General Motors at Deutsche Bank Conference: Strategic Moves Amid Market Shifts

On Wednesday, 11 June 2025, General Motors (NYSE:GM) presented its strategic vision at the Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference 2025. The company emphasized resilience and customer-centric strategies to navigate market challenges, including tariffs and electric vehicle (EV) adoption. While GM announced a $4 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, concerns about declining consumer demand and tariffs were also addressed.

Key Takeaways

• GM plans a $4 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing to boost production by 300,000 units.
• Potential resumption of share buybacks as early as Q3, depending on market stability.
• Tariff mitigation strategies aim for a $500 million to $1 billion cost reduction.
• Super Cruise subscription renewals show high-margin revenue potential.
• GM targets a 50% EV share by 2035, contingent on consumer adoption.

Financial Results

• GM is considering resuming share buybacks in Q3, contingent on market conditions and tariff policies.
• The company aims to mitigate tariff impacts through market adjustments and cost reductions, targeting savings between $500 million and $1 billion.
• Q2 is expected to bear the highest tariff impact, with offsets taking time to implement.
• Super Cruise adoption rates are promising, with over 30% renewal rates after the initial prepaid period, indicating strong revenue potential.

Operational Updates

• GM’s $4 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing will focus on full-size trucks, SUVs, and the Equinox.
• The Orion plant will pivot to full-size truck and SUV production due to slower-than-expected EV adoption.
• The Spring Hill facility will produce both EVs and internal combustion engine vehicles to maintain flexibility.
• GM plans to retain engineers focused on personal autonomy, aiming to save up to $1 billion annually.

Future Outlook

• GM is focusing on achieving EV profitability, shifting capital expenditures towards improving profitability rather than expanding the portfolio.
• The company aims for a 50% EV market share by 2035, depending on consumer adoption and regulatory support.
• GM is testing an asset-light model in Europe, with initiatives like a Cadillac dealer in Paris.
• Participation in Formula One is seen as a strategy to amplify the Cadillac brand globally.

Q&A Highlights

• GM’s EV strategy leverages the Ultium platform for flexible and efficient production.
• The current vehicle portfolio is 40% variable profit positive, with efforts to enhance profitability across all EV offerings.
• GM plans to build its own power unit, expected to be operational by 2028.

For more detailed insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference 2025:

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: Welcome, everyone. My name is Edison Yu. I lead the US Auto’s Equity Research at the bank. It’s my pleasure to welcome the CFO of GM, Hulkett Jacobsen. Thank you so much for joining.

Thanks for having us. Appreciate it, Ashley. It’s been a dynamic start to the year to say the least. We have tectonic shifts in in US policy. Generally speaking, I think most people would agree US automakers, US based automakers are the relative winners.

You’ve really prioritized pricing since you took over the helm. At the same time, you know, based on some of the comments and latest guidance, it does seem that GM is signaling ability to to absorb some of the cost through through volume. How are you thinking about this this balance of of volume slash market share versus pricing incentives?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Yeah. So let me let me start at the beginning. I mean, of all, I don’t I don’t think what the administration is doing is trying to pick winners and losers necessarily. I think there’s clearly a policy shift policy agenda. And, you know, I think, as you said, this been a little bit of a a big shift since the beginning of the year, but that’s been true for each of the last several years, whether it’s been chip crisis or or demand changes, etcetera.

But I think, you know, what what the team has really demonstrated, I think, is a sense of resiliency and a let’s just figure it out, grind it out, and and make sure that we we continue to run the business as efficiently as possible. I’m incredibly proud of what what the team has been able to do and the results they’ve been able to publish inside of all that uncertainty and and what we’ve generated. And I think this is just another step. I think you saw the announcements last night about $4,000,000,000 investments into US manufacturing. It will increase production by about 300,000 units in The US for The US.

It’s through a combination of underutilized capacity shifting from plants as we see where demand is responding to customer trends as well as creating some incremental production in some of our best selling units, particularly full size SUVs and Equinox, etcetera. So what we’re trying to do is make sure that we recognize the variables that are changing and go after them in a way that’s efficient, that responds to where our customers are and also help to drive the product portfolio the best we can. Because your question about pricing too is, I wouldn’t say that we’ve been really focused on pricing. I would say we’ve been focused on discipline throughout the industry. Pricing is an outcome of that, but discipline throughout everything that we do is really helping to create more consistent results and a more consistent offering to customers.

