If you’re a taxpayer, you own a piece of General Motors. And, well, congratulations!
GM said this morning it made money last quarter and it expects its first full-year profit since 2004. The automaker said it earned $865 million in the first quarter.
Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at S&P Equity Research, said the carmaker’s comeback was being driven by company-specific and industry-specific initiatives. “GM offered smaller discounts, they have a narrower product line, and also they’ve been able to increase their overall production,” said Stovall. “But let’s also face it — that auto sales bottomed in the first quarter of 2009 at 9.5 million units annualized and we expect auto sales to be close to 11.7 million for all of 2010.”
Read Alisa Roth’s report on how GM made its first-quarter profit here.
From the New York Times:
GM said revenue was up 40 percent, to $31.5 billion, and it had positive cash flow of $1 billion. The results show that G.M. is on track to become a public company again as soon as the fourth quarter, allowing the government to recover more of the billions of dollars it spent preventing GM’s collapse.
The automaker received $50 billion in U.S. government aid for its bankruptcy restructuring.
Follow our coverage of the auto industry here.
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