General Motors Company (GM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the General Motors Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Tuesday, December 10, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ashish Kohli, GM Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Michelle, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on such short notice as we share some thoughts on the Cruise announcement we made earlier today, along with providing you an opportunity to ask questions. We're also broadcasting this call via webcast. Joining us today are Mary Barra, GM's Chair and CEO; Paul Jacobson, GM's Executive Vice President and CFO; and Dave Richardson, Senior Vice President, Software and Services Engineering. On today's call, management will make forward-looking statements about our expectations. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include the factors identified in our filings with the SEC. And with that, I have the privilege to turn the call over to Mary.

Thanks, Ashish, and good afternoon, everyone. Earlier today, we announced plans to realign our autonomous driving strategy to prioritize the development of advanced driver assistance technology and a path to fully autonomous personal vehicles. We want to use this time to explain GM's rationale, discuss the opportunity we see on this journey and answer your questions. This is the latest in a series of decisions that GM has announced, which underscore our focus on having the right technology for the future of our company and the industry and reflects our commitment to execute with speed and efficiency. And I want to be clear that GM made this decision to refocus our strategy because we believe in the importance of driver assistance and autonomous driving technology in our vehicles. This approach would allow us to leverage the strengths of GM and Cruise while simplifying and accelerating the path forward, providing customers meaningful benefits along the way. We know people everywhere love to drive their own vehicles but not in every situation, so it makes sense to develop autonomous technology for them. Given the considerable time and expense required to scale a robotaxi business in an increasingly competitive market, combining forces would be more efficient and therefore, consistent with our capital allocation priorities. Together, we intend to leverage Cruise's AI technology, world-class engineering talent and insights from more than 5 million driverless miles and GM's strong brands, our scale, manufacturing expertise and our experience with Super Cruise. I can't stress enough how important the work of the Cruise team has been and would be as we pursue L3 and L4 together. As we work toward this plan, we look forward to working with Cruise's CEO, Marc Whitten; Cruise President and Chief Technology Officer, Mo Elshenawy; and Cruise President and Chief Administrative Officer, Craig Glidden. I would now like to turn the call over to Dave Richardson, who leads software and services engineering for GM, who will be instrumental as we move forward.

Thanks, Mary. I want to first acknowledge what Cruise has accomplished. As Mary said, Cruise has been an early innovator in autonomy and a pioneer in the industry. Over the past year, we've seen unprecedented advancements in AI that are also reshaping AV development. Cruise has been part of this new wave of technology where traditional modular AI systems built with hand-wired custom logic are being replaced by foundation and end-to-end models. Our goal at GM is to bring AV technology safely into millions of GM vehicles. And the best way to do this is with a singular strategy that prioritizes the incremental delivery of autonomous capabilities. We plan to first leverage Super Cruise to expand to L3 and beyond on a path to fully autonomous personal vehicles. I believe success on this path is best achieved with a combined focused effort from both the GM and Cruise engineering teams without the complexity of building and operating a robotaxi business. It's a smart pivot technically and would enable our customers to more quickly enjoy the benefits of autonomous driving technology, things like advanced safety, improved traffic flow, increased accessibility and reduced driver stress. Building autonomous technology together with Cruise would allow the teams to leverage GM's strength in shipping automated hardware and software at scale and Cruise's expertise in areas, including simulation, evaluation, perception and behavior models, and large-scale AI platforms. As our systems get smarter over time by utilizing vehicle insights, we believe the journey to personal autonomous vehicles is clear. And with that, I'll turn it over to Paul.

