General Motors Company

Good morning and welcome to the General Motors Company first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. During the opening remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the opening remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. We are asking analysts to limit their questions to one and a brief follow-up. To ask a question, press star then one on your telephone keypad to join the queue. To withdraw your question, press star then two. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Tuesday, April 23, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ashish Kohli, GM's Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us as we review GM's financial results for the first quarter of 2024. Our conference call materials were issued this morning and are available on GM's Investor Relations website. We are also broadcasting this call via webcast. Joining us today are Mary Barra, GM's chair and CEO, and Paul Jacobson, GM's executive vice president and CFO. Dan Burse, president and CEO of GM Financial, will also be joining us for the Q&A portion of the call. On today's call, management will make forward-looking statements about our expectations. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include the factors identified in our filings with the SEC. Please review the Safe Harbor Statement on the first page of our presentation, as the content of our call will be governed by this language. And with that, I'm delighted to turn the call over to Mary.

Thanks, Ashish, and good morning, everyone. In January, we outlined clear priorities for 2024 that are designed to build on our strength and learn from the challenges we faced in 2023. I'm very pleased to share that the team is executing well against all of them. Around the world, we are very focused on growth and profitability, which means taking full advantage of our winning product portfolio to grow share without chasing unprofitable business. In North America, the fundamental strengths of Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac truly stand out. The team delivered a 10.6% EBIT margin in the quarter thanks to our industry-leading full-size pickups, the momentum we're building in midsize pickups, the growth we are seeing in our SUV business, profit improvement in our EV portfolio, and our overall operating discipline. We again grew retail shares and market share in the U.S. during the quarter with incentives that remained well below the industry average, especially in our truck business. We grew our combined Chevrolet and GMC full-size pickup sales by 3% year over year and grew our retail market share 1.8 points to 43.8%, with much lower incentives than our closest competitors, whose sales were down. In March, we doubled sales of the GMC Canyon year over year, and the Chevrolet Colorado was the fastest-growing truck in the midsize pickup segment, thanks to its purity of function, simple elegance in execution, and value. Those are Motor Trend's words, not mine. We also continue to gain market share and grow EBIT with our new small SUVs, including the Chevrolet Trax and the Buick Invista. These vehicles are helping us win new customers, and we will continue to excel at customer retention. During the quarter, S&P Global Mobility announced that GM has now had the highest loyalty of any OEM for nine consecutive years. That's a powerful competitive advantage. In our EV business, we are building momentum in production and profitability. For example, we have increased battery module production by 300% over the last six months. Quality is very good and continuing to improve, and the installation and validation of our new high-speed module assembly lines is on track. We are projecting to double our current capacity by the end of the summer. EV production rose sharply during the quarter, and our dealers translated that into a 21% year-over-year increase in EV retail customer deliveries. For example, the Cadillac Lyric outsold all of the EVs from European luxury brands in the first quarter, and since mid-March, we are now delivering Chevrolet Blazer EVs with updated and improved software. All of our product programs are benefiting from the end-to-end improvements we've made in software, including the increased rigor of we have instilled in our quality and validation processes. More importantly, the talented executives and engineers we've hired from the tech industry are raising the bar for software design and execution, which will help us truly differentiate our customer experience and the suite of software-driven products and services we offer. We're also making progress at Cruise. The team is back on the road in Phoenix, updating mapping, gathering more road information. This is a critical step for validating our improved self-driving system and building upon the more than 5 million driverless miles we've logged before the pause. We are engaging frequently with regulators and stakeholders and building trust as we regain momentum. Safety will remain front and center and will guide our progress. I am pleased with our ICE performance, our progress in EV execution and growth, our new software organization's performance, and the steps we're taking to regain momentum at Cruise. In addition, I'm very proud of the GM team and all of our stakeholders for really leaning in to keep our momentum going. Their commitment and tenacity helped give us the confidence to raise our full year 2024 EBIT, EPS, and automotive adjusted free cash flow guidance. In our ICE business, the redesigned Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia, and Chevrolet Equinox are all launching in high volume segments starting this quarter. So are the Chevrolet Spin and the S10 in South America, and they have higher margins than the outgoing models. Then this summer, the stunning new Buick Enclave will arrive. It's the first Enclave to offer Super Cruise. Later in the year, we will make important design and technology upgrades to our best-selling GMC Yukon, Chevrolet Tahoe, and Chevrolet Suburban full-size SUVs. They include redesigned tech-focused interiors, safety and security features that include a suite of connected cameras, riding handling improvements, styling enhancements, and more. Mark and our performance team also have the unbelievable Corvette ZR1 coming, and we can't wait to put customers behind the wheel. And we've already begun installing equipment at our Fort Wayne assembly plant to produce our next-generation full-size ICE pickups. In our EV business, the Ultium cell plant in Spring Hill is shipping sales and scaling production through the year. The Chevrolet Equinox EV will arrive in showrooms this quarter, and we're very excited because it will be the most affordable long-range EV in the market. It will also offer Super Cruise, like all of our Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac EVs on the Altium platform. We will then introduce more affordable trim series for the Chevrolet Equinox EV, the Blazer EV, and the Silverado EV in the second half of the year, which will help grow volume and share. Also in the second half of the year, Cadillac will expand its EV lineup to include the Optique and the Escalade IQ. This is important because EV adoption in luxury segments is higher and more resilient than in the broader market. Two of our most highly anticipated launches are the GMC Sierra EV Denali and the Chevrolet Silverado EV RST. They are best in class in ways that truly matter to truck customers. By optimizing the battery, aerodynamics, and other systems, we were able to increase the range of the RST and the Denali by 10% to an estimated 440 miles, which is about 40 miles better than the median range of ICE vehicles on the road today. No EV pickup on the road today even comes close, and it's possible to go even farther. A few weeks ago, two road testers took the RST on a drive from Las Vegas to Phoenix, and they drove it like customers do, on paved and gravel roads, at freeway speeds, at different temperatures, and different elevations. At the end, they managed to travel 460 miles on a single charge. It's the same story for towing. One journalist drove a Silverado EV work truck and three competing battery electric trucks on a 500-mile trip over the Rocky Mountains while towing trailers. It wasn't even a competition. The Silverado EV stopped once to charge, while every other truck had to stop four to five times. Chevrolet and GMC are also the only pickup brands that allow drivers to tow while using Super Cruise, our hands-free driving technology. That's just one of the several features that uniquely differentiates our products. This is exactly the kind of design and engineering functionality that excites people, motivates them, and turns them into customers. It's the same formula for Chevrolet and GMC have followed with ICE trucks, and those results speak for themselves. Based on the feedback we're hearing from customers and dealers, the early sales momentum we are seeing, we're confident that continuing to scale EV production is the right move. We know that transparency matters in every transformation, so Paul and I will give you regular updates throughout the year, including at our Investor Day we're planning for this fall, as we achieve our EV production, sales, and profitability milestones. All of these great ICE and EV products were made possible by the investments we made to drive transformation and growth. As a result, our spending was above historic levels for several years. Now that the foundation is largely built and we're starting to see results, our focus has turned back to driving free cash flow through enhanced profitability and capital discipline, finding ways to spend less for the same results and with an unwavering focus on the customer. You're already seeing some examples of this. Our winning with simplicity discipline is a great example of how we're improving capital efficiency and lowering costs. The next generation Ultium-based Chevrolet Bolt EV is another. It's a profitable and capital-efficient program that will deliver one of the most affordable electric vehicles around when it arrives in late 2025. There will be many more examples as we move forward. With that said, I'd now like to turn the call over to Paul to take you through our results and our new hire guidance for the calendar year.