GM Pickup and SUV Record, Tense Tesla Earnings, Cookies To Stay

Paul J Daly: 0:04

Good morning. It is Wednesday, July 24. Today feels like the tale of two earnings reports. Talking about GM starting report, Tesla's earnings report and something about cookies. What kind of cookies? Until the third story? I needed to know the answer to that. No need to repeat. This was like, tip my head when it this

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:27

is like the day that all the marketers rejoiced, you know? And so you just gave a hint.

Paul J Daly: 0:34

Unless all the marketers just love peanut butter cookies.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:38

They do love peanut butter. I mean, that's

Paul J Daly: 0:41

probably the best if you don't let's what's your favorite cookie? What's what's the best cookie? And you know, I'm

Kyle Mountsier: 0:45

going to surprise you right now. Because you know, I'm like a guy that loves chocolate and you

Paul J Daly: 0:49

say something with some nuts in it about them.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:51

Oh my gosh, I don't eat nuts in dessert. That is like sacrilege said

Paul J Daly: 0:57

that. I didn't know that about you. But I do now. And that's just another point of similarity. We all

Kyle Mountsier: 1:03

know you can. Doodle not snickerdoodle Don't worry, you know, not having anything in a cookie is kind of silly. But I'm telling you, you give me a nice soft, like really? Right. Oatmeal raisin cookie. You're gonna see me have five of those things

Paul J Daly: 1:23

good, right? Yeah, I mean, but but a raisin is just like the next step down from having a nut in a cookie. Yeah, but

Kyle Mountsier: 1:31

only sweet you know Okay,

Paul J Daly: 1:33

yeah, I don't like I don't like things like anything with like particulates in ice cream like if I all of a sudden have to go from like chewing one way to chewing a different way. I'm not the only exception would probably be frequency changes oatmeal chocolate chip. All right. Oh below chocolate chips. A good one. Thanks, Doug for that one. D Mitchell. Trader Joe ginger cookies, ginger cookies and the right time of year I think are fantastic.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:58

right time of year. The Right Stuff next to it says

Paul J Daly: 2:02

raisins is why we have trust issues. Exactly. Exactly. I've got a peanut butter. I'm going to great peanut butter cookies amazing.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:11

With a little hash on the top. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 2:13

you got to have the hat. I'm like, Dude, I'm just like a simple I like my simple foods. I'm just boring. married. My wife really brought my powder like plain steak. Plain pizza. I like cookies like nothing. Then I'm chocolate ice cream. Like Give it to me.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:29

Again to a show, you know,

Paul J Daly: 2:32

I've gotten more comments on the cookies. I mean, it's just the state of the internet, right?

Kyle Mountsier: 2:37

Give the people what they want.

Paul J Daly: 2:40

Okay, so we do have switching gears here. We do have a webinar coming up on the seventh. Jennifer's laughing at the conversation. I know it's making us laugh too. Next week isn't next week, no, two weeks, two weeks from today. Two weeks from today, August 7, we are having our next asoto edge webinar we're actually talking about rebranding the webinars to just calling them quick shot webinars because apparently cause like that's all you ever call it. There's a quick shot rabbit webinar, which they are there's so much fun 2025 minutes, where we get in, get out, have some fun, talk about a meaningful topic, bring on some experts. Let let you know what dealers are dealing with what they're thinking this one is featuring our friend Jim Ganser, from Mosaic talking about what's up with the cars rule. It's been kind of quiet in the background. But it has been churning and burning. So it's about that time when we start paying attention to it again, because it's going to surface and when it does, we need to be ready. You can go to a soda.com scroll up just a little bit or maybe it's above the fold. And just click register. So you can join us. It's live. We take questions, we have fun, and then we get out of there so and get back to your day. All right, let's talk about some news. Let's go get some earnings today. General Motors has raised its 2024 forecasts. That's good news following a strong second quarter driven by North American record sales of pickups and SUVs CEO Mary Barra emphasized in a letter to shareholders that responsible growth and efficient capital use amid shifting market conditions is the strategy of course she says quote as excited as we are about our portfolio. I think she's talking about EVs. We are committed to growing responsibly and profitably in any demand environment over the next few years. Third party forecasters now see the Evie market growing steadily but more slowly than it did over the last few years. As a result, we're adjusting our spending plans to make sure we're capital efficient and moving in lockstep with customers, their q2 net income I know that's that's a slow clap right there. q2 net income rose 14% to 2.9 billion with global revenue hitting 47.9 7 billion North American profit is up almost 40% setting a new record at 4.4 billion. They adjusted their full year EBIT, I want to say EBITA but when you say EBIT guidance to 13 to $15 billion this year despite lowering net income so profits I in comes down a little bit but that's cool. revenues down a little bit. The company reported increased Evie sales but scale back production targets. As she just said, due to lower than expected demand feels like it's good for GM right now.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:09