Thank you, Dave. I'd like to start by expressing my appreciation for all of the advancements that Cruise has made to autonomous technology as this positions us well moving forward. Over the past year, we have been assessing our self-driving technology strategy, and we engaged with potential investors. However, none of these options seem to serve the best interest of the business and our shareholders, mainly because launching and operating a robotaxi business is expected to require a significant amount of incremental time and capital beyond the $10 billion we have already invested. Discussions are ongoing with our minority shareholders to explore the acquisition of the shares of Cruise that we do not own. We've already reached an agreement with several of the largest minority Cruise shareholders that will raise our ownership to more than 97% and anticipating purchasing -- anticipate purchasing the remaining shares by early 2025. We plan to share more information during our Q4 earnings call in January and provide further details in the first half of the year once the Cruise restructuring is finalized. However, upon completion of the restructuring, we anticipate achieving annual cost savings of more than $1 billion, reducing our current annual expenditure of approximately $2 billion by more than half. This restructuring was not factored into the comments we made at our Investor Day in October regarding our early expectations about 2025 and therefore, would be a source of upside all else being equal. Before we start the Q&A, I'd like to make one last comment. In this dynamic environment, agility and capital efficiency are key success factors. Last week, we announced a deal to sell our interest in the Lansing battery plant back to LGES. This move is designed to better align our current cell capacity with the prevailing market conditions. We also recently announced progress in our restructuring efforts in China, which we do not anticipate will require any capital to be injected. These actions should help us achieve our target of returning the China business to profitability next year. Today, we're applying the same principle, and I want to emphasize that we remain committed to investing in driver assistance and autonomous technology as we firmly believe in the importance to make driving safer, more accessible and less stressful. Our focus is on implementing this technology in a pragmatic and capital-efficient manner, along with capitalizing on the revenue opportunities along the way from Super Cruise and L3 technology. This concludes our opening comments, and we'll now move to the Q&A portion of the call.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Dan Levy with Barclays.

Wanted to start first, just simply, what parts of Cruise technology can be brought over to GM and effectively applied to an ADAS or ADAS plus type system versus what was more geared toward a fully autonomous system that maybe you would try to sell to other third parties?

Yes. Dave, do you want to take the lead on that question?

Sure. So I mean, first, I want to call out that with Cruise, GM is really a major player in this AV space in a way that no other traditional OEM is. And I think what we're looking at is really the talent and technical expertise that Cruise brings to autonomous driving software, but it's also sensors, some of the artificial intelligence systems, and that's been validated through more than 5 million miles of real-world testing in really complex environments. So really, our new focus is making sure that we have a scalable path to unlocking this vision going forward. But I think, overall, it's really about the combined effort of the strength of GM's ADAS as well as Cruise's technology and team.

Great. Maybe a related question. It seems like the theme here is to focus on more capital efficiency. I think what we've seen from other players in the industry is that developing an advanced ADAS or driver out or eyes-off system, it can be incredibly capital efficient, and sometimes it might be more efficient to use a partner. So could you give us a sense in your development of the next-gen ADAS plus autopilot system, how you view the go it alone versus partnership approach?

Well, I think, Dan, one of the things we really want to do is leverage the investment that has been made in Cruise. And so if we were able to do this, it would enable us to leverage, as Dave said, the technology and the work that they've done from a model, some of the work from a sensor perspective that can be leveraged in L3, L3+ and beyond. And so we think there's many pieces of work from Cruise, along with the expertise that the team would bring working with our team and building on Cruise that would really allow us to continue to build on the strong system we have with Super Cruise right now that externally is recognized as being one of the best driver assistance technologies. And so we want to leverage what already has been done as we go forward in this, and we think we can do that very effectively.

And fair to say that any such development would be done through the scope or lens of capital efficiency?

Well, yes, we -- I mean, we're always looking to drive capital efficiency, and that's when we look at the amount of money to deploy a robotaxi business and then to maintain that business and grow it. It's quite a bit of capital. And as you know, a robotaxi business is not General Motors' core business, but we do believe that from an autonomous -- personal autonomous vehicle perspective and driver assistance technology that continues at Cruise -- or excuse me, at Super Cruise, we're already adding more and more technology that this could be something that would be, I think, fairly substantial. And I think Dave would like to add a little bit more.

Yes, I just want to -- yes, yes, investing in compute, but we are already investing in compute and have been doing so. I think this is really that acknowledging that pursuing one path to autonomy is way more efficient than 2. And I think, as Mary said, based on our Super Cruise capabilities and what Cruise is doing, we're really going to be able to drive more ROI as a result.

Our next caller is Shreyas Patil with Wolfe Research.

I'm just curious how you would think about the process for developing full autonomy. And I guess why I'm asking is there are some approaches that other automakers are taking, which are actually quite capital intensive, requiring significant purchases of GPUs and harvesting of data for AI training. So -- but there are other approaches that may be more capital light. So I'm just trying to understand how you think about that path to autonomy and what would be some of the processes you would deploy.

