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GM says it will end regular monthly U.S. auto sales call

By Korea Herald

Published : Jan. 5, 2014 - 19:38

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General Motors Co. the largest U.S. automaker, will stop holding regular monthly conference calls with industry analysts and journalists to review its U.S. sales.

GM, which today said U.S. deliveries fell 6.3 percent in December from a year earlier, announced the decision on its last regularly scheduled such call. The automaker’s shares fell 3.4 percent to $39.57 at the close in New York, for the biggest one-day decline since Aug. 27.

“We are ending the call to concentrate on conferences and other forums that allow us to discuss our strategy and our results with a long-term view and in a very holistic way,” Jim Cain, a GM spokesman, said Friday on the call.

GM will continue to release its sales results on a monthly basis, Cain said.

Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. hold monthly sales calls to discuss results in the U.S. market while other automakers, such as Chrysler Group LLC, don’t.

GM’s decision comes amid overseas sales gains by the Detroit-based automaker, which got about 38 percent of total 2012 revenue from outside of North America. China, for example, has become its largest market by sales volume.

The company participates in six or seven major industry analyst conferences each year plus quarterly earnings calls, Cain said later in a telephone interview.

Stopping the U.S. sales call “gives us an opportunity to talk about our global strategy and how each individual market fits into it and not get so buried into the minutia and tactical results of one individual market,” he said. (Bloomberg)