One, it's great for GM and it's great for the American economy. The leading three auto manufacturers drive a significant portion of the overall GDP. You know, I have to believe somewhere deep inside like Mary Barra, Jim Farley caught some episode of the automotive troublemakers some summer and they were like, these guys might be on to something or

Paul J Daly: 5:36

every business book in the library telling them how you match inventory to demand. Stop

Kyle Mountsier: 5:42

steal my thunder, I was excited there for a minute. No, this this is really cool. I mean, kudos to the GM team for pivoting and seeing some high forecasts this year. I'm sure that that trickles right down to the dealer network. And we're seeing you know, good profitability, good good. Good margins, good sales velocity on the new car side of the business at GM store. So it's I think it's good news all around.

Paul J Daly: 6:11

I think so too. You know, we're gonna be back out episode four of more than cars, our Docu series if you haven't seen it go to more than cars.tv We're gonna be out at Mohawk Chevrolet to do some pickups because we were already out there. We're going out there and one more time. And now that they've got you know, their their little office parody really crushing. It was in USA Today yesterday. Ship. I texted him this morning, I was like, hey, we need to get Mary Barra out to the store. And like get on that TV show the dealership because you know, like when something hits in pop culture, it's like, if you're a CEO of a major company, you want to suck live right, just like a politician. And then, you know, we might happen to interview or let's see what happens. If you know, Mary or the GM PR team, drop them a line, send them our way. You know,

Unknown: 6:54

I don't know. Speaking

Paul J Daly: 6:55

of letting them know,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:57

segue are

Paul J Daly: 6:59

the people questions at the Tesla earnings report call let them know despite slightly better than expected revenue, Tesla's q2 earnings had a significant decline in profits raising investor concerns particularly during a tense earnings call with CEO Elon Musk and q2, their net income dropped. This is almost like a mirror image of GM. When they went up 45%. Tesla's net income down 45. Or they went up 40% and profits Tesla's down 45% in net income down to 1.5 billion down from 2.7 billion the previous year. That's a lot while revenue rose to 25 billion exceeding analysts estimates of 24. So they made more money or they brought in more revenue and gross made less money. The company also experienced a 4.8% decline in global deliveries down to 443 900,000 issued vehicles following an 8.5% decline in the first quarter. So there's this q&a session, and must kind of answers these questions you can tell when he's not happy because he gives really short answers. But when he's fine, he gives really long answers. So when asked about diverting GPUs from Tesla, to the startup x ai, the AI startup, you know, they were asking him, like, why did you do that wasn't in Tesla's best interest? And he basically came out and said, Well, that's that that news is based on an old article, which is, I guess, technically true, but it's still relevant question. He assured everyone that the diversion of GPUs to x ai was in Tesla's interest, not detrimental to the company. And then he was pressed on their declining revenue from auto sales, and continued delays of the robo taxi project. And again, he remained non committal about, you know, this conversation they've been having about a more affordable low cost model. And basically, he said this to end the conversation, he said, We're gonna make great products in the future, just like we have in the past End of story. And that was his answer to this whole line of questioning.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:56