Well, as we've said, we are committed to continuing to improve Super Cruise to advance to true L3, L3+. And we believe, ultimately, L4 technology is still important from a personal autonomy perspective. And so as we do that, we will look at ways to be efficient doing that. Again, as I've mentioned already, leveraging what's already been done at Cruise, I think, is going to be an important part of it. There's also other opportunities, I think, that we would have potentially working with others as we go forward that we'll continue to explore. So we're looking to do this in a capital-efficient manner, but we also recognize this technology is so sufficient. We want to make sure that's something that we have and lead with from a General Motors perspective.

Okay. And then curious how you're thinking about collaborating with other parties, today, obviously, with Super Cruise. You do work with other suppliers. And I'm just wondering, as you think about advancing to L3 and then eventually full autonomy, how you think about the relationship with suppliers.

Yes. I'm not going to get into the specifics of -- from a supply partnership perspective or other partnerships, but I definitely think we're not a everything must be invented here type of solution, but we want to make sure the overall solution is something where we really can distinguish ourselves from what the offering we have to the consumer as well as how that creates additional revenue and profitability for the company. So more to come on that. Obviously, we have some work to do to get to what GM is laying out as our plan here. And as we do that, that will then open up our opportunities to have further discussions and share those.

Our next caller is Joe Spak with UBS.

I guess I'll throw this out to the team. But if you continue to progress to -- beyond Level 3+ to Level 4, I guess I want to hear from you like how is that different from a robotaxi. Like if you are able to offer personally owned autonomy, why would that not also be suitable for purchase on a robotaxi service?

I think Cruise was well on its way to a robotaxi business. But when you look at the fact that you're deploying a fleet, you're maintaining a fleet, there's a whole operations piece of doing that and where the vehicles sit on the company's balance sheet. So as we looked at the cost, when that's not our core business today, if you look at rideshare 1.0, the capital-intensive piece of that. I would also say, as you get into personal autonomous vehicles, as I mentioned or we mentioned earlier, there's -- customers like to drive and there's times they don't like to drive. And how do you have a seamless experience in the vehicle, ultimately, where you have driver assistance technology that does more and more? Again, as I've said, building on Super Cruise all the way to L4, there's times even when you get to full L4, doesn't mean the consumer or the customer, the owner of this personal autonomous vehicle is always going to want to be in that autonomous mode. So I think the application of what the customer wants in a privately owned, a personally owned vehicle is very different. But I also think there's -- yes, the technology you mentioned, there's a lot of commonality, but the -- how it seamlessly moves back and forth, I think, is something different in a personal autonomous vehicle. But I also think you've got to really understand the cost of running a robotaxi fleet, which is fairly significant and again, not our core business.

I get the operations perspective. I guess what I'm wondering is the vehicle and the technology itself, if someone or an organization wanted to buy a number of those vehicles to operate on a network that allowed autonomous vehicles, is there something that -- is there a difference between, I guess, what you were pursuing from a technology perspective on the actual Cruise or the taxi vehicle versus what you think you could eventually get to on a personally owned autonomous vehicle?

So Joe, let me take a shot at that because I do think that, over a long period of time, there can be market models and capital market solutions to the capital cost of the vehicle. I think what we're looking at and assessing is what is the near and intermediate-term draw on capital to be able to establish the business, get it set up, get it anchored to a point that it would attract sufficient amounts of capital for us. And that's where I think in the name of capital efficiency, we thought that the better use is to pursue improvements in L3 and ultimately to L4 in a personal model because, ultimately, that is much, much more aligned with the core working capital needs and efficiency of the business going forward versus stacking a lot of capital on our balance sheet in anticipation of a market developing down the road.

Okay. One quick follow-up and I apologize if I missed this. But did you mention how many employees from Cruise will be ported over to GM?

No. Again, we have work to do. We've outlined what our plan would be. There's still work, as we've mentioned, of acquiring the balance of shares, decisions that will be made by the Cruise Board. So that is something that will -- after those things happen, if they do happen, will be down the road.

Our next caller is Vijay Rakesh with Mizuho.

Just a quick 2 questions. One, on the battery side, just wondering what your battery capacity was before -- [ was expected ] before the sale back to LGES and what is current capacity would be post that. And then I have follow-up.

So Vijay, it's Paul. As we talked about at Investor Day, Cell Plant 1 is running about 80% capacity. Cell Plant 2 is running about 40%. We talked a lot about our strategy. And when we look at current demand as well as the work that we're going to do with both SDI and LGES on prismatic cells, we felt like this was a more capital-efficient solution to let LGES have that plant or sell our interest in that plant to them so that they can use that capacity to meet needs for other customers.

