnarounds over the past decade and a half. "Wait until next year" has been its executive-suite refrain for too long. Wagoner's current fix-it plan was advertised as the mother of all turnaround efforts in GM history. And now even GM insiders are conceding it's too little, too late. Wagoner himself might not survive GM's board meeting early next month.
In fairness to Wagoner, he has cut labour costs as rapidly as possible over the past year. The veteran new-model guru he recruited, Bob Lutz, has come through with vehicles that actually have curb appeal, a novelty for GM since the mid-1980s. Lutz has even arrested the decades-long decline of Cadillac, long ago given up for dead against rivals Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. (Although, to be sure, Cadillac and its Detroit rival, Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln brand, remain also-rans in the luxury sweeps.)
And Wagoner's unstinting investments in new-product development, despite a dwindling GM cash position, has yielded at least one potential industry game-changer, the all-electric Chevrolet Volt, due in showrooms in 2010.
For all the "halo" effect of Toyota's Prius, which has cast an eco-friendly glow over the entire company (even though Toyota makes its share of gas-guzzling large cars, trucks and SUVs), Prius remains a niche product even after several years on the market. Its anticipated 2008 sales are a mere 100,000 vehicles. And the Prius is a hybrid, using both electric power and conventional gasoline.
Not only is the Volt's all-electric technology revolutionary – the biggest industry advance since automatic transmission and perhaps even the perfection of the internal-combustion engine in Germany in the 19th century – but GM alone has the sprawling dealer network to make the Volt readily available to curious tire-kickers.
Wagoner's dilemma is that he launched his deep cost-cutting far too late. That also applies to the breakthrough deal he forged last year with the United Auto Workers to shift the enormous burden of employee health-care costs to a new trust to be administered by the UAW with a one-time mega-contribution from GM.
Wagoner has been especially late in addressing GM's notoriously bloated white-collar workforce, whose natural bureaucratic tendencies are to block innovation. And he has been slow to remove even those top executives culpable in GM's biggest blunders.
Wagoner has been a staunch defender of an eight-division GM, but ultimately it's not his decision to make. It's the call of an increasingly restless GM board that has a fiduciary duty, if nothing else, to curb the cash burn and preserve as much of GM's value as possible on behalf of shareholders. Wagoner's credibility is undermined by his failed attempt to revive Saturn with a slew of costly new models that are showroom dust-collectors.
The hard reality for Wagoner is that he has had his kick at the can, having run GM since early this decade.
There's a precedent for sacking CEOs set by Robert Stempel's ouster by the GM board in the early 1990s. And there's a promising replacement on deck in Frederick "Fritz" Henderson, the former GM chief financial officer recently promoted to president and head of auto operations, a post he took over from Wagoner.
Henderson turned around GM's troubled European and Asian operations, now regarded as among the few crown jewels GM can use as collateral in its urgent recapitalization effort. No sooner had Henderson stepped into his new job than GM hung a for-sale sign on Hummer, a brand which, like Saab, commands a negligible North American market share of 0.2 per cent.
It's difficult to see a future for GM except after being stripped down to Chevrolet, which accounts for well more than half of GM's total business, and a reviving Cadillac that could serve the same purpose that Lexus and Infinity do for Toyota and Nissan Motor Co., respectively.
To pull itself back from the brink, GM needs to wholly commit itself to the costly task of replicating the Volt and becoming the undisputed leader in the small, fuel-efficient vehicles of a 21st-century market.
FULL Article: http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/459290
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Company that once provided half of all the vehicles in North America finds itself in perilous state
Jul 13, 2008
David Olive
The Toronto Star
Last Monday, the Wall Street Journal shook up the auto world with a front-page report on GM's woes, and the radical steps the firm is contemplating to ensure its survival.
Little in the report was new. Wall Street long ago factored into GM's share price its litany of woes: The billions of dollars in losses GM has accumulated in recent years, and the continuing losses so far this year; the firm's effective negative net value in balance-sheet terms; GM's steady loss in market share, to a lowly 23 per cent or so; the desperate cash position of a firm that burns through some $3 billion (U.S.) each quarter and must raise at least $10 billion in a hostile stock market to make it through to 2010. And looming cuts in GM's white-collar workforce, after the company threw tens of thousands of workers on the street with plant closures including four announced last month alone, in Oshawa, the U.S. and Mexico.
That's why GM stock is trading at about $10, a 54-year low. And why its shareholder value is a pitiful $5.73 billion, which makes what was the world's biggest automaker less valuable than the larger video-game makers.
