General Motors officials have gone on record in saying that the company will discontinue its monthly sales conference call. The call, which has been a monthly routine for roughly a decade, allows analysts, journalists, and other participants to ask GM executives about its latest monthly sales results.
The news is one of the first orders of business under incoming CEO Mary Barra, and follows a 6.3 percent sales drop in the U.S. in December 2013.
“We’ve been thinking about this for a while,” said GM spokesman Jim Cain in a Wall Street Journal report. Cain elaborated by saying the company nixed the call because it already provides “ample opportunity to interact with its executives throughout the year.” GM also participates in six to seven major analysts’ conferences annually, and offers executive interviews during auto show media days.
The monthly conference call seems to be a bit of a dinosaur these days. In Europe, for instance, no automaker hosts sales calls, and GM’s cross-town rival Chrysler halted its domestic sales conference calls in 2009, once Fiat got involved. However, Ford, Volkswagen, and Toyota continue to host monthly sales calls in America.
To note, General Motors will continue to hold its quarterly earnings calls.
Comments
I’m so glad GM is finally doing this! These executives have more important things to do then sit with a bunch of media types and talk about numbers sold!
Like the article mentioned they provide plenty of interaction with the media threw out the year so there is no reason for doing this any longer!
I also give GM huge props for not caving into public pressure and media scrutiny to not make this change!
The media is going to right negative things about this and to them I say go pound sand!
For those people who think this will effect suppliers, GM talks to those companies on a routine basis telling them what they need or want there is no need to make those things public!
Agreed as there are better ways to handle this.
I have the complete opposite opinion to the previous post. Telling the Media things such as trade secrets and purely internal communications should, of course, not be performed by any executive of GM. But this monthly sales number call is a measure of PERFORMANCE against their competitors, and for investors to gauge whether they would change their financials positions in the company. Notice the companies that still hold the call? Ford and Toyota. And that is because in many ways including ACTUAL SALES, they have been eating GM’s lunch. I think any attempt to limit information should be immediately viewed with a skeptical eye, and certainly not praised…..
I love my GM vehicles. And I want the best vehicle I can get. But this could be a start of a troubling trend at GM. Just my opinion….
Your opinion sucks!
Info for financial firms does not come from a conference call! People on Wallstreet have those numbers long before that meaningless phone call is ever placed!
The people that do this just want to make the people that write articles about their company feel good about making positive comments and to be on there good side and give them better PR!
GM keep your info in house and only tell the people you need to for business!
It’s great to see that grown up conversation and intellectual discussion is so obviously present in your statements……
Listen Fan Boy. Whenever I see ANY attempts to limit information to the general public my reaction is as posted. In that I do not trust any corporation or governments “best intentions” as they usually do not have any.
Sycophant……..
Corvette Stephen don’t mind the web site idiot as we do not take him serious either.
The key here is the monthly phone conference is not going to happen but that does not mean GM is not going to interact with the media and Wall Street.
GM has many new more interactive ways to work with different groups and they will move to be more targeting and more informative on this.
Today the phone conference is something few do. I would expect GM may move to some form of a Video conference at various times of the year.
I was just in Goodyear new world headquarters and the new cooperate world is really changing. Video conference is becoming big for even small work groups and there are now even smart boards in most conference rooms now. The possibilities of communication is nearly endless for GM.
The deal here is the phone conference is gone the way of the rotary dial.