What General Motors Holders Got Right

If you only glanced at GM headlines this year, the privacy settlement over OnStar data or a pause at an Indiana battery plant probably grabbed your attention more than the quieter progress in earnings and capital returns. Holding General Motors over the past year would have returned 20.3%, including dividends. If you were deciding on 28 October 2025 whether to buy, what would you have needed to believe about Ultium, software, and capital allocation for that outcome to feel reasonable?

General Motors has already moved. See which of 26 high quality undervalued stocks still trade below our estimates.

The Argument You Would Have Been Weighing Up On General Motors

The shares cost US$69.87 at the start of the period, so any view on General Motors depended on which story about its future you thought sounded more realistic.

The bullish camp pointed to a Fair Value of US$80, a level they saw as justified by their assumptions, built on Ultium cost cuts and flexible plants making over 2 million high margin North American SUVs and pickups each year.

The more cautious view put Fair Value at US$61.36 based on its own set of expectations, stressing risks from tariffs that could create annual cost headwinds of US$4b to US$5b with only partial mitigation.

What The Evidence Did To The General Motors Argument

General Motors delivered Q3 2026 revenue of US$50.0b and net income of US$3.3b, with net margin at 6.6% versus 2.7% a year earlier, which supported the optimistic case about higher profitability from trucks, software and Ultium investments. The US$12.75m OnStar privacy settlement and five year limits on selling driving data challenged the most aggressive software and data assumptions, so the evidence cut both ways.

The lesson is simple. When a story leans on software and services, keep checking two things in each report: whether margin actually moves toward the target and whether any new regulation, fines or rule changes narrow the pool of data the company is allowed to monetise.

What General Motors’ Price Now Asks You To Believe

General Motors shares now trade at US$82.48. The selected Narrative sees Fair Value below that level, framing the stock as a transition bet in which investors are paying for disciplined capital use through a long and expensive shift toward electric and software-heavy vehicles.

Anyone buying today effectively assumes GM can keep ICE profits funding that shift without major value erosion. The question is how the legal, regulatory and execution risks that Narrative highlights might affect that balancing act.