We've all been waiting for.
Thank you, Rod.
No pressure there.
Little bit of pressure. Look, everybody knows our next fireside chat is going to be with General Motors. Just to introduce GM. In a pretty challenging environment last year that tripped up more than a few global automakers, GM hit their targets once again. 2022 earnings were actually at the upper end of expectations that were set at the beginning of the year. That's, it's really remarkable when you think about what the company faced. They wound up coming up in with global EBIT of $14.5 billion, 9.2% global EBIT margin, 10% margins in North America, free cash flow of $10.5 billion. Looking ahead to 2023, GM guided to EBIT of $10.5 billion-$12.5 billion.
That was down $3 billion at the midpoint, with most of that decline attributable to pension accounting and an expected decline in GM Financial. It's worth noting that within that guidance, GM's absorbing the cost of at least half a dozen growth initiatives that we know of. There's a barrage of EVs, investment in new digital distribution network, expansion of Cruise, BrightDrop, OnStar Insurance, big push into software, aftermarket, a new defense business. There's a lot of stuff going on at GM. Considering all that investment and growth, we actually were expecting structural costs to go up. On their call two weeks ago, GM said that their fixed costs will go down by $2 billion, with 30%-50% being recognized this year.
I would say that just stepping back, consistency of financial performance has really been a hallmark of this company's profile over the past decade, and it shows us that that's gonna continue even as this company, for the first time in decades, pivots to growth. On that note, GM laid out a plan to grow revenue from around $157 billion last year to $225 billion by 2025, and we backed into something like $11-$13 of earnings per share. By 2030, GM has its sights on $300 billion of revenue, including $50 billion from Cruise, $20 billion-$25 billion from software and services.
What's interesting for everybody in this room is that despite that growth, their shares are still trading at roughly seven times forward earnings, more or less the same valuation that we've seen for the past 10 years. If you ask three analysts, you'll probably get three different reasons for why that is. Of course, there's the economic cycle. Of course, there is normalization of industry pricing. Separately from that, there are certainly questions about the competitive landscape and how that's gonna change. Most people presume that it's very hard for big companies with entrenched processes to innovate, to achieve cost benchmarks, and we talked quite a bit about that yesterday. I'm hoping that today we can set the record straight and that's... I'm very pleased to welcome Paul Jacobson and Mary Barra from GM.
Maybe just to start things off, I'd like to ask you about competitiveness, and the pace of innovation that you're seeing and whether investors should be thinking about General Motors differently than in the past. Maybe just to introduce this a little bit and make it a little more provocative. We have this weekly webinar called Car Talk. About a month ago, I polled investors, and I got about 100 answers in my poll. I asked people whether they thought the generically legacy OEMs could catch up to Tesla in terms of costs. 92% said no. We've got a lot to prove, but I think that it says something, and I wanna get your impression whether you're surprised by that?
Do you think that that perception, maybe it's correct generically for the industry, but not for General Motors? Within GM, are there changes that you are implementing in design and engineering and other things that are really fostering a different pace of innovation? Do we think it's wrong for people to be assuming that it's a big company and it's just hard to do at GM?
Well, there's a lot in there, Rod. First of all, thanks for being here. Thanks, everybody, for the opportunity to talk to you. You know, the way I see it, this is the year General Motors pulls away from a lot of what I, you know, you'd call them legacy, I call them traditional automakers. It's not because of what we're doing right now, it's because of what we've been doing since, you know, 2015, 2016 and on. You know, in 2015, we looked at where the industry was changing. We said there's four major trends that are gonna change the way people move. It's the propulsion system, it's autonomous, it's connectivity, and it was sharing at the time.
When you look at, you know, and we know what's happening to sharing, but frankly, I think autonomous sharing is, you know, part of our, part of our plan, and we do have the leading AV company with Cruise, operating now in three cities, and continuing to scale. Throughout the year, you're gonna hear more about Cruise's plans, not only to scale, but how they're gonna reach profitability. You know, when you look at, we bought Cruise in 2016. We started working on the Ultium platform, which is our foundational, dedicated EV platform, in 2018. Started rolling it out in 2021 at the very end.
We now have, by the end of this year, we'll have seven products coming off of the Ultium platform available in the United States in addition to the Bolt EV and EUV, which, by the way, we can't make enough of, and that's our second-generation technology. You know, a lot of other traditional OEMs are just now working on a dedicated platform. We have it. We realized we needed to control our own destiny from a battery perspective. We have one plant running, and two more will be online in about what? 15, 18 months. We'll have our own batteries. We won't be paying for the cost on those. We have been systematically changing our organization, not, you know, trying to do it all overnight, but as we did the restructuring in the 2018 and 2019.
