How Big is General Motors?

On June 23, 2010, articles on Reuters and Bloomberg said GM General Motors plans an IPO Initial Public Offering. Some of the major stockholders will sell some of their shares.

I shared the articles with my friend Dr. Doug Stetson, an acute observer currently inspiring insights for the govt in Washington, who always has something interesting to say. He pointed out that many people, for instance us, weren’t aware that (1) GM isn’t a publicly traded company, and (2) Toyota (NYSE:TM) is twice the size of GM as the Reuters article asserts. I looked into it, and verified both are true.



GM stock doesn’t trade publicly. There are exactly 4 stockholders currently (General Motors, 2009 Annual Report on Form 10-K ):

61% UST United States Treasury

12% EDC Export Development Canada, an agency of the govt of Canada

18% New VEBA Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association, a trust administering benefits for the UAW United Auto Workers union

10% MLC Motors Liquidation Company  (OTC:MTLQQ)

MLC is the post-bankruptcy rump of the old General Motors Company, selling off divested assets (including a church in Bedford, Indiana) and satisfying the claims of certain creditors. MLC stock trades publicly (Possibly worthless, investigate carefully before you trade.). New VEBA and MLC also have warrants (long-term options) to purchase stock in GM in the future at specified prices. UST, EDC and New VEBA also hold preferred stock (in this case, essentially a form of debt) and debt.

Toyota sales were $209bn in the fiscal year ending March 2010, approximately twice General Motors sales of $105bn in the fiscal year ending December 2009. Honda and Ford are much smaller than either Toyota or GM. All figures in the following table are billions of US dollars.

Company	Ticker	Revenues			Mkt Cap June 2010
		FY 2009	FY 2008	FY 2007
General Motors	[none]	105	149	178	[note]
		FY 2010	FY 2009	FY 2008
Toyota	NYSE:TM	209	262	203	112
		FY 2010	FY 2009	FY 2008
Honda	NYSE:HMC	101	120	94	54
		FY 2009	FY 2008	FY 2007
Ford	NYSE:F	118	146	172	38

Note: GM stockholders equity = $22bn at Dec 31, 2009.
For TM and HMC, fiscal year 2010 ends March 2010. For F and GM, fiscal year 2009 ends December 2009. For GM, all figures come from the 2009 Annual Report on Form 10-K. For other companies, Revenues come from Marketwatch, and Market Capitalization is from Standard and Poors.







In preparing this post, I got help from