Got it. And then on the AI robotaxi side, I guess, following up on Mary's comment on not invented here, I guess. Would you be -- wondering, first, are you setting any new Super Cruise or robotaxi targets looking out after this reset and if you would partner with, I don't know, licensing FSD or using a third-party solution?

Yes. Yes, we're not going to cover either of those at this point in time. There'll be more to follow as we go forward. This is, I think, an important announcement as we make the decision to really focus on personal autonomy from driver assistance technology to personal autonomous vehicles. So more to come, but not today.

Our next caller is Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank.

Just on the Robotaxi side, you have obviously announced a partnership with Uber. Does that basically just go away? Or is it kind of getting restructured, so you would just basically potentially sell them a vehicle in the future?

Again, we made the announcement that GM is planning not to invest in -- continuing to invest in Cruise rideshare. Those are issues that have to be worked out from a Cruise perspective.

Got you. Just more philosophically, I think it was touched on a little bit earlier. But just from the, I guess, architecture standpoint, do we have any kind of updated thoughts on pursuing perhaps like an end-to-end AI approach as opposed to, I think, the more rules-based method that Cruise was working on?

Yes, it's a great question. And that's really where the industry is pivoting. That's -- Cruise has already started making headway down that path. And as I called out, we are moving to a foundation model and end-to-end approach going forward.

And our last question comes from Colin Langan of Wells Fargo.

I feel like in the past, you were pretty clear that Super Cruise for Level 2, 3 was a totally different approach from Cruise at Level 4. What's changed? Or did I misunderstand that, that now you think you could go from Level 3 and get to Level 4? Because I thought there was -- just sort of directionality wasn't there in the past.

Colin, appreciate the question. If you look at it, the technology is continuing to evolve pretty rapidly. And as we made the investment originally in Cruise in 2016, we looked and we really had a two-pronged approach. One was solving the hardest problem, which meant fully autonomous vehicles in a very dense urban environment and the work that we were doing in San Francisco and most recently in Houston with, I'll call it, more evolutionary as you've seen us do on Super Cruise, continue to add features, continue to add miles, more and more roads that Super Cruise is available on with the latest -- some of the latest technology that we have, where it does lane change, where it does towing for trailering, et cetera. And so one, I would say, as you continue to build up and the other is -- was prove out, and that's why we think there's a huge advantage for us to take all of the good work that Cruise has done and the experience they have, as Dave mentioned, with the 5 million miles and couple that and have a team very focused on how do we make rapid advancements in L3 and then potentially move to L4 as the technology gets ready. It's something everyone has been working on for quite a while now. So I would say it's just as the technology has developed and evolved, we've seen an opportunity where we think we can move more quickly with focusing on personal autonomous vehicles and having -- our plan would be to bring the teams together.

And I guess just secondly -- sorry, squeeze in more questions. You sort of have a unique perspective having looking at both technologies. I mean what are your -- do you think the economics of a robotaxi are possible? Or is that just part of your decision here that you actually question whether the economics could get there given the cost of the sensors in the vehicle? And what are your thoughts there?

Well, I mean, I think from that perspective, leveraging the sensors and the technology that is necessary, that's the core technology that it's necessarily whether you're in robotaxi or whether you're in a Level 4 personal autonomous vehicle. So I think we've already had many road maps and we'll continue -- as we have done, we'll continue to work together to get the cost down as sensing technology improves, so we can do it efficiently. And again, that specific question, I think, is independent of whether it's a robotaxi versus a PAV. You have to have good, safe technology to have people really adopt full autonomy.

I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mary Barra for her closing comments.

Well, thanks, everybody, for joining on short notice. Appreciate your questions. And I hope you recognize and appreciate that this decision was clearly grounded in GM's commitment to deliver the best driving experiences for our customers in a disciplined manner. Our commitment to driver assistance and autonomous technology to make driving safer, more accessible and less stressful is unwavering. The opportunity to deliver these benefits and vehicles to our customers that they'll use every day is very exciting for us, and that is our core business. And we believe that GM and Cruise are uniquely positioned to deliver this when we begin working together as what is our plan as we execute. So that is the strategy that we're executing. We'll continue to work now that we've made this announcement, working with the Cruise Board and with the remaining shareholders of Cruise, and we'll keep you updated as we go forward. So on a personal note, I'd like to wish everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday season. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you again early in the new year.

Thank you. That concludes the conference call for today. Thank you for joining.