We restructured our engineering, dedicating a software engineering group, dedicated electrification. We haven't gone and said we're gonna split the two companies completely because there's a lot of the vehicle that's the same and we can, we can share parts, which we do. We can get a lot of synergies as opposed to having two chassis groups, two interior groups, two software groups, for that matter. A lot of the software is the same. The work we've been doing to transform the company is all here now. We're executing on all of it. We are different than the rest of the traditional OEMs, and this is really gonna be our year to demonstrate it. I think, you know, with everything I've just covered, I think we've got a strong year planned ahead.
You know, the other thing, you said it, but this company, we do what we say we're gonna do from a financial perspective. As Paul likes to say, no one believed us last year when we said we were gonna achieve our guidance. The year dramatically changed, but I think it also shows the scrappiness and the resiliency of the GM team. We said, "Okay, this happened, that happened, how are we still gonna meet our numbers?" We did. You know, I think we are a transformed company. Yes, it's, we're never done. We can always be more efficient. You know, we can always work and continue to implement and innovate new technologies, and we're doing that. The last point I wanna make too is from a battery perspective, I think we set ourselves apart.
We never stopped working on battery technology or hydrogen fuel cell technology for that matter since EV1. When you look, the reason we knew to start the Ultium platform in 2018 with all the lessons we learned from the Bolt EV. We now have a lot of capability as it relates to battery technology. Yes, you know, our partnership in building the cells right now is with LGES, and they're a great partner, and we have three big plants we're scaling up. We also have the largest battery lab. We now have a battery processing lab. When we talk to all the different startups or different companies that may have promising technology, generally what you find is they don't know how to scale, and they don't know how to make automotive grade.
We now have a processing center where we can go in and take promising technologies and get them to market faster because we have battery knowledge inside the company, which most of our peers do not.
Is it-
I don't know, Paul, did I miss anything?
We're no stranger to skeptics from that standpoint. I think, you know, when you look at the perception study that you talked about, I don't think it's surprising. I hope the eight people that said, yes.
Raise your hand, guys.
can catch up with you. Welcome. Thank you. You know, at the end of the day, it really is about execution. Mary and I talked even a lot going into 2022 about how we're gonna have some challenges, right? Because we knew 2023 was the year that all these programs were gonna be rolling out. We kind of called it get through the desert from that standpoint, and the way we were able to do that is really focus and drill hard on execution. I think that's carried over into 2023. Yeah, there's a lot of macro concerns about there, about the environment around us. You know, what we can do is just continue to execute, pivot where we need to.
I think what you've seen is through it all and through a lot of challenges, whether it was the chip issues or storm issues, et cetera, there are a lot of times that we could have said, "You know what? We need to dial back the investment. We need to preserve. We need to, you know, batten down the hatches." What did we do? We leaned in. We accelerated twice during the last two years in terms of the EV journey, and you see a lot of that coming to fruition now, and you'll see it more as we, as we ramp up in the back half of this year and then hit that 400,000 goal, and it's off to the races.
I'm curious if you can maybe elaborate on whether this is foresight, so you guys were planning ahead, you've been investing well in advance of everybody else 'cause you knew where this was going, or actually within the company, there's really changes in process. Process is important, right?
Mm-hmm.
It's safety critical product. You don't wanna skip anything and have big things blow up. The world is changing quickly. We're seeing companies innovate with things like Giga Castings and 45 second takt time and things that just are happening quicker than we have seen in the past. Within GM, do you see things that are changing in the process that can accommodate innovation or things that you're just not used to incorporate that and implement those kinds of things quickly too?
Absolutely. I mean, you know, one, I think a great example of it is our Global Vehicle Development Process. Let me back up a little bit. In the 15-16 timeframe, we realized our quality wasn't where we wanted it to be. We had took one of our most successful chief engineers who had launched a ton of products, and we reworked our Global Vehicle Development Process and made major changes to it that allowed us. That was implemented. Actually, our head of quality work, what we call the quality chain, looking at, you know, quality starts in design. It's from design to engineering to manufacturing to your supply base. Any one of those, if those links in the chain are broken, you're gonna have quality issues.