You know, look, you won, you can't see so much continued just to the moon growth, right? Like, you watch companies like Facebook, and like Google and Apple have these like little dips, right? You haven't dips in product roadmap, or, you know, cycles in r&d, you're gonna see this and maybe consumer demand. It's, it's just, it's a weird place for Tesla to be in because they've been up into the right for so long at this point. I also still contend that Tesla is a data company, right? That not just Tesla, but all of everything that Elon is doing is a data company. And so, you know, I would not be surprised if they are diverting GPUs to x ai in order to create a more robust AI can then be leveraged by all their other entities. For sure. Josh

Paul J Daly: 9:54

Joshua or just said in the comments from LinkedIn, his his robots are coming along amazingly well remind me of it. iRobot though they do remind me of iRobot they, that's the reality. They didn't cover the story, but they're saying they're gonna have Optimus robots working in Tesla plants next year. Yep. Right. I mean, well, it's Elon Musk's next year. So what does that actually mean? I don't know. But I mean, so I think it'll be next year based on what I've seen, right? Yeah, based on what I've seen, so I think you're right on the money though. Kyle, just like you can't go up into the right forever. And, yeah, they got a lot of he's got a couple irons in the fire. He's tried to do a few things. A couple of guns ready to do a few things. Try. I'm trying to what's the segue to the part of fire? I

Kyle Mountsier: 10:36

don't know. Yeah, I

Paul J Daly: 10:37

NS and cookies really? Alright, let's just talk about cookies. Just

Kyle Mountsier: 10:40

let's talk about cookies. This is a couple days ago. All like I think the collective sigh of marketers happened as Google announced they no longer to intend to remove third party cookies from Chrome a major shift. And it's 2020 announcement, the company will retain third party cookies, focusing on enhancing user choice and said, cookies are an important part of the $180 billion ad tech industry allowing advertisers to track users and targeted ads effectively, particularly on one of the major providers, which is themselves Google, the original cookie deprecation date was supposed to be in 2022, then has been pushed back several times. Their alternative privacy sandbox is aimed to preserve ad mechanisms while protecting privacy. But it had a rocky rollout. So basically, they're saying, hey, look, we're going to do this privacy sandbox thing, it's going to basically be a clean data room and all this consumer interaction. So you're not tracking real users. So Anthony Chavez, VP of privacy sandbox, said, instead of deprecating third party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and then be able to adjust that choice at any time. Early reports indicates significant revenue losses up to 60%. For publishers without cookies, the Google aims, claims this test show a 20% drop for admin manager publishers. So lots is still rocky stuff to go and figure out like, who owns the data? Who's tracking you? When do you get tracked? How do you determine or tell when to track or not? Very different system than what Apple has in place. But still a massive win, at least, you know, short term for marketers?

Paul J Daly: 12:24

So let me ask, let me ask you this. If there's like, like selection criteria, if you can be like, I can self select the level of tracking, what percentage of people do you think, actually are like, I don't want any of that, realistically. And then they're like, totally, totally cookie LIS like rigid?

Kyle Mountsier: 12:48

I would say that before the narrative of like, did you know that people are tracking you and you know, Apple's narrative of like use Safari so that you're not tracked? From an education point, you're probably like five to 10% of users. My My feeling is that that's grown significantly what that number is, like, I couldn't 20 30% Maybe 20 30% really care about like not being crossed, tracked across apps by specifically third party scripts, and cookies.

Paul J Daly: 13:21

Meaning that seven, you'll still have 70% of the tracking data, like, which is still quite a bit because cookies are still in play, you

Kyle Mountsier: 13:30

would have 70% of the tracking data in Google Chrome, which is still not the leading web delivery mechanism for browsers. So what is your chrome versus what? Safari? Safari? Well, because of Safari, mobile, it significantly outpaces Chrome. Yeah, I mean, we've been dealing with Safari mobile since 2017. Right, as marketers, you know, but that, but the narratives haven't really started until Google made the big announcement in 2020. And so that's when everyone started freaking out. But really, you know, from just a general tracking perspective, we've been missing data since 2017. On users,

Paul J Daly: 14:08

it's pretty well just think of all the conversations topics, freak outs that happened over this. Another like, yeah, only a little bit. That's why everybody's got a pivot business is hard people if you didn't notice, you gotta be pivoting. You gotta move. But the one strategy that always works always, is making sure you take care of your people. We'll see you here tomorrow.

‍