Am I the only one who is certain that we will not be seeing anything major when it comes to layoffs before the earnings report?
There are so many speculations about February 4, February 5, but to me that makes no sense.
Whatever the earnings report shows, layoffs can be used to mitigate it, and I'm sure those on top will use that to their advantage.
But I guess we will see...
HR booked rooms in Canada for Feb 5 from 8 to 12:30. Also some directors booked rooms on Feb 4 from 8 to 12. So most likely Feb 4 and 5.
Do we know for sure that people involuntarily laid off will get any severance at all? After all, it's not legally required. Maybe the layoffs won't cost GM anything at all.
If you listen to the (public) earning calls every quarter, as those of us that work in finance do, you'll understand the raise in 4q profit despite sales drop. No, it has nothing to do with layoffs.
Also, layoffs dont really save you money and are in fact quite costly in the short run (think severance payments).
No one actually knows the date. First, it was 15th, then 22nd, and now 4th/5th , who knows the next date will be Feb 28tth!!
They will very likely finish the layoffs before earnings because GM has already publicly raised their 4th quarter profit expectations. This raise in expected earnings despite a drop in sales, in my opinion, is due to making a ‘forward claim’ of the layoff savings. A company can do this accounting trick by up to 1 quarter. Wouldn’t make sense to claim the savings on earnings day if they haven’t fully executed the job.
It would also be better to finish layoffs before they have to pay people bonuses.
If you're right, it would be better to have finished the layoffs before the earnings report. If they're reporting bad news, they can say, "but we're cutting costs through layoffs, so we've fixed the problem" during the call itself.