We put those processes in place, and I think both of them were well underway in the 2018 timeframe. You know, why did everyone else's quality go down last year when ours went up? We just got good, great recognition from the J.D. Power U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study as well. We fundamentally invested and changed our processes to deliver quality. Allowed us, as we developed the Ultium platform, and we did the wireless control system, we realized a lot of engineering that went into powertrain configuration and all the unique things you had to do for every vehicle, we didn't need to do with the Ultium platform because we had a wireless control system that we did. That allowed us to take over 90 weeks out of our Global Vehicle Development Process. We are changing.
You spoke about Giga Castings. You know, we started with learning about Giga Castings on the CT6, that is still in production in China, by the way. It is being used heavily on the CELESTIQ, the Cadillac CELESTIQ. We just bought two, invested in two Giga Presses. I'm not gonna tell you what program we're gonna be rolling out, getting to high volume, mainstream use of Giga Castings. Again, have the experience, had the learnings, now we're gonna be putting it into high volume. We're working on that right now.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we're looking. We have a ventures group that looks at anything we can do to improve our business. You know, I would say another important thing is our relationship with the supply base. You know, we've steadily been going up in the rankings of working with our supply base, 'cause a lot of innovation in this business can come from your supply base. What you need the supply base to do is choose to bring it to you first because they know you're gonna put it in, you're gonna put it into a vehicle or you're gonna put it into your plants, that they're gonna get the benefit from it. The relationship we have with the supply base is also beneficial, and we've worked hard. I mean, you know, yes.
When we go work, when they have issues, we work in a problem-solving manner. Instead of trying to divide the pie of cost, we try to make the pie smaller. I think we've been successfully doing that. You know, last year, I think, was another proof point.
You're saying that this is actually not even just an EV thing for GM. CT6 is not an EV.
Right.
You're applying those kinds of innovations, outside as of that as well.
Absolutely. You know, one of the things, you know, obviously, I think for the globe, COVID was tragic, but it, you know, you learn things when you get put in those types of situation. The company learned how to be more efficient, how to be faster. Complexity reduction, the work we do with our dealers, there's a tremendous amount of work that has been done to re-reduce complexity, that's in our products now, and we continue to look for those.
Okay. I want to ask about EV growth and whether EVs are gonna actually be a good business. We want to own GM as an EV company. When we talk about EVs, a lot of the focus is on battery costs, still 30% or more of the bill of materials in an EV. You talked about getting those costs down 40% from $145 today to $87 by 2025. Based on the math we're doing on the pack level, we're thinking it's $170 down to $110. Even if you get half of the IRA benefit, it's conceivable that you're gonna get packs down to, like, $90 a kilowatt hour.
For some vehicles, at that point, we could sort of have line of sight on getting close to parity with internal combustion. Presumably, that's why you're able to do Equinox and Blazer products that, where your pricing is pretty close. Overall, my questions are, you're targeting 1 million EVs, $50 billion of revenue by 2025. That's a big part of that $225 billion target. How much of that is incremental? 'Cause that would imply a lot of market share growth. Where does that market share come from? You know, how does the competitive landscape change in order to get 1 million more vehicles out of GM?
Well, I'll start. Yeah, let me start with that. I mean, because I think one of the things is, if you've looked at the products that we've already released, we have more coming. When you look at the success of the Hummer, 40% of our Hummer buyers or people who have the vehicle on order are new to General Motors. If you look at the Lyriq, again, you know, really strong response. By the end of this quarter, we'll have delivered all of our debut edition. New to General Motors, 40% are new to General Motors. On the Silverado, with the orders or the interest orders that we have, we're converting to orders right now, 50% are new to General Motors.
If you look at from a coastal perspective, you know, we are underrepresented from a, I'll call it, our fair share of what we should be getting in the coast. We're seeing a lot of interest in the coast as well. You know, obviously, we've said by 2035 we're gonna be an all EV, a light-duty EV. By the way, your initial question was, "Is EVs a good business?" The answer is yes. You know, we'll...
We see it as growth in the interim, and then when you look at the quality that they have, that we have and provide, the fact that we have the highest customer loyalty, we think getting these customers early is gonna be really put us in an advantageous position to maintain stronger share as we go to all EVs. Paul?
I think, you know, on the cost side too, right? Whether it's the engineering and what Mary talked about with the ventures team and what we're doing around battery tech, there's also the scaling. You know, we've got three Ultium plants opening in the next 15, 18 months, right? We've got a really good platform already built, right? We're adjusting within this by toggling the lever, accelerating the adoption. Also, we're looking and being more strategic about all the raw materials and all the commodities that are going into it.
