General Motors Company (GM): How It Plans to Drive Faster Growth

On Thursday, General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) will release its latest quarterly results. The key to making smart investment decisions on stocks reporting earnings is to anticipate how they’ll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you’ll be less likely to make an uninformed knee-jerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.

General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) has come a long way from the financial defeat investors suffered when it filed for bankruptcy. Yet after enduring years of massive government intervention, General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) has finally seen success, and its share price has responded by moving to new two-year highs recently. Let’s take an early look at what’s been happening with General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) over the past quarter and what we’re likely to see in its quarterly report.

Stats on General Motors

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Can General Motors shift into overdrive this quarter?
In recent months, analysts have hit the brakes on their assessments of General Motors Company (NYSE:GM)’s earnings prospects, substantially reducing estimates for both the first quarter and the full 2013 year. Yet even with declines of $0.14 per share for the just-ended quarter being just part of a nearly $0.40 per share downgrade for 2013’s earnings estimates, the stock has managed to rise 7% since late January.

GM has taken considerable steps in its attempts to retake its status as the No. 1 automaker in the world. With its Chevrolet brand having boasted 10 straight quarters of record global sales, General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) is trying to capitalize on its popularity, with a new Silverado pickup competing against rival Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F)‘s mainstay F-150 line. Meanwhile, with the company finally getting around to redesigning or refreshing nearly all of its vehicle models in the next three years, GM is positioning its Cadillac luxury brand to become relevant again in the lucrative niche, which has become dominated by the Lexus brand of Toyota Motor Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:TM) as well as European players BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen‘s Audi.