General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) is suddenly one of the hottest names in autos. The stock has surged to fresh record territory in December 2025, powered by a big earnings beat, aggressive capital returns and a notable shift in Wall Street sentiment toward legacy carmakers.
As of 11 December 2025, GM shares trade around $80.80, not far from their recent intraday peak at the same level, marking a new all‑time high for the post‑bankruptcy company. [1] The stock is up roughly 45–50% in 2025 and about the same over the past 12 months, significantly outpacing the broader market. [2]
Below is a deep dive into what changed for GM in 2025, how analysts now see the stock, and what the latest forecasts say for 2026 and beyond.
GM stock today: riding a powerful 2‑year rally
GM has gone from “perpetually cheap” to “quiet momentum star” over the last two years. From lows near $26 in late 2023, the stock recently traded in the high‑$70s to low‑$80s, with a market capitalization now in the $70–77 billion range depending on the data provider. [3]
Several data points capture the recent move:
- Over the past year, GM shares are up about 45–50%, with a particularly strong run in the last six months. [4]
- Macrotrends data shows a record closing high around $76 on 5 December, while more recent intraday trading has pushed as high as $80.80. [5]
- GM’s valuation still screens modest: trailing price‑to‑sales near 0.4x and price‑to‑book a bit above 1.1x, with a forward P/E around 7–8x based on the company’s own 2025 earnings guidance. [6]
For context, some high‑growth “auto‑adjacent” names are trading at many multiples of GM’s valuation. Used‑car platform Carvana, for instance, now carries a market value north of $80 billion and trades at over 50x forward earnings, more than GM’s entire market cap despite selling far fewer vehicles. [7]
GM’s low‑to‑mid‑teens trailing P/E and single‑digit forward P/E multiple are a core part of the current bull case: investors are paying an old‑school valuation for a company that is, at least on paper, in the middle of a large EV and software transition.
Q3 2025: the earnings beat that reset expectations
The inflection point for the 2025 rally came with GM’s third‑quarter results released on 21 October 2025.
Key numbers:
- Q3 2025 revenue: $48.59 billion, slightly below the prior year but comfortably ahead of analyst estimates around $45.3 billion. [8]
- Adjusted EPS: $2.80 versus Wall Street expectations near $2.31–2.32. [9]
- EBIT‑adjusted: about $3.4 billion, beating forecasts but still down roughly $700 million year‑on‑year due largely to tariff costs. [10]
More important than the quarter itself was the guidance hike:
- 2025 EBIT‑adjusted: raised to $12–13 billion
- 2025 adjusted EPS: lifted to $9.75–10.50
- Adjusted automotive free cash flow: guided to $10–11 billion [11]
At the current price around $80.80, that EPS range implies a forward P/E of roughly 7.7–8.3x, noticeably below the broader market and even below some slower‑growing industrial peers. The guidance also assumes GM can offset roughly 35% of the hit from new U.S. “Liberation Day” tariffs and related trade measures through pricing, cost cutting and supply‑chain tweaks. [12]
The Q3 beat and outlook upgrade triggered a sharp one‑day jump of nearly 15% in the stock and set up the move to new highs in November and December. [13]
Wall Street turns bullish: upgrades, targets and consensus
The tone from Wall Street has shifted decisively in GM’s favor over the last few weeks.
High‑profile upgrades
- Morgan Stanley: Analyst Andrew Percoco upgraded GM from Equal Weight/Hold to Overweight/Buy and raised his price target from $54 to $90 per share, highlighting upside from traditional combustion vehicles, hybrids and disciplined capital allocation even as pure EV enthusiasm cools. [14]
- Goldman Sachs: Analyst Mark Delaney reiterated a Buy rating and increased his target from $81 to $93, pointing to improved earnings visibility and attractive valuation versus both EV specialists and industrial peers. [15]
- Other recent targets include $92 from Tigress Financial, $86 from Citigroup, and $74 from Evercore ISI, while Wells Fargo stands out with a more cautious $48 target. [16]
Several quantitative and research platforms now label GM a “Strong Buy” or similar:
- TickerNerd cites 31 Wall Street analysts with a median price target around $80, a range of $46–100, and a breakdown of roughly 18 Buy, 7 Hold and 2 Sell ratings. [17]
- MarketBeat’s summary of analyst views describes GM as a “Moderate Buy” with an average target near $73–74 per share, a level that has already been surpassed but still shapes the consensus narrative. [18]
- Simply Wall St’s models forecast earnings growth close to 18% per year over the next few years, even as revenue is expected to grow around 1% annually, implying expanding margins rather than surging volume. [19]
Short version: the analyst community has moved from skepticism to cautious optimism. The stock is no longer “orphaned,” and many price targets are now chasing the share price higher rather than leading it.
