Earnings Call Excerpt
General Motors Corporation (GM)
Business Update Call
June 3, 2008 10:15 am ET
Executives
Fritz Henderson - Vice Chairman, Chief Operating Officer
Randy Arickx - Executive Director Investor Relations
Analysts
Brian Johnson - Lehman Brothers
John Murphy - Merrill Lynch
Chris Ceraso - Credit Suisse
Himanshu Patel - JPMorgan
Rod Lache - Deutsche Bank
Media
Jamie LaReau - Automotive News
Mark [Feeline] - Detroit’s Free Press
Joseph Szczesny - Oakland Press
David Welch - BusinessWeek
Presentation
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GM Business Update conference call. During the presentation all participants will be in a listen-only mode.
(Operator Instructions)
I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Randy Arickx, Executive Director of Investor Relations and Financial Communications. Please go ahead, Sir.
Randy Arickx
Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us as we recap the key announcements we made in conjunction with this year’s annual meeting this morning. I’d like to first direct your attention to the Legend regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors on the first page of the chart set. As always, the content of our call this morning will be governed by that language.
I would also like to highlight that GM is broadcasting this call live via the Internet and that the financial press is participating as well.
Our call today is scheduled to last about an hour. This morning Fritz Henderson, President and Chief Operating Officer will provide opening remarks that will briefly outline announcements made earlier this morning at a press conference hosted by President and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner.
After the presentation portion of the call we will have a Q&A session with both security analysts and then followed by the media. Now let me turn the call over to Fritz Henderson.
Fritz Henderson
Thanks Randy. Good morning. I really want to talk about three things on page 2 that summarizes my agenda for this morning, discuss briefly the industry conditions, recap the actions announced today and then look forward.
Page 3. The U.S. industry is going through changes probably as quickly as we have ever seen before. The industry itself in terms of aggregate demand is experiencing some significant headwinds due to both economic weakness as well as high oil prices. Oil prices have doubled over the last 12 months in terms of dollars per barrel. Our industry outlook for aggregate demand in the U.S. was recently revised downward to the mid to high $15 million range versus $16.5 million in 2007. Recall that when we talk about industry volumes we talk about total industry volumes so that mid to high $15 million would include about $300,000 of mediums and heavy’s which you would need to subtract if you were trying to compare with other people’s outlook for light vehicle volume.
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