GM and Toyota are shaping up to be the biggest losers in the EV transition

GM could have mortgaged its future final week.

On Wednesday, the automaker introduced that it will increase its dividend and buy back $10 billion worth of its shares, successfully erasing this 12 months’s internet earnings after which some. The transfer happy shareholders, with GM’s inventory buying and selling about 10% greater than earlier than the monetary engineering strikes had been introduced.

However shareholders’ delight could also be fleeting. Income from gross sales of fossil gasoline automobiles are speculated to bankroll the transition to electrical automobiles, GM president Mark Reuss stated final 12 months. That doesn’t look like the case anymore, partly as a result of the corporate is determined to prop up its share worth, which is similar because it was 5 years in the past.

CEO Mary Barra in all probability thinks the market is being unfair on condition that the corporate has, excluding a couple of quarters, been worthwhile for greater than a decade. The share buybacks are undoubtedly a ploy to wrench GM out of its rut.

Any increase the buybacks give to the share worth will solely paper over the probably cause shareholders are lukewarm on GM: The corporate lacks the power to execute on its plans.