It benefits them in terms of having some certainty. We have more certainty and consistency and residual values, etcetera. And it benefits us because we’re able to plan better. So, you know, I think this industry has been very cyclical, not on not unlike past industry that I’ve been in as well. But what we’ve gotta do is avoid the self imposed cyclicality.

What are the things that historically we’ve done that actually accelerate or amplify that cyclicality over time? And one of the ways that we typically contributed to that was with inventory management. We would take inventory way up. We’d find that demand slowed, and then we’d have to discount steeply to be able to do that. That leads to a significant decline and a rapid decline in cash flows and doesn’t allow us to plan, it doesn’t allow us to budget, it doesn’t allow us to properly allocate our capital according to our policy.

So it’s really that discipline more than focused on pricing because you can say you’re focused on pricing and just take it higher. If the demand isn’t there, if you don’t have the quality of products, if you don’t understand where you sit in the competitive landscape, that’s a that’s a failing strategy. But what we’ve been able to do is really focus it on the customer, our portfolio, and the demand for that portfolio. And to a large extent, I would say we’ve been able to be independent. So, you know, we’re not responding immediately to what’s going on in the market because we’re focused solely on our demand set and our product portfolio, and that’s really benefited us.

And I think it’s contributed to a lot of the outperformance that you’ve seen against some of our competitors.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: Wanted to touch on the announcement yesterday. Obviously, that was very timely for this conference. Right? You just mentioned, I think you you had about 300,000 units of production. That takes you to about, call it, two plus million in The US.

How do we think about, I guess, the the distribution of that 300 k? Is it primarily on the on the full size trucks? Is it kinda split evenly between that and and some of the other vehicles? Yeah. It’s it’s really

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: a combination of all of it, and it’s really bent on focusing how are we gonna utilize the plants, how are we gonna create more security at our plants given the uncertainty of where EV adoption is. So, you know, if we start with Orion, you know, we had planned for that to be a big EV plant as we were we were thinking about rapid expansion of electric vehicles, and clearly, we haven’t seen that happen. So as we look at that capacity and we look at the landscape where we’re in, pivoting that to full size truck production as well as incremental full size SUV production is gonna help create and satisfy the demand that we’ve already seen in the marketplace for our for our industry leading products and give an opportunity to be able to to produce and and increase production a little bit more by benefiting from that higher utilization. Then you’ve got the the the Equinox, which we’re gonna be able to create some incremental production as well as shifting it and use that in a great solution that’s gonna allow us, much like Spring Hill, to be able to produce EVs and ICE vehicles on the same line.

That optionality is really important and critical for us as we move forward, being able to respond to where EV demand is gonna be. And ultimately, why we chose Spring Hill as the location for our Investor Day last year was to showcase that and then to be able to move the Blazer into Spring Hill, which will help us ultimately balance that plant as well as we see some of the ICE vehicles that were produced there starting to come out. So I think this is a great example of how we can pivot, how we can adjust, how we can be resilient in the face of, you know, an environment that’s changing around us. I know a lot of the fear from talking to investors was that the policies that are being enacted by the administration were gonna create a significantly run on cap significant run on capital. $4,000,000,000 is a lot of money, but I think we’ve been able to thread that in ways that are capitalizing on the next generation of vehicles coming in to do it efficiently, not building walls that we don’t need to build where we can fill plants up, and also keep our our capital forecast in line and consistent with where we’ve seen it.

So we’ve taken it up a little from 10 to 11 in twenty twenty five to 10 to 12 over the next couple of years. But that’s our job is to to balance that, to reprioritize, and reallocate capital, and I think the team’s done a good job.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: Just one housekeeping on the on the four. Does that

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: include the eight eight eight for the the eight plan? The 808 for the v eight plant? No. That was This is this is this is additional. So we talked about that Gen six capacity Okay.