Mm-hmm.
You've seen a lot of announcements from us. We've been, you know, unapologetic in terms of saying we wanna partner with people. We want these providers to be successful as well. We can bring capital, we can bring purchase commitments, we can bring a lot of things to the table that can help them grow their businesses as well. I think that's been really attractive to a number of partners, and it's really setting the table for success even well beyond 2025, right?
Yeah.
Whether you think about it's getting costs down, it's getting strategic relationships established, it's complying with the EV tax credits in the IRA, all of that, we're setting the table for tremendous success.
I'm gonna ask you about that in a minute.
Yeah.
Just back to this question about whether this growth is gonna be compelling. Today, the center of gravity of GM is trucks, right? Crossovers today don't make a lot of money. Should we really be excited about EV crossovers, which haven't historically been very profitable? Will it change in the EV environment versus the ICE environment? Do you see that center of gravity shifting a little bit for GM as that happens?
You want me to do it?
Sure.
Okay.
I'll add on.
It's tough being in the middle here. You know, this is one that I know has been an area of debate for a long, long time, but I think when you look at both the improvement that we've seen in crossover profitability and what we're doing going forward with both the ICE portfolio, with the features that we have, the pricing environment that we're in, but also the EVs. I mean, EVs gives a chance to reinvent every vehicle. You remember from Investor Day, when we talked about the market data that we have are people that want to buy an EV, don't wanna generally cross out of the segment that they're in. They're not willing to give that up to get an EV. This is where the platform advantage comes in, right?
I'm producing the same cells, whether we're putting them in a Silverado or a crossover or a full-size SUV or a Hummer. They're the same cells, right? We can package them differently. That's what gives us that scale advantage to be able to add features, add content into these vehicles at a level that we think, you know, is gonna lead the industry from that perspective. Obviously, that gives you the platform down the road for the foundation of software services...
Right
... et cetera, everything else that you can do. It's about growing that foundation, even just beyond the cost of the vehicle. We think that that's still gonna be a strong business and continue to improve.
Will you be able to sell a 40 or low $40,000 EV and make a 20% gross margin? I mean, is that something that you see as possible based on the cost structure that you have?
Well, what I would say is, you know, we're not anywhere near where we think we can get the cost of a battery cell down.
Right.
You know, we're gonna keep driving that. With all the synergies we have, what we've invested from a vertical integration perspective, the sourcing work that Paul's leading, by the way, has done a phenomenal job working with our... Because we're looking at this much differently than just a pure sourcing situation. You know, our aim is to have industry-leading margins as we invest. We're ramping up some things, but, you know, I think it's also to note, we're maintaining, you know, we've said in the 8%-10% range while we make this, you know, I'll say accelerated investment and transformation to EVs. Once we get everything ramped up, we're gonna just continue to work battery costs down, drive the efficiencies, leverage Ultium, as Paul mentioned. You know, is it gonna be 20?
I don't know, but I'll tell you, we're not gonna stop until we lead from a margin perspective.
Should we worry about cannibalization of ICE trucks with EV trucks?
You know, if we said, you know, we sell a lot of light-duty trucks.
Yeah.
We've said by 2035, we're gonna be all EV. Again, we see this as an opportunity to grow, especially in the very near term, and bring in more customers. We know the truck customer, once they come in, is a very loyal customer. We're seeing that with the data that I already referenced. 50% are new to General Motors on the Silverado EV. We see an opportunity where we can continue to have a strong ICE while we grow our EV, continue to improve the margin structure as we get to scale. And again, we're gonna look for ICE-like margins or better, as we make this transformation. I don't know.
Yeah. We've seen success in the mid-size truck launches that we've done and trucks, and we're actually growing share.
Right
... in ICE trucks right now, right?
It's true.
While the focus has been on, well, you're gonna sell EVs and not ICE, we're actually selling more of both.
Right
right now. That's where I think we have a really distinct advantage in the fact, you know, I'm a personal believer that EV adoption is gonna be choppy, right? There's gonna be spells like we've seen, where we've seen really rapid acceleration that might slow down, might speed up. We've got the flexibility in the product portfolio to be able to manage through that. The important thing here is we keep the balance of cash flow generation.
