The General Motors Corporation is a multifaceted company but its primary function is the manufacturing of automobiles and light trucks (SIC 3711). The General Motors stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has approximately 1,426,592,046 outstanding shares on the marketplace, as of 10/14/2001. It is headquartered in Detroit Michigan with offices around the world. General Motors has many other operations besides automobile manufacturing including: General Motors Acceptance Corporation Financial Services, Hughes Electronics Corporation, and the GM Locomotive Group. (Disclosure.com)Financial Statement AnalysisOverall, General Motors has had five profitable years with increasing sales during the same period. GM has also paid a fixed dividend to its shareholders over the same period. The one-year, which was below average for GM, was 1998. During this period, GM was restructuring its top management and operations and also incurred a union strike of 54 days. However, GM did return to better performance in 1999 and 2000. GM overall was able to attain a fixed dividend of $2.00 per share and increase the shareholders value over the past five years. The first observation from the financial data in appendix one is that General Motors has a low profit margin and is generally less than the industry average each year. The firm is able to keep a low profit margin because they have such high sales volumes throughout the world. This strategy can be both an asset and liability in business planning. The plus side of the strategy is that GM is able to sell a large number of vehicles in the marketplace due to the lower selling price as compared to the competitor. However, the down side of the strategy is that there is a possibility that if sales volumes decrease, the firm can incur a significant decline in the EPS because the profit margin on each item sold is very low. If the global economy sours, GM can have a very difficult t...