That is gonna be there in Tonawanda, and that’s gonna help us with that truck. But that it coincides with, excuse me, it coincides with the the next generation and and what those Gen six engines are gonna go into. And I guess as it relates to

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: you mentioned capital and and obviously, we’ve we’ve heard similar, you know, similar feedback from from investors. Now that we have some some numbers around the the CapEx, does that give you, I guess, bit more line of sight into the the capital returns and how quickly or how more aggressively you can get on that?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Well, I mean, I think we said at a conference a conference a few weeks ago that we expect to be in a position to resume potential share buybacks in the half of the year and potentially as soon as the third quarter. You know, we’re we’re trying to get through the uncertainty just like everybody in the market is from that standpoint. And I think as the administration has rolled off rolled out the tariff policy and how it’s going to be implemented, As we’ve seen, demand remain relatively stable. And as we’ve seen a market that seems to be moving moving past it a little bit, it gives us a little bit more certainty around the cash flows. And that’s what we’ve been looking for is we we we are absolutely committed to our capital allocation policy, but we’ve got to make sure that we maintain that confidence going forward.

And through this period of uncertainty, I think it was a good pause. As I’ve mentioned before, we were still in the market for the bulk of the second quarter as the banks that were party to that accelerated share repurchase were still in there, retiring their shares, covering their positions, etcetera. So we were still in the market doing it even if it was under that ASR. But I think we’ll be in a position as soon as the third quarter to potentially start repurchasing shares again.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: Wanna get your thoughts on kind of what you’re seeing on the on the ground, particularly in the in The US. You know, when when the tariffs were announced, obviously, saw this big surge in in sales. I I think you probably call that some some maybe pre buy. How how is the consumer looking from from your perspective? And and do you think you’re starting to see some of that, you know, pre buy kind of wear off based on kind of last month sales?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Yeah. I mean, we we we we’ve certainly seen that come back down, and I think the question out of earnings was going to be how far does it come down? So, you know, we were running at about a 16 SAAR that spiked in April and May up to high seventeen, seventeen eight. And and we’ve seen that come back down in late May and and early June, and and we’re seeing it, you know, around that high fifteens, 16 mark. And it’s still been, you know, pretty recent.

It’s only two to three weeks. And what we feel comfortable that at the end of the day, it’s gonna kinda settle out where where we thought it was going to be around that 16,000,000 unit mark. So we’re watching that closely. Like I said, it’s it’s pretty new information, but certainly the the sales rates and the volumes that we saw in April and and the May aren’t gonna we don’t expect them to continue through through June. As far as where the consumer is, know, I think, look, the, you know, many competitors have announced pricing actions and so on and so I think as a general rule, they’ve been somewhat less than what expectations maybe were right out of the announcement from that standpoint.

So, you know, I think hopefully that results in some stability in the consumer going forward. I think we don’t we don’t ever wanna be in a position where we’re shocking the consumer reacting. So you raise prices, you create a lull in demand, and then you just have to start discounting again. We wanna be more consistent about how we do that, and that that goes back to that discipline that I talked about in the answer to the question is the more disciplined you are, the less inventory you have sitting around them, the less you have to whipsaw pricing and discounting in order to address those inventory builds. So really proud of how the team has managed that.

I know historically there have been temptations even from the finance side of the house to go ahead and produce to try to hit numbers and so on and and book those wholesales. We gotta get out of that business and focus on where that end consumer is. And and maintaining that discipline, I think, has has helped us through this as well.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: On the competition, you know, I I sort

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: of and you sort of,

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: I think, would would agree that there are certain structural advantages in GM. GM has some of the Asian OEMs. Are are you surprised they they actually haven’t raised price more given their their cost structure is kind of unfavorable?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Well, I mean, I won’t comment on anybody’s specific pricing strategies or or what we’re seeing. I think, you know, that’s a that’s a question for them. As I mentioned, our approach to pricing is looking specifically at where our demand set is, how we discount, etcetera. And I think when you look at the relative incentive levels, not just based on where the industry is today, but based on where we are in relation to that industry, I think you see the power of our disciplined approach. You know, we’re running two to 300 basis points less than the industry average on discounting.

And that’s that’s generating, you know, significant significant incremental revenue to our products, and and that helps us. Because I think so much of the history of this business has been focused on cut cost, cut cost, cut cost. Well, you can do that to a point, but once you start cutting content out of the vehicle and cutting cutting costs, I mean, you can have the cheapest vehicle produced in the world, and if there isn’t demand for it because customers don’t respond to the features or or whatever you cut out of it, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have anybody to sell it to. So focusing on that margin balance where you’re also looking at the revenue side of the equation, what are those features that customers want?

