Paul Jacobson
Analyst · TD Cowen
Thank you, Mary, and we appreciate everyone joining us this morning. The GM team delivered another outstanding quarter. Thanks to their hard work and strong execution. Q1 EBIT adjusted was $4.3 billion, surpassing expectations even after excluding the $0.5 billion tariff adjustment. Once again, we demonstrated discipline in our approach to both pricing and inventory. In the first quarter, our U.S. incentive spend per vehicle as a percentage of MSRP remained more than 2 points below the industry average. U.S. dealer inventory ended the quarter at 516,000 units, down 6% year-over-year overall and down 9% for full-size pickups, even against the difficult comparison created by outsized pre-tariff March deliveries last year. While we further strengthened our leadership in U.S. full-size pickups this quarter, leaner inventory constrained retail sales. Looking ahead, we are working to increase inventory levels of key products and believe that we can take this higher over the next several quarters while being mindful of the broader demand environment. Let me now provide more details on our strong first quarter results. For the total company, revenue was down year-over-year by approximately $400 million in the first quarter, as expected, driven primarily by lower EV wholesale volumes. ICE wholesales were flat year-over-year, with higher GMI volumes being offset by lower North American volumes, which were constrained by the end of production of certain Cadillac crossovers, lower imported volumes from Korea and full-size pickup downtime. As I mentioned earlier, our Q1 EBIT adjusted came in better than our expectations, driven by solid execution across all of the businesses and good expense management. Year-over-year, Q1 EBIT adjusted was up approximately $750 million, driven by the [ IIFA ] tariff adjustment, lower EV losses and FX benefit, lower warranty expense and emissions-related regulatory savings. These tailwinds were partially offset by a full quarter of tariffs. Let's expand on a couple of these items. In the first quarter, we incurred $200 million of incremental gross tariff costs, including the tariff adjustment compared to minimal tariff costs last year. EV losses were down several hundred million dollars year-over-year in the first quarter, driven by lower volumes, manufacturing efficiencies and lower fixed costs. On warranty, we continue to expect a year-over-year tailwind of $1 billion with first quarter results improving roughly $200 million versus the prior year. Q1 results included $400 million of lower warranty liability reserve adjustments, partially offset by higher warranty rate accruals on new vehicle sales. We continue to pursue a comprehensive multipronged approach to reduce our warranty expenses from product development and current production all the way to repairs at our dealers. Let's turn next to an update on our EV charges. Last year, as you know, we reassessed our EV capacity and manufacturing footprint to better align with softer demand and elimination of U.S. tax incentives. As previously indicated, we are transitioning Orion assembly from EV to ICE production and resolving associated supplier contracts. With the exception of the BrightDrop EV van, we have not recorded impairments to our current EV portfolio. Our focus remains on improving EV profitability and scaling our business as market adoption grows, albeit at a slower expected pace than we had previously seen. In the second half of 2025, GM recorded a total of $7.6 billion in EV related charges. This breaks down into $4.6 billion of estimated cash charges and $3 billion in noncash impairments. In the first quarter, we took an additional $1.1 billion in EV charges, driven mainly by contract cancellations and supplier commercial claims. We expect about $1 billion of this will have a future cash impact. We're moving quickly to finalize claims. To date, we've already recorded around 90% of the expected total supplier commercial claim costs, and we anticipate reaching agreements in principle on most of the remainder during the second quarter. Separately, we continue to work expeditiously through rightsizing our battery supply chain with our joint venture partners. Of the total, $5.6 billion in EV-related cash charges recorded since the second half of 2025, $2.6 billion has been paid as of March 31. In April, we've already paid an additional $600 million, and we continue to expect most of the remaining cash flows to occur in 2026. We remain steadfast in our desire to get these claims resolved quickly and fairly for our business partners and our shareholders. Now let's turn to a regional perspective. In North America, Q1 EBIT adjusted was $3.7 billion with a 10.1% margin, including an approximately 1.5 point benefit from the tariff adjustment, which nets to 8.6%. We're off to a terrific start to deliver a North American margin in the 8% to 10% range for the full year. Excluding the plant sale gain, China equity income was $100 million. This shows ongoing resiliency from our prior restructuring as well as disciplined production and inventory management in the face of softer macroeconomic conditions. GM International, excluding China equity income delivered approximately $40 million in EBIT adjusted despite the Iran conflict disruptions in the latter part of the quarter. We have been and will continue to divert some full-size SUVs and pickups from the Middle East back to North America, helping to alleviate low domestic inventory levels. GM Financial continued its stable performance, delivering EBT adjusted of $700 million for the quarter. Now let's look ahead to 2026 guidance. While the U.S. economy has been resilient, we haven't seen any material changes