Record Truck Profits, a $7 Billion EV Write Off, and a Market That Doesn't Care

General Motors (NYSE:GM) is trading at $73.05 on Monday, down 10% year-to-date, and the number driving market mood has nothing to do with truck margins. A post from r/wallstreetbets titled “Just as GM, Ford, and take massive EV write-offs, oil hits $100/barrel” captured the tension. GM just wrote off billions to exit EV capacity right as oil makes EVs look like the obvious long-term play again.

 

As the post title puts it: “Just as GM, Ford and take massive EV write-offs, oil hits $100/barrel” — a pointed summary of the strategic whipsaw both automakers now face.

Record Truck Margins Are Not Moving the Stock

The underlying business is genuinely strong as GM’s Q4 EBIT-adjusted came in at $2.8 billion, up 13.3% year-over-year, with a Q4 EBIT margin expanding to 6.1% from 5.3%. North American plants ran at 113.7% two-shift utilization, and GM holds a 17.2% share of the U.S. truck market. Management raised the dividend 20% to $0.18 per share and authorized a new $6 billion buyback. The 2026 guidance calls for adjusted EPS of $11 to $13.

Retail investors are weighing that against three things harder to dismiss:

• GM took more than $7.2 billion in special charges in Q4 alone, tied to EV capacity realignment, producing a net loss of $3.3 billion for the quarter despite the adjusted earnings beat.
• Full-year 2025 net income fell 55.11% year-over-year to $2.70 billion, even as operating cash flow rose sharply, making reported earnings hard to trust at face value.
• Fleet sales as a share of total volume climbed to 19.6% from 16.9%, a lower-margin mix shift that quietly pressures the profitability story.

  Where GM and Ford’s EV Bets Leave Investors

Ford (NYSE:F) faces a similar bind, down 8.6% year-to-date at $11.98 after absorbing $10.7 billion in Model e asset impairments in Q4 and projecting another $4 to $4.5 billion in EV losses for 2026. Despite achieving its best U.S. market share in six years, Ford trades at a forward sales multiple of 0.28 versus the industry’s 3.29. Both companies are generating real cash and getting almost no credit for it. With EV incentives gone, the market is still waiting for a coherent answer on what the transition actually costs.