That’s really benefited from us. We’ve benefited from that. So that’s our approach to pricing. And I think, like I said before, it served us quite well in terms of our financial performance and our ability to deliver more consistent results.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: You mentioned costs. I I think most people would agree GM has actually done an excellent job on the cost structure. With tariffs now, you you you indicated you actually mitigate quite a bit of it. Is that kind of going according to plan on on the tariff mitigation side? Yeah.

I would

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: say so, and I appreciate you saying that because we actually don’t hear that we’ve done an excellent cost. So that’s I’m flattered. Thank you for that. And anybody in the meetings later today, if you wanna say it, we’ll take that too. But, you know, I think this is this is important in the in the discipline side of it because as as much as I talked about, you know, cutting costs in the vehicle and going after customer content is not the right way to run a successful business.

Going after costs and being more efficient and all those things that the customer doesn’t see is absolutely critically important. We had good success with our $2,000,000,000 cost reduction. When we rolled out the, you know, what we’re calling it self help, etcetera, the 30 percent offset of the tariff impact, we really put that into three different buckets. One was go to market, which we said we didn’t need to take any price increases, etcetera. We just needed to maintain some consistency.

And and based on how we started the year, we felt like we were in a good position to do that. That was the bucket. The the bucket was the footprint changes. So, you know, things like what we did at Fort Wayne where we increased the line rate to to get, you know, an extra 50,000 units of trucks capacity annually in Fort Wayne simply by hiring a few people and increasing the line rate, driving more efficiency and utilization out of the plant. The announcements that we made today or last night, sorry, are they’re gonna help us, but at the end of the day, it’s gonna take a couple of years to get that as we said, you know, early twenty seven, late twenty six before that production starts.

And then the bucket is gonna be cost reduction. So we cracked open the COVID playbook. We’re really careful to look at it and study how did the company respond really quickly to that shock to the system, if you will, and what are some of the lessons that we could apply today, recognizing it’s a very different environment. Back then, you know, we could cut production and we could cut costs because nobody was leaving their house and certainly not going to dealerships to buy vehicles. Today, they are.

In fact, for the couple of months, they’ve been going to dealerships faster than they were before this. So there are things that that that we can do and and manage our our costs down, and we had put a 500,000,000 to a billion dollar target in there. I’d say we’ve made really good progress in the six weeks. We’re we’re not where we need to be, but, you know, six weeks into it, it’s in a it’s in a really good spot, and I feel confident that we’ll be able to get there. So, you know, it’s important to note, especially as an analyst, you’re really focused on the quarter performance.

The second quarter, we expect, will be the highest tariff impact we have because ultimately, it’s going to take time to work some of these net offsets in, etcetera. You know, there’ll be a little bit of seasonality that works its way in, but but we feel good about, you know, our overall strategy and being able to work through it.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: Two part question on on EVs. GM has obviously done tremendous amount of of investment in in The US on on EVs. part, how does one think about the, you know, kind of the regulatory backdrop we’re in right now in the context of all that? And then secondly, is there opportunity to kind of collaborate in some way to kind of spread that cost around? I know you guys worked with Honda.

Is is there more room for that, something like that?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Well, you know, I think we we’ve got we’ve got good partnerships, and we’ve got an an open mentality to to look for those. And the the work that we’re doing with Hyundai that we’ve announced at least the framework and and, you know, be more specifics coming around that, I think shows our willingness to to collaborate and find efficient solutions where it makes sense. You know, I think there are areas that we need to make sure that we maintain, you know, competitive advantage where we can. So we have to be careful about that in areas where we can make parts of our brand distinctive, etcetera. So I think it’s finding that right blend and being able to do that.

