GMNYSEThe short version
General Motors Company
General Motors is the largest US automaker, earning nearly all its profit from full-size trucks and SUVs sold and financed at home. This distills how the finished report measures it against a fixed, dislocation-hunting framework, pillar by pillar.
Since its 2010 relisting GM has round-tripped several deep drawdowns; it fell to $42 on 2025 tariffs and has since run to an all-time-high $90 close.
Mkt cap $141.8BP/E FY27E 6.2×
$90
Share price
$88B
Market cap
13.5%
Adj. FCF yield, 3-yr avg
−38%
Shares retired in a decade
SwipeScroll▾
Snapshot
General Motors Company in numbers
Price
$90.30as of 2026-07-28
Mkt cap
$141.8B
12m perf
+68.9%
3m ADV
$580.4M
| Year to Dec (USD) | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026E | 2027E | 2028E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 157.7B | 171.6B | 168.0B | 185.9B | 190.6B | 194.4B |
| EBITDA | 21.0B | 24.2B | 14.9B | 23.0B | 23.8B | 24.2B |
| EBIT | 9.3B | 12.8B | 2.9B | 14.7B | 15.6B | 15.9B |
| EBIT margin | 5.9% | 7.4% | 1.7% | 7.9% | 8.2% | 8.2% |
| EPS | 7.32 | 6.37 | 3.27 | 13.36 | 14.67 | 15.65 |
| P/E | 12.3× | 14.2× | 27.6× | 6.8× | 6.2× | 5.8× |
| FCF yield | 7.0% | 6.6% | 12.4% | 7.3% | 8.2% | 8.4% |
Consensus: S&P Capital IQ (CapIQ) · as of 2026-07-29Derived from run data; ratios use the latest price.
IThe business
The business
General Motors is a car company: one North American truck franchise earns almost all the profit.
FY2025 revenue vs segment profit ($B)
GM Financial shown at EBIT; segments do not sum to group revenue after eliminations.
- One engine. GM North America earned $10.5B of the group's profit on $154.3B of revenue in FY2025; GM Financial added $2.8B and the rest of the world just $0.7B.
- Trucks pay the bills. The profit pool sits in US full-size pickups and SUVs — where GM holds about a third of the market — financed through its captive lender.
- Cyclical, not compounding. Revenue has ranged between $109B and $172B since 2020; FY2025 landed at $168B, down 2% on the year.
Market structure
A seven-way US market with chronic overcapacity leaves GM the lead, but no pricing power.
US light-vehicle market share, 2025 (%)
General Motors
17.2%
Toyota
15.2%
Ford
13.2%
Hyundai-Kia
9.8%
Honda
8.6%
Stellantis
8%
GM's 17.2% share leads a contested field; competitor shares are approximate.
- Leader, not ruler. GM's 17.2% US share sits just ahead of Toyota (~15%) and Ford (~13%), with four more scaled rivals live — a scramble, not a duopoly.
- No pricing power. GM's own 10-K describes an industry with historical excess capacity, where rivals selling more vehicles pressures its pricing and share.
- One real stronghold. Its edge is narrow: about 33% of US full-size trucks, while its US car share has fallen to roughly 2%.
IIIThe story now
The fit
Does not fit the framework (P1 not met); contested: P2
~0.50
Modeled odds the year-10 gate holds — near-certainty required
13.5%
Adjusted FCF yield against the 10% bar
0.63
Probability the 2025 impairment is temporary
Medium
Overall confidence tier
- The gate governs. GM is a car company, a named exclusion, and the pure year-10 durability gate does not hold — a gate nothing else offsets.
- Every other pillar clears. A double-digit cash yield, a net-cash industrial balance sheet, a share count down 38% in a decade — GM passes each valuation and self-help test it is set.
- It fails anyway. Four blind jurors put year-10 conviction at a coin toss (~0.50); the gate demands near-certainty, so any proper doubt resolves it to does not fit.
Year-10 gate
The gate demands near-certainty on cash flow; GM's structural risks leave only a coin toss.
The year-10 doubt, itemized
| Year-10 drag | Cost | Self-correcting? |
|---|---|---|
| EV realignment | $7.9B in 2025 | Mostly — charge terminating |
| Tariffs | $3.1B EBIT / yr | Policy — partly reversing |
| China JVs | −$0.3B; JV expires 2027 | No — structural |
| Moat | One truck franchise | No — no pricing power |
- Too many wildcards. EV-transition timing, a shrinking China, and a recurring tariff drag all sit largely outside GM's control and currently cut against year-10 cash flow.
- The counter-case. GM has produced positive free cash flow every year since 2016 and guides 2026 EBIT-adjusted back to $13–15B — earning power well above the charge-hit 2025 result.
- Execution isn't a moat. GM out-executes today, but the doubt is structural: no durable pricing power beyond one truck franchise.
Dislocation
The 2025 tariff drawdown was real but shallow, and it has fully reversed.
