GM Leaving NYSE for Nasdaq 100 Move Draws Tech Debate
General Motors will switch its stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq on Nov. 17. A Yahoo Finance panel questioned whether the move makes…
General Motors is changing its stock market home, and investors are arguing over what the change means. GM will move its listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq on Nov. 17, according to CNBC. The New York Times noted the automaker had been on the NYSE for more than 100 years.
Bloomberg described GM as the first legacy automaker on the Nasdaq. Reuters reported the switch comes as the company accelerates its push into artificial intelligence.
A tech label or a new address?
A Yahoo Finance panel took up the question this week. Nancy Tengler, CEO and CIO of Laffer Tengler Investments, led a discussion with Yahoo Finance senior autos reporter Pras Subramanian, Axios senior AI reporter Madison Mills, Envorso founder Adrian Balfour and Clocktower Group chief macro strategist Eric Wallerstein.
The skeptics were blunt. One panelist said that for the move to make sense, GM would need to be selling data or building robots. "Cars are the first robots out there in the wild," the panelist said, but added there was no sign of a robotics play from GM. The company has gotten rid of its Cruise business and folded self-driving work into its own units, a path the panelist called "a little confusing."
Another panelist was harsher about the listing itself. "Give me a break," the speaker said, comparing it to putting on a firefighter outfit and declaring yourself a firefighter.
The tech pivot, and the factory floor
The case for GM's tech ambitions is not thin. A panelist pointed to the company's GM Forward event last week in New York City. There, GM talked about a new design process that uses AI to build cars faster, software-defined vehicle architectures and new batteries.
The panel also traced the company's connectivity roots. GM has been connecting cars for 10 to 15 years, starting with the OnStar system with Verizon. Later, it brought in a number of Apple executives to try to turn around its product development. One panelist said that effort did not work out as hoped, and recalled a senior GM figure comparing the culture clash to a high school sorority dance, with technology staff and the Palo Alto recruits on opposite sides. The panelist added that things have improved since, and that some of the people now in those roles are capable.
The other side of the argument is physical. One panelist said GM still has tremendous capital spending needs and thousands upon thousands of workers. The speaker also pointed to the company's forward price-to-earnings ratio, a measure of how much investors pay for expected profit, as a sign the market still treats GM as an industrial firm. Nasdaq 100 inclusion is "nice," the panelist said, but it does not turn an automaker into a technology business.
Who gains from the switch
For investors, the practical effects are the exchange and the index. The Nasdaq gets one of the best-known industrial names in American business, and GM gets a listing alongside tech-focused companies. Whether the market begins valuing GM differently is the open question the panel kept returning to, and it is one the stock's trading after Nov. 17 will start to answer.
The closing word on the panel went to the exchange. "So the big winner is the Nasdaq," one panelist said.
Source: finance.yahoo.com