The Honda partnership worked out really well for us in various aspects. Excited about what we can do with Hyundai and excited for a lot of things that we have in our own pipeline as well. Shifting gears to kind of autonomy.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: You’ve been integrating the the cruise team. Also, two part question is how does how does one think about the the level of investing going forward on on autonomy in the context of the the, you know, the 10 to 12,000,000,000? And then, you know, separately, there’s, know, the partnership now with with NVIDIA, which is getting, I think, a lot of attention on the

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: and then AI side. What what’s what’s the future? What’s the future there? Yeah. So when we we made the tough decision to to walk away from the Robotaxi business, it was really one that was based on capital availability, notwithstanding the fact that autonomy had been experiencing pretty boom in interest in the capital markets.

You know, when we went to the markets, what we were finding was a lot of people were willing to put in a little bit of money, but they were only willing to put in a little bit of money after GM put in a lot of money. And, you know, that was something that when you look at our cost of capital, when you look at our capital priorities, funding a robotaxi operation and building that wasn’t gonna be something that that we saw as a as a sort of good sort of disciplined use of capital going forward, especially against all of our other commitments and priorities. So we made that decision. It wasn’t walking away It was walking away from the robo taxi side of it.

So personal autonomy, I think, is something that’s still important. And so what we’ve done is we’ve retained some of those engineers, focused that on on on personal autonomy. And at the end of the day, we said we’ll save about half a billion dollars this year and working our way up to to saving a billion dollars a year versus what we were spending on a cruise. And that’ll be a lot more capital light because it coincides with the work that we are doing on Super Cruise and and l two, l three, ultimately, turning going forward. So we think it was a much more efficient solution.

I mean, we’re grateful for what the what the Cruise team did. It just you know, it’s part of part of the tough reality of capital allocation and prioritization that that we had to make that decision, but I think it’s the right one for for the shareholders of GM. On the I

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: guess, the revenue side of that, when do you think you can kind of start monetizing those those efforts with higher level of time personal autonomy?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Well, we’re we’re already kind of seeing that a little bit with Super Cruise, and I and I think this is a good test bed for the the commercial features and and customers’ willingness to to pay for those features. So, you know, our strategy with Super Cruise has been a little bit different. So customers buy it upfront, pay for the hardware package, get it for three years, and then at the end of three years, we see opportunities for them to subscribe to it and continue to subscribe to it. So if you look at that, the customer elections and adoptions of Super Cruise are actually increasing exponentially. We expect that to double this year.

And it’s a little bit different than those companies that are actually putting it on every vehicle and then soliciting folks. We think this is more efficient because people will cover the cost of the hardware who want it. And what we’re seeing is customers who who have it, love it. And so it’s in the really early stages of coming off that initial three year prepaid period, but we’re we’re now seeing attachment rates north of 30%. Mhmm.

And that for people whose three year period expires and they’re re upping for a new new subscription. So we’re gonna be really focused on that because, obviously, that’s incredibly high margin revenue for us going forward. And I think it’s indicative of what the market is going to eventually be for that. But we’ve gotta keep up with the functionality. Clearly, there are a lot of companies that are out there that are making great strides in autonomy, and and we need to figure out at the end of the day, do we continue to go it alone?

Do we partner with somebody? Do we we enter into strategic relationships, etcetera? So we’re working through all that to try to find the most efficient way to to get the best products to market for our customer. What’s the, I guess, the the biggest obstacle to to getting, I guess, much much higher Super Cruise adoption? Is it is it cost?

Is it education to the consumer? Well, I think it’s, you know, the the the education, and this is the part of the the strategy of going out and and, you know, having a prepaid subscription along with the hardware for three years is is get people comfortable with it, etcetera. Think over time, you know, and we’re like I said, we’re dealing with really small numbers because remember the vehicles that are rolling off that three years were Yeah. During the peak of the semiconductor crisis. And as we said before, semiconductor related to supercrews were some of the most heavily impacted chips that we saw.

So they’re still relatively small numbers. I think we’ve got to focus on how do we reach our customers, how do we explain the value proposition, etcetera. And then ultimately, over the long haul, how do we make sure that we understand and are able to capture the and owners of the vehicle going forward. I think this is going be integral to the software revenue strategy overall as we expand that into software defined vehicles is making sure that we’re marketing to the vehicle owner, whoever that might be, even if it’s not the initial purchaser of that vehicle. So a lot of good work going in here.