Right
... across the board, 'cause this is what is funding the journey over the next several years as we get to 2035. Keeping that balance in the portfolio, coming out with new, great products, and we're seeing strong take-up of those as well, at the same time funding that journey and ramping up the EV production. We do see this as a way to grow share over that time period because nobody's gonna have the comprehensive suite of products that we have with the type of loyalty and the type of conquest data that we're seeing in the early stages.
Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. Maybe we could talk about competitive advantage a little bit more. You alluded to it when you mentioned the IRA and materials, but I guess maybe backing up a step, LG works with a lot of companies nowadays, and competitors of yours can also buy cells from Samsung and SK and Panasonic and others. Do you think that that means that in the long run, this becomes commoditized, at least the batteries and battery packs? Is there really a sustainable competitive advantage that GM is building here? Maybe you could tie into that whether or not your positioning for IRA gives you an edge.
I would just say, I think our positioning for our IRA gives us an edge, and I'm really proud of the team 'cause we looked over everything we learned from semiconductors and all the shortages, we really work to either ally onshore or ally shore. We were doing that before IRA, so we happen to be very consistent with what we didn't even know was gonna happen. We thought it was the right sourcing play. It's turned out to be even better. Yes, I think we're one of just a couple that are very in very good position from an IRA perspective. I think that is gonna be something that is an advantage.
I think we're also, you know, continuing to take costs out in the battery space because what I mentioned before, that we're doing. We're not just dependent on a supplier to say, "Bring me your best technology," as it relates to, you know, like you said, 30% of the vehicle is the battery. We're doing work on our own. We have partnerships with SES. We have a partnership with LG Energy Solutions. We're working with a lot of other sources, and frankly, a lot come knock on our door because our volume is attractive. You know, there definitely is a path. You know, I don't know, 20 years from now, I mean, I'm an engineer, so I believe we're gonna just keep improving. Might it be commoditized?
I don't think we're even close to the chemistry and the, you know, is it solid-state or what we're going to have that's gonna allow us to take costs down. I think we have a long time, and why I think we're in the lead is because we've got battery expertise in-house.
Even though companies and others can engage with LG, form joint ventures with them, or buy batteries from them, you think that your costs and your joint ventures, for a variety of reasons, are better?
I think I wanna be very respectful of our partner. I would say what most people don't understand is that we have a joint venture to manufacture battery cells. We also have a joint venture doing battery development. I don't think many others have that.
Okay.
I think this is also a resource game, too, right? You might, you might be right over the long term that things do converge into single chemistry, into single manufacturers, et cetera. It might get commoditized, but that's a long, long ways away. Right now, what's happening is in the race to EV adoption and satisfying that demand that's out there's a race for constrained resources, right? Virtually every battery manufacturer has more customers they can handle. They don't have enough capital to do everything they wanna do. When you're in a position like General Motors, and you've heard me say this many times, Rod, this still at the end of the day is scale business, right? I think Tesla's done an amazing job of demonstrating how to achieve scale.
Is there room for more folks to do that? Don't know yet, right? We don't know in a world where resources become really constrained. When you think about the scale, you look at the capital base that we have, you look at the cash flow, you look at the demand that we can bring to the table, and you look at the head start that we have. Nobody's working on as many battery plants as we are right now, as we've talked about one, two, three. Four is coming, five is coming, six is coming. We know that as part of this transition.
Yeah.
That's where we're able to get the resources. It's why we're able to do the deals with POSCO and with Livent and with others, where we're able to go out and start looking at long-term agreements because we can bring that to the table. I don't think that it's at risk of getting commoditized anytime soon...
Right
...while the industry is ramping up that capacity base.
I'd like to ask about competitiveness and distribution, just switching gears a little bit. This is a pretty heated subject, I think, in the marketplace. You've talked about plans to take $2,000 of costs out of your distribution costs. Can you talk about what that's going from and to, how are you changing it? Why should dealers go along with that? 'Cause they've got a pretty good gig right now. When will we start to actually see the benefits of that?
you know, there's a lot that we've done this place, but I think one of the key points I wanna reinforce, we've done it with our dealers. When we talk about what we talked about at last year's Investor Day of taking $2,000, that's what's gonna attribute to General Motors. we took more cost out than just the $2,000, and we sat down and looked together, how can we take cost out? One of the things we saw from a dealer perspective, they spend a lot of money on IT. We invested in the digital retail platform. We have a small ownership in Tekion.