For investors in GM bonds and stock, the big shocker last week was a Merrill Lynch analyst's report asserting the possibility of a GM bankruptcy could no longer be dismissed. GM critics have long argued that the firm is on a glide path to insolvency and a bankruptcy-court administered breakup.
The Journal shocker, more internal to the industry, was that GM insiders were talking to the paper along nearly the same lines. The GM officials in the Journal piece were quoted anonymously, but for the first time were going outside the company to admit that the idea of selling or killing most of GM's eight brands was at least "on the table." Which means some of the global industry's most venerable brands – conspicuously Buick and Pontiac, and the younger Saturn – could soon join Oldsmobile, closed down by GM a few years ago with few tears shed even if the legacy of Ransom Olds was Olds' status as the world's oldest auto brand.
Thus GM's top North American sales executive quickly fired off a memo this week to the dealers assuring them the Journal piece had no substance. And CEO Rick Wagoner himself informed GM employees the firm was not skating toward insolvency.
But the media reports and Wall Street's assessment come closer to the truth. Some realities are difficult to hide. North American auto sales are down 10 per cent so far this year. GM's are down 16 per cent. And GM sales of the only vehicles it makes money from – large trucks and sport utilities – are down 25 per cent.
GM has little credibility with Wall Street, having failed with a succession of promised turnarounds over the past decade and a half. "Wait until next year" has been its executive-suite refrain for too long. Wagoner's current fix-it plan was advertised as the mother of all turnaround efforts in GM history. And now even GM insiders are conceding it's too little, too late. Wagoner himself might not survive GM's board meeting early next month.
In fairness to Wagoner, he has cut labour costs as rapidly as possible over the past year. The veteran new-model guru he recruited, Bob Lutz, has come through with vehicles that actually have curb appeal, a novelty for GM since the mid-1980s. Lutz has even arrested the decades-long decline of Cadillac, long ago given up for dead against rivals Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. (Although, to be sure, Cadillac and its Detroit rival, Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln brand, remain also-rans in the luxury sweeps.)
And Wagoner's unstinting investments in new-product development, despite a dwindling GM cash position, has yielded at least one potential industry game-changer, the all-electric Chevrolet Volt, due in showrooms in 2010.
For all the "halo" effect of Toyota's Prius, which has cast an eco-friendly glow over the entire company (even though Toyota makes its share of gas-guzzling large cars, trucks and SUVs), Prius remains a niche product even after several years on the market. Its anticipated 2008 sales are a mere 100,000 vehicles. And the Prius is a hybrid, using both electric power and conventional gasoline.
Not only is the Volt's all-electric technology revolutionary – the biggest industry advance since automatic transmission and perhaps even the perfection of the internal-combustion engine in Germany in the 19th century – but GM alone has the sprawling dealer network to make the Volt readily available to curious tire-kickers.
Wagoner's dilemma is that he launched his deep cost-cutting far too late. That also applies to the breakthrough deal he forged last year with the United Auto Workers to shift the enormous burden of employee health-care costs to a new trust to be administered by the UAW with a one-time mega-contribution from GM.
Wagoner has been especially late in addressing GM's notoriously bloated white-collar workforce, whose natural bureaucratic tendencies are to block innovation. And he has been slow to remove even those top executives culpable in GM's biggest blunders.
Wagoner has been a staunch defender of an eight-division GM, but ultimately it's not his decision to make. It's the call of an increasingly restless GM board that has a fiduciary duty, if nothing else, to curb the cash burn and preserve as much of GM's value as possible on behalf of shareholders. Wagoner's credibility is undermined by his failed attempt to revive Saturn with a slew of costly new models that are showroom dust-collectors.
The hard reality for Wagoner is that he has had his kick at the can, having run GM since early this decade.
There's a precedent for sacking CEOs set by Robert Stempel's ouster by the GM board in the early 1990s. And there's a promising replacement on deck in Frederick "Fritz" Henderson, the former GM chief financial officer recently promoted to president and head of auto operations, a post he took over from Wagoner.
Henderson turned around GM's troubled European and Asian operations, now regarded as among the few crown jewels GM can use as collateral in its urgent recapitalization effort. No sooner had Henderson stepped into his new job than GM hung a for-sale sign on Hummer, a brand which, like Saab, commands a negligible North American market share of 0.2 per cent.
It's difficult to see a future for GM except after being stripped down to Chevrolet, which accounts for well more than half of GM's total business, and a reviving Cadillac that could serve the same purpose that Lexus and Infinity do for Toyota and Nissan Motor Co., respectively.
To pull itself back from the brink, GM needs to wholly commit itself to the costly task of replicating the Volt and becoming the undisputed leader in the small, fuel-efficient vehicles of a 21st-century market.
FULL Article: http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/459290