I wanna give a shout out to Ralph Darmo and the entire GM rewards team. We just rolled out a new loyalty card with new bank partner. We’ve seen some really good success with that. But I think that that rewards opportunity, co brand card is a real opportunity for us to build those muscles on that direct to consumer, that B2C business that historically we’re going to have to get really good at in the future in order to to help maximize and drive the revenues from personalization and and so on. So really encouraged by that start.

It’s been a couple of weeks. And if you haven’t already, go get the new GM rewards card. That’s my my my free promo for that, but lots of exciting things coming alongside that.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: I’ll I’ll trade in my my Delta card.

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: I’m a shareholder of Delta. You can you can have two. Just plug ours into your Apple Pay and everything else, but happy for you to use both. Just drive your GM car to the airport to get on a Delta flight. It will work great for my family.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: So switching gears, I actually we we noticed that there’s a very fancy Cadillac dealer in

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Paris. Very, very, very stylish.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: Any any any thoughts on on GM kind of taking a closer look or or getting bigger in in Europe?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Yeah. So we we we have previously announced that we’re we’re we’re targeting Europe, but it’s very, very different than the way we’ve done it before. I think, you know, the notion of having a lot of assets and a lot of infrastructure over there, we we really can’t do it that way. So we’re we’re doing much more of an asset light model, bringing our electric vehicles there. What we’ve seen is that the the value that we can get from them over there incrementally somewhat a little bit better than than what we’ve been able to do here given lower adoption rates here in The US, although they’re performing well.

So the idea is can we we ship some production over there? You know, I think we’re continuing to watch it really closely. What we’ve challenged the team is we can’t get too deep in the cost structure before we’ve started to build up some of the success. So what what you see in Paris is, you know, what I would say is a is a dip the toe in the water type approach to test it. We’ve seen some really good results.

I mean, it’s the number one selling EV luxury EV in its class in France. We saw car of the year from many journalists in Germany for electric vehicle of the year in that segment, which is a huge testament to to what we’ve been able to do with the Cadillac Lyriq and and what it means to consumers. I think we’re meant to to get it out there, but we’re meant to do it as efficiently as we can so that we can watch the market and scale appropriately rather than just putting a lot of assets in trying to make something work.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: Kind of in relation and this last question on my end, MGM is getting into f one in a in a really big way. Their crosstown rival is also getting involved in in a in a different way, though. Why why do you think there’s such a big push now from The US automakers to to get that one?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Well, I think, you know, when you look at GM Motorsports, we have a long legacy there, and we’ll be in Le Mans this weekend as well as I as I know Ford also will be and looking forward to spirited competition in those classes. But when you look at the success that we’ve had, whether it’s in Indy, NASCAR, IMSA, Le Mans, etcetera, that, you know, f one is a natural opportunity for that. But what I would say is it’s a little bit different. I mean and and it’s not just, you know, the premise of your question was Europe, but I think you look at the growth that we’ve seen in North America and throughout the world. It it it clearly is an amazing brand and an amazing testament to to race craft technology, etcetera.

But I think it’s also an opportunity to really amplify the Cadillac brand. So we, you know, we’re able to go in with our partners at TWG Motorsports, incredible partners to have and absolutely committed to that success of that team. And, you know, what we bring to the table in terms of building our own power unit, we’ll bring that to the grid in 2028, but also, you know, participating in the ownership of the team. That’s gonna be really important because it helps us to not only amplify our brand, but also capitalize on what we expect to be the success of that team going forward and being able to share in the revenues and the value accretion from that team. But if you just look at some of the initial things that we’ve done, you know, I think the the Cadillac logo Formula One team logo reveal that came out, I think, had 9,000,000 views on social media.

That blows out of the water anything that Cadillac has done on its own, etcetera. So this is an opportunity not just to showcase it, but to really amplify the Cadillac brand, not just throughout Europe and the world, but even in here in North America. And I think I think represents a really great opportunity for us going forward. Well, we’re looking forward to that for sure. I’ll open it

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: up to the audience for a quick question. Think we’re behind for maybe one. The hardest part is

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: I have to convince my children to drop their favorite teams because we’re gonna have a new favorite team next year. So

Unidentified speaker: Thanks. Thank you so much for coming. Really appreciate it. Just a quick question on segmentation in between the different electrified lineup for for Chevy, for GMC, for Buick, and now, you know, you with Cadillac, the IQ. I saw my IQ in the street, by the way.