−29%
Peak-to-trough fall, Nov 2024–Apr 2025
1.6×
Peak volume vs normal — short of capitulation
$42.48
April 2025 trough close
+50%
Current price above the pre-fall peak
- Real, dated, shallow. GM fell 29% from a $60.20 peak (Nov 2024) to a $42.48 trough (Apr 2025) on a 25% import tariff and a matching guidance cut.
- No capitulation. Volume ran only 1.6× normal through the fall — orderly repricing, not the 60–70% forced selling the framework hunts for.
- Already gone. At $90 the stock sits about 50% above the pre-fall peak, so the entry trigger is no longer live.
Damage math
Reported profit halved on a one-time EV write-off; underlying earning power did not move.
What the drawdown priced vs plausible value lost ($B)
NPV-lite: 10% discount, no growth; temporary = 3-year hit, permanent = perpetual.
- Optics, not earning power. Reported net income halved to $2.7B on a one-time $7.9B EV write-off; adjusted EPS held near $10.60 and is guided higher.
- The gap has closed. Peak-to-trough the market erased about $21B against a temporary-case NPV loss of $5–10B — a real gap in April 2025, since reversed.
- A moderate lean. A blind trial put the odds the damage is temporary at 0.63; the China and Cruise write-offs are the genuinely permanent pieces.
Self-help
Buybacks retired more than a third of the shares — the one flywheel that is unmistakably real.
Diluted share count (millions)
- Executed, not promised. GM spent $11.1B, $7.1B and $6.0B on buybacks in 2023–2025, retiring about 465M shares — roughly 35% — at a blended ~$49 against $90 today.
- Denominator shrinking. Diluted shares fell from 1,570M in 2016 to 973M in 2025; the rising-share-count hard-fail is absent.
- The caveat. GM paused repurchases when tariffs hit in Q1 2025, and insiders buy none of the stock in the open market.
The clock
GM's own history says deep drawdowns round-trip in three to four years; this one already has.
GM's deep drawdowns since 2011 all round-tripped
| Episode | Depth | Trough→recovery |
|---|---|---|
| 2011–13 | −52% | 16 months |
| 2013–17 | −35% | 20 months |
| 2017–21 | −64% | 10 months |
| 2022–25 | −60% | 23 months |
- Serial deep drawdowns. Four falls of 35–64% since 2011 each fully recovered; trough-to-recovery ran 10–23 months, full round trips about three to four years.
- Already re-rated. The 2025 dip bottomed at $42 and the stock has since made new highs — the re-rating mechanism has fired.
- Catalysts, not gaps. Buybacks, next-gen trucks from December 2026, and a guided 2027 growth year drive compounding, not a gap-closing bounce.
IVThe price
Yield vs the bar
The adjusted cash yield clears the 10% bar on every basis — the classic value-trap signature.
Adjusted FCF yield vs the framework's 10% bar
3-yr avg adjusted FCF
13.5%
FY2025 automotive FCF
12.1%
Consensus forward FCF
11%
- Clears on every basis. The adjusted FCF yield is about 13.5% on the three-year average, 12.1% on FY2025 automotive FCF, and 11.0% on conservative consensus forward FCF.
- The signature to distrust. A car company screening cheap on FCF yield is the framework's canonical value trap, so a passing yield reads as a warning, not a fit.
- Not a fear jump. GM has screened cheap on cash yield for a decade; today's yield continues that pattern rather than marking a dislocation.
Forward yield
Consensus sees free-cash-flow yield climbing past 13% by 2028.
Consensus forward FCF yield on today's market cap (%)
- Rising, not cut. Consensus free-cash-flow yield runs 11.0% (2025) to 13.6% (2028) on today's market cap, so no mean-reversion underwrite is needed.
- Fear, not fundamentals. The sell side already agrees the cash is there; what is depressed is GAAP earnings and sentiment, not forward cash flow.
The price
At an all-time high, the cash yield is there but the fear discount is gone.
$90.30
All-time-high close — the drawdown fully reversed
+113%
Gain since the April 2025 trough
8.9 yrs
Consensus free cash flow to buy the whole company
- No discount left. The framework's target math needs a fear price to re-rate from; at an all-time high with the drawdown reversed, there is none.
- Not an absurd price. About 8.9 years of consensus free cash flow would buy the whole company — normal-to-cheap, not the ~3-year figure that signals a price that cannot survive.
- The gate still closes it. Even with the cash-return mechanics intact, the year-10 gate decides the report.
What to watch
GM clears every cash-and-capital test the framework sets and fails the one gate that overrides them all.
- 01FY2026 EBIT-adjusted lands below ~$13B or auto FCF below ~$9B
- 02revenue declines for a third consecutive year
- 03share count inflects upward
- 04China keeps bleeding with further restructuring and no recovery in equity income above ~$1B
This is a distillation of a fixed fit test built pillar by pillar; the full report holds the evidence.
Compiled from the full report · 2026-07-29 · For information, not investment advice.