The quote in the title ("It's Your Money, Demand Better") was actually the Oldsmobile ad slogan from 1993-1997. Oh, the irony.
General Motors reported a $15.5 billion loss this morning. That's a loss of over $27 per share on an $11 stock. That's big. Of course, there are plenty of reasons for this huge loss. I have no intention of getting into them since I have no intention of ever owning this stock. I was interested, however, in looking at a longer history of GM's financial performance.
I compiled the history of GM's net income back to 1993. I would've gone further back, but this was all that was easily available in Edgar.
| Net Income (millions) | ||||||||||||||
| 20082Q | -$15,471 | |||||||||||||
| 20081Q | -$3,251 | |||||||||||||
| 2007 | -$38,732 | |||||||||||||
| 2006 | -$1,978 | |||||||||||||
| 2005 | -$10,417 | |||||||||||||
| 2004 | $2,805 | |||||||||||||
| 2003 | $3,822 | |||||||||||||
| 2002 | $1,736 | |||||||||||||
| 2001 | $601 | |||||||||||||
| 2000 | $4,452 | |||||||||||||
| 1999 | $6,002 | |||||||||||||
| 1998 | $2,956 | |||||||||||||
| 1997 | $6,698 | |||||||||||||
| 1996 | $4,963 | |||||||||||||
| 1995 | $939 | |||||||||||||
| 1994 | $822 | |||||||||||||
| 1993 | $724 |
Since 2005, GM has LOST about $70 billion. That works out to $123 per share. If we look at GM's cumulative net income since 1993, we come up with a LOSS of over $33 billion. I knew it was bad, but these numbers are astounding. I thought only the U.S. government could lose this kind of money so quickly.