to demand or mix thus far. There remains considerable uncertainty, and therefore, we want to be prudent as we think about the future. Based on what we know today and assuming the SAAR remains in the low 16 million unit range, we are raising our overall EBIT adjusted guidance to $13.5 billion to $15.5 billion up from $13 billion to $15 billion. Likewise, we are raising our EPS diluted adjusted guidance to $11.50 to $13.50 per share, up from $11 to $13. While our execution and discipline helped drive first quarter outperformance, we now expect incremental commodity and freight costs versus our original guidance. At the same time, our FX outlook has improved from a small headwind to neutral for the full year. As a result of these changes, we are increasing our full year guidance for year-over-year commodity inflation, including logistics and higher DRAM costs to $1.5 billion to $2 billion. The incremental $500 million is expected to be more or less equally weighted across the remaining 3 quarters. In light of that, we're continuing to take proactive steps to ensure that we are efficiently allocating our resources and are ready to quickly adjust as needed. Meanwhile, our gross tariff costs are now expected to be $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion for the year, down from our original guidance of $3 billion to $4 billion because of the tariff adjustment we took in Q1. We expect 2025 self-help offsets to continue in 2026 and are pursuing additional opportunities to further mitigate these costs. Relative to our international regions, we expect China to remain profitable and to deliver results consistent with 2025. However, we anticipate some softness in our international operations outside of China due to the impact of the conflict and around on Middle East wholesales in particular. There is no change to our other 2026 key guidance assumptions. On price, we continue to expect to be flat, up 0.5%, benefiting from model year 2026 price increases. ICE volumes are expected to be flat to modestly up though production is constrained due to the major refresh on full-size pickups as well as the end of production of the Cadillac XT6. For EVs, we expect volumes to be lower as the market shows early signs of stabilizing around 6% of U.S. industry sales. We continue to expect a benefit of $1 billion to $1.5 billion for the calendar year as we rightsize our EV capacity and run at substantially lower EV wholesale volumes. The production pause at Ultium Cells means lower benefits from production tax credits flowing through material costs, but this is largely offset by positive inventory adjustments from lower cell inventory levels. On regulatory costs, we continue to expect $500 million to $750 million tailwind year-over-year. The endangerment finding repeal in February was already assumed in our plan. GM Financial continues to expect EBT adjusted in the $2.5 billion to $3 billion range, including accelerated depreciation on its EV lease portfolio. As part of our disciplined risk management, GM Financial regularly evaluates the estimated residual values and proactively adjust depreciation accordingly. We are maintaining our adjusted auto free cash flow guide of $9 billion to $11 billion with a heavier weighting to the second half. Note that this guidance excludes the EPA tariff refund given uncertainty around payment timing. Our capital allocation policy remains unchanged. We are committed to investing in the business, maintaining a robust balance sheet and returning the remainder to shareholders. We believe that repurchasing GM stock at the current valuation remains one of the most effective ways to deploy capital and create long-term value for our shareholders. In Q1, in addition to distributing $164 million in dividends, we made $800 million in open market stock repurchases, retiring approximately 11 million additional shares at an average price of $75.02 per share. We ended Q1 with $19 billion of cash and $5.5 billion remaining on our share repurchase authorization. Before I open the call for Q&A, I want to highlight our OnStar digital service business. This includes Super Cruise, but also a broader suite of connected services that we highlighted earlier in the quarter. It's an underappreciated asset that is growing and margin accretive. In Q1, we saw recognized revenue of over $750 million, up over 20% year-over-year. For the calendar year, we expect $3.1 billion of recognized revenue, up 15% year-over-year. We are on track to reach 13 million subscribers by the end of 2026, up by $1 million year-over-year with a monthly average revenue per subscriber of around $20. Those subscribers are driving ongoing deferred revenue growth as well. In Q1, the deferred revenue balance ended at $5.8 billion, up $2 billion or over 50% year-over-year. For the calendar year, we expect deferred revenue to approach $7.5 billion, up more than 35% year-over-year. In conclusion, I have tremendous confidence in the GM team's ability to successfully navigate the evolving geopolitical landscape. Our broad ICE and EV portfolios remain key competitive advantages versus our peers and our disciplined approach to inventory and incentives keep us agile. Just like we've done with other macro headwinds, we are proactively planning for a range of potential outcomes. We are working to identify additional profit improvement opportunities and have begun taking initial no-regret steps to moderate spending. As events continue to unfold, we will remain flexible and execute the right playbook to optimize profitability, maximize free cash flow and continue to deliver strong returns for our shareholders. Thank you for your continued support. And with that, we now begin our Q&A portion of the call.