I think it's 80% of our dealers have signed up to use the digital retail platform, which by the way, I think, I can't remember who, someone just rated all the different online digital systems, and General Motors was recognized as being the best. So as we're already using it on the Bolt EV and EUV, as we have more electric vehicle rollouts, the system will be used. Like I say, 80% of our dealers have already signed up. That's gonna take cost out. There's also a back office system that Tekion did that many of them have already used it. It was funny, when I first encouraged them to do that, they weren't sure. Now I have dealers, when I see them, they're like, "Why didn't you have me do this sooner?
I'm saving so much money." Again, IT was one area. If you think about some of the traditional players there, I mean, you know, I think it was mainframe. I mean, a huge advantage from a cost perspective. Dealers are also. You know, every dealer is an entrepreneur, so, when you look at what they've been able to do, they've learned through COVID how to sell with less variance. We use data analytics to help for the different areas, different regions of the country to say, "This is the vehicle that you should be ordering. It'll be a fast mover." They're now, you know, they're ordering faster moving vehicles. They need less inventory. That saves them money on the floor planning of what's on their lot.
You know, with what we're gonna do on DRP, we're gonna have regional distribution centers, so they'll still have some vehicles for those who literally wanna go in and still kick the tires. For the most part, we're gonna have, with these standard configurations, 'cause we've taken a lot of complexity out of our EVs. Compared to an ICE portfolio, we're gonna be able to have those, deliver them more quickly. That's gonna take cost out. We've looked at every aspect of what it takes to sell a vehicle. We've taken it out. You know, our dealers, though, are, what is it? Almost 90% of the population lives within 10 mi of a dealer today.
When you need it serviced because it's your only vehicle, not the second or third or fourth that you can just jump into another vehicle if your EV's not working, that becomes very important. To get to the penetration that we need of 40%, 50%, you need to win that customer who only owns one vehicle and needs it for their livelihood. They depend on dealers, or someone to fix their vehicle quickly or give them a loaner. Again, we started working with our dealers about three years ago. I said at a dealer meeting, which I wasn't the most super popular that day, as I said, "Look, our customer's changing, our business is changing. We think you're a competitive advantage, but you've got to change with us.
If you try to cling to the business the way it was five to 10 years ago, it's not gonna turn out very well." You know what? A lot of our dealers are coming along, and the dealers are, you know, that say, "Hey, I just don't wanna be in this business," there's an off-ramp for them. You know, the dealers that I talk to that are signing up to be part of our EVs, they're very excited about where they're coming, and they've seen that we've worked with them. In many cases, they have long-standing relationships with customers. I think people are gonna realize that dealers, the way that we've, again, transformed that part of the business, the way we're transforming everything, is gonna be a competitive advantage for us.
When do we actually see that just externally?
As we start to ramp more EVs, you'll see it. As we get to the latter part of this year and next year, I think it'll start to become more, much more evident.
Let's talk a little bit about the market, the U.S. market. One of the things that I just found amazing is that you're generating more revenue today in a smaller market. If I go back to 2018, you generated $113 billion of revenue in North America in a $17 billion U.S. market. Last year, you did $128 billion in a $13.7 billion U.S. market. Obviously, average transaction prices have gone up a lot for GM and for the industry. I know you are anticipating some deflation this year. Can you talk a little bit about how you think this plays out over the next year or two? Should people in this room be optimistic about the cycle or concerned about prospects for pricing?
Is there enough price reduction embedded in your plan over the next year or two to sort of stimulate the kind of demand that you're looking for?
You know, I'll start by just I wanna clarify, you know, when you said we're anticipating prices to soften. We built our plan around the possibility that plans will soften, right? We're not seeing anything in the market right now. In fact, you know, we commented on our earnings call that January came in really strong. As we said, December came in a little bit stronger than we thought it was going to as well, which is why we came in at the top end of the guided range.
Right.
that we gave at Investor Day in November. You know, I think the prudence in this is essentially looking at the macros around us and saying, "What happens if?" We need to be ready for that. We need to anticipate that rather than reacting to it after the fact, right? Just wanna be clear that we're still not seeing anything out there that signals any major deterioration from that standpoint. What you've seen happen, right, and, you know, a big part of the skepticism, I think, last year on the numbers was that, you know, between the inflationary environment and production increasing, we weren't gonna be able to hold pricing.
Yeah.
We actually took pricing higher last year than 2021, we still have a little bit of that annualization in our 2023 expectations as well. You know, the reality is we're producing really, really high-quality vehicles that people are clamoring for, right? Production hasn't been able to keep up over the last couple of years. Even as we ramped up production, we've still seen that strength with the consumer. You know, I think there was a couple of sound bites that we had on the earnings call that I think are really, really important, right? We said, one, we're gonna manage inventory in a 50- to 60-day band, right?
