How’s it possible to loss $38.7 million in a year?
Not even General Motors is like sure exactly how it happened. But the world’s largest automaker has annnounced that’s the amount it lost in 2007.
As a result, GM will again offer a new round of buyback offers to 74,000 hourly workers, all of whom are represented by the United Auto Workers.
GM said the loss largely was due to a third-quarter charge related to unused tax credits.
The 2007 loss topped GM’s previous record in 1992, when the company lost $23.4 billion because of a change in health care accounting, according to Standard & Poor’s Compustat.
Excluding the tax charge and other special items, GM lost $23 million, or 4 cents per share, for the year, compared with a net income of $2.2 billion in 2006, beating Wall Street’s expectations.
GM retained its status as the world’s largest automaker in 2007, barely. It sold just 3,000 more vehicles than Toyota Motor Corp. GM sold a total of 9,369,524 vehicles worldwide, up 3 percent from the previous year.
Article Last Updated: February 13, 2008.
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A sports, travel and business journalist for more than 45 years, James has written the new car review column The Weekly Driver since 2004.
In addition to founding this site in 2004, James writes a Sunday automotive column for The San Jose Mercury and East Bay Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., and monthly auto review and wellness columns for Gulfshore Business, a magazine in Southwest Florida.
An author and contributor to many newspapers, magazines and online publications, co-hosted The Weekly Driver Podcast from 2017 to 2024.