EV execution: from promise to numbers
For years, GM’s electric‑vehicle strategy was a PowerPoint slide. In 2025 it finally started to show up in actual sales.
No. 2 EV seller in the U.S.
According to GM’s own updates and independent industry data:
- GM has solidified its position as the No. 2 seller of EVs in the United States, behind Tesla but ahead of other legacy manufacturers. [20]
- GM brands sold more than 62,000 EVs in the U.S. through May 2025, across a portfolio of about 13 different EV models from Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC. [21]
- By Q3 2025, EV sales had more than doubled year‑on‑year; several analyses peg year‑to‑date growth around +100–105%, with full‑year U.S. EV volumes expected to exceed 144,000 units. [22]
The Chevrolet Equinox EV — GM’s relatively affordable electric crossover — has emerged as the volume leader and a key contributor to record monthly EV sales. [23]
Profitability still the big question
GM has repeatedly told investors it expects its North American EV portfolio to become profitable around 2025, targeting low‑to‑mid single‑digit margins initially as battery costs fall and Ultium platform volumes ramp. [24]
In the Q3 2025 shareholder letter and slide deck, management emphasized:
- An intense focus on EV margin improvement, including cost reductions in batteries, manufacturing and distribution.
- Production and pricing “discipline,” with the ability to flex between combustion, hybrid and EV output depending on demand. [25]
The EV story is clearly moving in the right direction on volume, but the profitability side is still in “trust, but verify” territory. A lot of the 2025–2027 investment case rests on whether GM can deliver on those margin goals while EV incentives and tax credits are shifting.
Battery and raw‑materials strategy: Lithium Americas and beyond
One under‑the‑radar element of the GM bull case is its work on securing domestic battery materials.
In late 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it would take 5% equity stakes in both Lithium Americas and the company’s Thacker Pass joint venture with GM. The move is designed to support a large Nevada lithium project that is a key future supplier of battery‑grade lithium for GM’s Ultium platform. [26]
For investors, this matters because:
- It reduces supply‑chain risk around one of the most critical inputs in EV batteries.
- It strengthens GM’s claim that it can drive EV costs down enough to hit its 2025 profitability targets.
- It adds a small but real layer of geopolitical insulation in a world where trade tensions and tariffs have become a bigger part of the auto investing story.
Capital returns: buybacks and a growing dividend
GM is pairing its operational progress with a surprisingly shareholder‑friendly capital‑allocation strategy.
$6 billion buyback and shrinking share count
In February 2025, GM’s board approved a new $6 billion share repurchase program, including a $2 billion accelerated share repurchase (ASR) slated to be completed in the first half of the year. [27]
This comes on top of a prior $10 billion buyback completed in Q4 2024, which reduced GM’s share count to under 1 billion. [28]
Zacks notes that these renewed buybacks resumed as uncertainty around the U.S. “Liberation Day” tariff package began to ease after court challenges and policy adjustments. [29]
Dividend growth resumes
GM also re‑established itself as a dividend‑paying company:
- The quarterly dividend was raised by 25% in early 2025, from $0.12 to $0.15 per share, its first increase since 2023. [30]
- The next $0.15 dividend is scheduled to be paid on 18 December 2025, following an ex‑dividend date of 5 December. [31]
- At current prices, the dividend yield is around 0.7–0.8%, with a payout ratio below 20%, leaving plenty of room for buybacks and reinvestment. [32]
Zacks points out that GM has now increased its dividend for multiple consecutive years, after suspending it during the pandemic, framing this as a sign of confidence in the sustainability of cash flows. [33]
The other side of the ledger: labor, tariffs and autonomous reset
It’s not all tailwinds. Several structural headwinds remain important for anyone looking at GM stock.
Labor deals: higher costs, lower strike risk
GM’s 2023 labor agreements with the UAW and Canada’s Unifor union significantly improved wages and benefits for workers but at a cost:
- GM has estimated that the new UAW contract will add about $9.3 billion in labor costs through 2028, translating to roughly $500 per vehicle in 2024 and an average of $575 per vehicle over the life of the deal. [34]
- Contract summaries highlight double‑digit upfront wage increases, the return of cost‑of‑living adjustments (COLA) and the unwinding of many lower‑paid wage tiers. [35]
The positive spin: investors no longer have to price in an imminent strike risk, at least until the late‑2020s. The negative: GM has to claw back these higher structural costs through productivity gains, pricing, and product mix — all while contending with tariffs and EV price competition.