Mm-hmm.
Is where we're heading. We also said that the, the cycle time of getting finished vehicles to dealers has elongated, right? Despite the fact that we've seen inventory levels grow, the grounded stock at dealer inventories is still 30% of what it was back in 2019.
Right. Mm-hmm.
Right? We're still not seeing that pressure alleviate. We're in this inventory band. The second thing that we said that I think is really important is we're going to balance production with demand, right?
Yeah.
We wanna make sure that we maintain that strength, in the pricing, in the in the value of the vehicles, in the consumer's eyes as well. What we've seen over the last two years is a consumer migration up trim levels, right? We even created an additional level of GMC above Denali, right?
Right.
Because of consumer demand. We've seen that really cycle through. Consumers have responded to what we're building. You know, I know there's a lot of speculation out there about price wars and so on. It's just something that has kind of percolated every month that hasn't materialized, you know, for more than a year now.
Mm-hmm.
that we've been talking about that. We still have very, very good confidence in the market. We wanna be cautious because we don't want to ignore the macro signs that are out there, because I don't wanna be up here, you know, a year from now saying, "We missed it. We didn't see any of the signs." That would be silly. We're preparing for that, right? We've balanced that capital. We've talked about the $2 billion in cost reductions that we're going after and that we're going to achieve over time. That's part of this dynamic approach I think you alluded to in your first question, what Mary said, is our ability to adapt.
Yeah.
We had an EV plan two years ago. The EV plan we have today is much more intense than it was two years ago because we've pivoted, we've accelerated. We had margins that, you know, two years ago weren't where they wanted to be. We've seen them expand. We had double the inflation last year. We pivoted, and we saw that go. You're seeing more of the same. At the commercial environment, you know, we can control what we can control, but so far remains remarkably strong.
Yeah. You've created an outlook that encompasses a wide range of possibilities, including the potential for more deflation, but you're committed to making these numbers and adjusting as needed in order to get there?
Yeah.
Yeah, and everything you said, totally. The one other point I wanted, where I think we're again, exceptionally well-positioned compared to a lot of our other competitor, virtually every competitor, brand new or a brand new heavy-duty truck coming out right now. Last year, we did a major upgrade to our full-size light-duty trucks. We have a brand new midsize truck coming out right now. We have, by the end of the year, we'll have nine EVs in market. When you look at our product portfolio and the customer reception we're seeing, and they're all fresh and new, or, you know, not even out in the marketplace, you know, in February, we have a, I think, a huge advantage because of our product portfolio. That's why we're getting this, we're seeing the strong prices, you know, across the board.
Yeah. Great. I wanna see. We've got a question up here. If we've got one or two that we can take.
I was wondering, can you give a little more color or definition around your, maybe even your plan on pricing as it pertains to MSRP, product mix, competition, incentives? Just kind of a little more color, like when you say we're planning or we're incorporating in our plan that potential at some point, whether or not it's three months from now or six months from now. Just give a little color, like how all those different dynamics play in. Does the supply chain kind of go along at the same pace, or is it different?
What I would say is, you know, we've got to learn to balance, and we've got to be able to balance production to demand from that standpoint. That's why I think these inventory bans are so important. That's what we talk about internally, right? We've gotten the vehicles to, you know, price levels in the consumers' minds that are very fair and very attractive, and there's a strong demand for them. You know, at the end of the day, we have to find out if it is cyclical, right, and we see prices coming down, what do we have to do between the supply-demand price balance to make sure that that works? Like I said, we're not expecting that right now. We're building plans that are cautious.
We're pricing our vehicles for us and for our consumers, full stop. I won't speculate on what others are going to do, but we've got margin targets. We've got a commitment to hitting our numbers. You're gonna see us staying according.
Yeah. I wanna see if I can slip in two more. Sorry, guys, I think that you'll find these interesting.
He's drawing it.
All right. Two questions. One is the China market. Do you see that market changing structurally at this point? Obviously, Chinese domestic competitors are gaining some share. What does GM need to do to maintain that as an important contributor to earnings? My first question.
Again, you know, right now in China, obviously, you know, the rapid rolling of COVID through the country.
