General Motors Q1 2007 Earnings Call Transcript

Tags: General Motors Corp.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now proceed with the analyst's question of the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instruction). Our first question comes from the line of Himanshu Patel from JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Himanshu Patel - JP Morgan

Hi. Good morning, guys.

Fritz Henderson

Hi, Himanshu. How are you?

Himanshu Patel - JP Morgan

Good. On slide 8, on the North American walk, can we get a little bit more granularity Fritz on the contribution margin? I know there's a lot of moving parts there but any sense for how much steel was a head win in the quarter? And what happened to pricing? Was that a positive I presume, given the big negative on steel?

Fritz Henderson

When we met with you in January, we laid out what we saw the impact might be of steel and raw materials for the calendar year. And pretty much we are seeing that roll through. So, raw materials remained a challenge for us. I would say pricing was net small favorable, very small tough. So, when we look at it, net pricing was small favorable, material cost was frankly negative, given the pressures we saw in raw materials and commodity. And it came out to above $0.1 billion negative. So that was pretty much it.

Himanshu Patel - JP Morgan

Okay. And then on the Delphi issue, you mentioned your contingent exposure is still in the $6 billion to $7.5 billion range. This is just, I guess, an accounting question. In the last quarter, didn't you say that $4.5 billion was transferred into OPEB? I don't have the accounting works on that, but does the contingent exposure go down because of that, because now it's in the OPEB category now?

Fritz Henderson

Yeah. If you look at geography and the balance sheet, you would have moved a part of that $6 billion into OPEB. But for a purpose of understanding what's the total cost of the deal would be, we keep focusing back on that $6 billion. But if you look at our balance sheet, we have reclassified a part of that $6 billion into OPEB.

Himanshu Patel - JP Morgan

Right, okay. And then one last question, Fritz. On the slide, just trying to reconcile a little bit between slide 7 and 8. Revenue per unit saw a very nice $1,000 increase; mix was $400 million increase on your walk on slide 8. I am just trying to do the math there. I mean it sounded like it should have been may be a more powerful increase on the walk for mix. Any color on the discrepancy there?

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