It looked great. Excellent. What’s the what’s the strategy going forward with you know, in terms of is there cannibalization potential there with too many EV models out? And then what’s what do the economics look like for, you know, the larger scale EV, whether it’s, you know, the the the Blazer or the Cadillac? Is it is it possibly the same as the ICE for those models?

And what’s the, you know, the path forward in the next couple of years and the the the future of, you know, driving profitability for the, you know, the 100 k plus models of the Cadillac?

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Yeah. Sure. So, of all, I appreciate the kind remarks about the Escalade IQ. I know the team is incredibly proud of that, and, the the people who’ve gotten one, have been raving about it. So, we’re excited about that that vehicle and what it represents, you know, alongside that that premium brand that we were just talking about going forward.

So, you know, look, electric vehicles, we we started this, and I know many people didn’t believe us when when we said it at Investor Day a couple of years ago, that we saw EVs as a growth opportunity. And we’re pretty confident at that time that we could pick up share in EVs at the same time we were growing share in ICE vehicles. And and the market really didn’t believe us. But you look at our ICE penetration right now, we’re up two points in share year over year running in the 17s, which are numbers that we haven’t seen in more than a decade, which is a testament to that vehicle portfolio and what I talked about before. But at the same time, you know, even though EV adoption is flat to slightly down, we’re growing faster than many else many other people.

And and Chevrolet recently, just Chevrolet, became the number two seller of EVs last month in the country. So General Motors has a clear lead in number two in electric vehicles. So we’ve been able to do that. I think the difference in our EV strategy than what you’ve seen from many others is it goes back to that platform. So, you know, while the the hype of EV adoption three, four years ago, you know, people generally perceived us as being late, and we probably were, but we were focused on that platform.

We were focused on what Altium could do. We talked about being able to switch form factors and switch chemistries in the future, etcetera, and that flexibility was really important. But also the flexibility for the portfolio because the propulsion system is the same and the batteries are shaped, you know, put in different configurations, but they’re the same battery cells, same motors, etcetera. It allows us to build a variety of top hats and build a portfolio much more efficiently than if we’re just building single set electric vehicles. So that helped, and I think it’s put us in a position where we can be successful even in a slower adoption world.

So as we look at what the next five years might be, and let’s assume that the administration is successful in sort of bringing back some of the regulatory requirements that, you know, we’re we’re basically trying to put the industry to 50% EVs by 02/1935. It’s clear the consumer is not ready for that yet. But we do think EVs can continue to grow, and we can be a meaningful role in that. We talk internally about the number one thing that we can do for our multiple and market capitalization is get EVs to profitability, And we’re on that journey, a big step. Several weeks ago when we announced the new LMR chemistry, the new prismatic can form factors as well as doing LFP with our partners at LGES.

That’s gonna save us thousands of dollars and and ultimately make the the vehicles that much better going forward. So we’re committed to getting EVs profitable. In fact, if you look at our capital expenditures around EVs, it’s gonna look different for the next three years than it did for the last three. Last three, we were building out a portfolio. The next three years of capital and engineering are focused on taking that portfolio and making it as as profitable as we possibly can.

It’ll take a while to be able to get there to the same level of ICE, but we believe that it can be done, and we’re on a journey to be able to do that. We said in the first quarter that about 40% of our vehicles are variable profit positive. We weren’t VP positive at the fleet level like we were in the fourth quarter primarily because of mix. But we’re focused on getting each individual offering to that level and being at 40% of our product portfolio is I think a great step. We have a lot of work to do, but we’re committed to being able to do that.

And ultimately, we think much the same as our ICE portfolio, we can deliver EVs that customers want and that customers are looking for. And that’s why you’ve seen us being able to grow that share despite the fact that in the EV space, our incentives are less than 50% of what others are offering in the marketplace. So we think that’s a much more sustainable approach, and we expect it to be successful for us over the coming years. Thanks for that question.

Edison Yu, Equity Research Lead, Bank: On that note, I think we we are out of time. Alright.

Hulkett Jacobsen, CFO, GM: Well, thank you for your time. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. And for those that listen on the webcast, thank you.

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