Yeah
has really depressed. We think it's, you know, gonna impact first quarter. We'll see if it, if it bleeds into second quarter. Like the U.S., and some of our other markets, this is an important year from a EV launch perspective or an EV perspective for our SAIC-GM.
Right
... joint venture. We'll see that. We expect recovery. There's a lot of work going on from that perspective. Again, I think we've got products, the Lyriq has been launched there. It's been well-received. You know, with what happened at the end of last year and this year, we gotta make sure people remember it. We'll do that. Our other joint venture partners, SGMW, Wuling, still has the best selling with the Hongguang Mini EV. From a China perspective, they have another vehicle coming out that's gonna be a little priced a little higher. It's very important.
I think the biggest issue that we look at from China and what we continually say to both governments when we have the opportunity as, you know, that issue is out there, is we think if we can get to a level. We're competitors. If we can get to a level playing field, probably will be better for both economies. That, you know, so as long as we have a level playing field to go in country, and we think we've got strong brands, especially with Cadillac and Buick and then with Wuling, but their Baojun brand, to be a significant player there.
you're optimistic about that business maintaining its position as a big contributor to GM's profitability.
I think we're positioned well to do that. I think we're watching, again, the whole, you know.
Right
... environment to understand, but I think we're well-positioned.
Secondly, the market, if it's applying just the seven times multiple on GM's earnings, is implicitly valuing Cruise at negative $13 billion. If you were to put our hat on and say, "Okay, I'm an analyst, I'm a portfolio manager," what do you think happens that makes it difficult for investors to continue to do that?
Go take a ride. I mean, literally, go take a ride. The vehicle is so capable, you'll never wanna get in an Uber or a Lyft again. Just because, I mean, how many people have done an Uber or a Lyft ride? Probably everyone, right? Do you? Yes? Okay.
Yeah.
Come on, everyone.
Yeah.
You know, some of them have probably been scary. I know I've been in a few that were a little scary. This vehicle is so capable that, you know, you, at first you get in, you're like, "Oh, my God," and you're watching the steering wheel. I mean, I've been riding, but in the vehicle all along with a safety rider, but the first time that I was in the vehicle where I'm in the back seat, the steering wheel's moving. Two minutes in, you forget about it because it's such a good ride. It is so confident. Frankly, it's like the perfect driver, and it is because it's paying attention all the time.
The fact that in 90 days, Kyle was able to take the technology that, yes, we'd worked for a long time in San Francisco to get where we are, but in 90 days, have a vehicle running in Austin. We'd been in Phoenix for a while, so that's why I used the Austin. Now we're continuing to expand the, you know, the area that we're operating, and there'll be more to come. Gil West is in a conference not too long. Kyle and I will be at South by Southwest. There's more coming, but, I mean, the number one thing I'd ask you to do is go take a ride.
You've heard me say before, Rod, buy a share of GM cheap, you get a share of Cruise for free. Got one question out there.
Just as you think about sort of beyond a three-year horizon, and you think about the car between sort of hardware and software, how does that evolution progress? We've heard from some tier ones that are talking about taking ADAS capabilities and putting it, you know, the software into the cloud, doing a lot of sort of cloud serve. How do you think about the GM vehicle sort of beyond maybe 2025? How much of it, how much hardware are you able to sort of reduce the price of, and how much are you able to abstract maybe in terms of software and cloud? Is that something that you would retain if you went that direction as an in-house capability, or is it something that you would consider partnerships for?
You know, we, a couple, actually several years ago now, excuse me, we brought in a lot of software because the vehicle is a platform. We talk about it as the software-defined vehicle. I think the software-defined vehicle is even more significant than the propulsion change from ICE to EV and the opportunity that provides. We've been building that capability for several years now, and, you know, what we do in the cloud, we have a lot. You know, we also, with Cruise, what they do in the cloud versus what's done on vehicle, that's all learning that, you know, we have. Those teams, even though, you know, Kyle runs Cruise, and we have a separate team, they collaborate a lot and share best practices and lessons learned.
You know, when you look at it, even our semiconductor strategy of going to three families, really, you know, changing again, the architecture of the electrical system in the vehicle, we very much see that it's gonna be a huge future. I'm not saying we're gonna write every line of code, 'cause I think there's some that, you know, make sense to get from a supplier, but anything important, like we did with the battery control system, we're gonna do in-house.
Great. Well, I think we're out of time. I wanna thank you, Mary and Paul, for taking the time with us, this has been fantastic, and addressing so many different questions, from me and from the audience, and hope to see you again next year.