Tariffs and trade uncertainty
The “Liberation Day” tariffs — a broad package of U.S. import duties announced in April 2025 — have complicated life for global automakers, including GM. [36]
GM’s Q3 results show about $1.1 billion in gross tariff costs weighing on EBIT, with management aiming to offset roughly a third of the impact. [37] Court decisions in mid‑2025 have challenged parts of the tariff framework, which eased some of the worst fears, but the policy environment remains volatile. [38]
Any investor thesis on GM in 2026 has to assume a world where trade is more politicized and less predictable than in the pre‑2020 decade.
Cruise and the autonomous rethink
GM’s story once had a big autonomous‑driving kicker in the form of its Cruise subsidiary and a much‑touted partnership with Uber to offer robotaxis on the Uber app starting in 2025. [39]
Reality has been messier:
- After high‑profile safety incidents and regulatory scrutiny, GM drastically scaled back Cruise operations in 2024, with some coverage describing the move as “pulling the plug” on the original robotaxi vision. [40]
- Strategy comments since then suggest a pivot toward personal autonomy and advanced driver‑assistance systems rather than a capital‑intensive, city‑scale robotaxi network. [41]
The net effect for investors: Cruise is no longer a near‑term growth driver or a central piece of the valuation narrative. It’s now more of a long‑dated option embedded in GM’s software and ADAS roadmap.
Valuation in context: is GM still cheap?
With the stock at all‑time highs, the natural question is whether the easy money has already been made.
Current valuation snapshot (approximate, based on recent data):
- Share price: ~$80.80
- Forward EPS (company guidance): $9.75–10.50 [42]
- Forward P/E: ~7.7–8.3x (based on guidance)
- Trailing P/E: mid‑teens, depending on the data source and earnings definition. [43]
- Price‑to‑sales: ~0.4x
- Price‑to‑book: roughly 1.1x [44]
These are not bubble numbers. They are closer to what you’d expect from a cyclical industrial with flat growth, which is precisely why many analysts argue GM still has room to re‑rate if it can:
- Maintain double‑digit earnings growth (the 18% annual growth forecast doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be directionally right). [45]
- Prove that EVs can be profit contributors, not just a drain funded by pickup truck profits. [46]
- Sustain capital returns in the form of buybacks and dividends without compromising the balance sheet. [47]
Some algorithmic and quantitative services provide long‑term price projections that are much more conservative, with average estimates for 2035 and 2040 that are actually below today’s price. [48] That sort of highlights the spread between the bullish “re‑rating” thesis and models that assume mean reversion in margins and multiples.
GM stock forecasts for 2026 and beyond
Pulling together the latest December 2025 forecasts:
- 12‑month price targets:
- Bullish houses (Goldman Sachs, Tigress, Morgan Stanley) cluster in the $90–93 range. [49]
- Consensus averages across multiple platforms fall in the mid‑$70s to around $80, which at today’s price implies either modest upside or low‑single‑digit downside. [50]
- Bearish outliers, such as Wells Fargo’s $48 target, reflect concerns that earnings will normalize lower once tariff, labor and EV costs fully flow through. [51]
- Earnings and growth expectations:
- Street models and independent platforms like Simply Wall St call for high‑teens annual EPS growth over the next few years, driven more by margin and mix than raw volume. [52]
- GM itself expects to generate $10–11 billion of adjusted automotive free cash flow in 2025, alongside the $12–13 billion EBIT‑adjusted target. [53]
- Dividend and buyback trajectory:
- With a sub‑20% payout ratio and a large buyback already in motion, most analyst notes assume continued dividend growth and ongoing net share count reduction in their 2026–2027 models. [54]
Several retail‑oriented forecast tools that extrapolate from historical prices or technical patterns see GM trading somewhere in the $70–85 band over the next year, with wider ranges further out. [55] These tools are useful as sentiment thermometers but are not substitutes for fundamental analysis.
Is GM stock a buy after the run?
From an investor’s perspective, the bull case on GM as of 11 December 2025 looks something like this:
- The company is executing better, with strong Q3 numbers and higher 2025 guidance despite tariff and labor headwinds. [56]
- GM has become a credible No. 2 EV player in the U.S., with triple‑digit growth in EV sales and a clear path to portfolio‑level profitability. [57]
- Capital returns via buybacks and dividends are substantial and likely to continue if free cash flow behaves as guided. [58]
- Valuation remains modest versus both the market and high‑growth auto peers, even after the 2025 rally. [59]
The bear case centers on:
- Structural cost inflation from labor deals and tariffs that may erode margins more than currently modeled. [60]
- The risk that EV adoption slows or becomes more competitive just as GM ramps capacity, pressuring pricing and returns. [61]
- The loss of the Cruise robotaxi narrative as a near‑term growth driver, which leaves GM trading more on its cyclical ICE/EV mix than on a software/autonomy story. [62]
As always, whether GM is attractive at current levels depends on an investor’s time horizon, risk tolerance and view on the auto cycle, EV adoption and trade policy.
References
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