GM Will Miss Financial Results Filing Deadline

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

Ohio.com reports that GM will miss a March 31 deadline for filing its first GAAP-compliant financial results since emerging from bankruptcy. According to an SEC 10k filing:

General Motors Company (the “Company”) is unable to file its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2009 (the “2009 Form 10-K”) by March 31, 2010, as the Company is still finalizing its fresh-start adjustments required by generally accepted accounting principles relating to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed from General Motors Corporation (“Old GM”) in connection with Old GM’s sale of assets under Section 363 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (the “363 Sale”) prior to such date. Due to the size of the Company, the global application of fresh-start reporting and the associated determination of the fair value of its assets and liabilities is a significant undertaking, which requires extra time

GM says it will be able to file within a 15 day extension period, which means there’s not too much longer to wait before we have our first “real” measure of GM’s post-bankruptcy performance. And because GM’s last results were accompanied by warnings that Q4 2009 results could be worse than November’s non-GAAP numbers (not to mention recent soft-pedaling by CFO Chris Liddell), there’s reason to believe that they won’t be particularly pretty. Either way, GM can only delay their release for so long. As 60 percent stakeholders in the artist formerly known as the world’s largest automaker, taxpayers have the right know just how their “investment” is panning out. I guess we’ll be seeing GM in line at the post office just before the midnight on the 15th.

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

More by Edward Niedermeyer

Comments
Join the conversation
 4 comments
  • Jkross22 Jkross22 on Mar 30, 2010

    I don't get why delaying is of benefit to GM. You'd think that if the numbers are really bad, they would want to release them instead of drawing it out and avoiding more embarrassment.

  • Porschespeed Porschespeed on Mar 30, 2010

    "Due to the size of the Company, the global application of fresh-start reporting and the associated determination of the fair value of its assets and liabilities is a significant undertaking, which requires extra time" Which, reading between the lines and translating into English comes out as: "Damn accounting. 30 years of more smoke and mirrors than a Vegas magician is really hard to undue in a hurry. Especially unwinding this mess in a manner that doesn't draw the attention and consummate ire of regulators. Besides, we have a rare opportunity to build-in all sorts of fresh ways to make the upper-mgmt stock options valuable. "

  • PrincipalDan PrincipalDan on Mar 30, 2010

    Didn't Knudsen warn John Delorean that you could shake the tail of GM and not have it felt by the head for months or years?

  • Robert Schwartz Robert Schwartz on Mar 30, 2010

    "I guess we’ll be seeing GM in line at the post office just before the midnight on the 15th." Those filings must be electronic.

Next