GM to hold Nov. 29 business update after UAW contract deal

By David Shepardson

(Reuters) -General Motors said on Tuesday it will give a Nov. 29 business update following the ratification of new labor agreements in the United States and Canada.

GM CEO Mary Barra and Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson will hold a conference call with analysts.

The United Auto Workers union on Monday said members had approved a new labor deal through April 2028 that will boost GM’s labor costs, including an immediate 11% pay hike.

GM’s stock was down more than 2.6% at $27.76 a share in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Detroit automaker is also facing mounting troubles at its self-driving unit Cruise, which has lost more than $8 billion since 2017, including $728 million in this year’s third quarter, according to GM financial disclosures.

Cruise co-founder and chief product officer Daniel Kan resigned on Monday, a day after Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt quit just weeks after California barred the company’s self-driving vehicles from public roads following an Oct. 2 accident.

GM on Monday said it would not advertise in the 2024 Super Bowl, the first time since 2019 it will sit out the heavily watched National Football League (NFL) championship game while it cuts marketing costs as part of a broad strategy to reduce fixed expenses.

GM, which said in July it planned to cut operating costs by an additional $1 billion through the end of next year, said in October it was slowing the launch of several electric vehicle models to cut their costs, and pulling back on EV product spending.

Before the additional $1 billion in cuts announced in July, the automaker earlier this year said it would cut fixed costs by $2 billion by the end of 2024.

In April, GM said about 5,000 salaried workers had taken buyouts and agreed to leave the company, which would reduce fixed costs by about $1 billion annually, including a few hundred additional jobs cut in February.