John Casesa North Quotations

Capitalizing on growth in Asia through Daewoo is essential if GM is to achieve a profitable mix of businesses. They can't do it by just cutting costs in North America.

The outlook for the fourth quarter is not so hot. It is very clear that results in North America will be compressed by all this price cutting.

These results are reminiscent of Ford's late 1990's performance -- driving earnings improvement with a richer truck mix, ... GM remains market-share driven and its North American pricing fell 1.0 percent. Fortunately, it was able to increase its mix of light trucks and decrease its fleet sales, offsetting partially the negative impact of lower prices.

We were surprised that GM said that it does not plan to reduce permanently assembly capacity in North America to reflect the Olds phase-out, ... GM's restructuring, especially its discontinuance of the Olds brand, is undeniably a step in the right direction. However, the costs of these actions are much more visible than their ongoing benefits right now.  We anxiously await follow-up actions.

The North American operations are the driver of the results. Business is great this year, and the mix is very rich -- they're selling lots of trucks,