Automakers offer a wide range of guidance in latest earning batch

Call it a tale of two cities. Okay, three. And instead of cities, it’s automakers.

Fine, you got us. We’re really just here to talk about auto earnings, as General Motors, Tesla, and Ford all reported the week of October 20, and “a tale of three automakers” is a lot less catchy than we’d like it to be.

Going into the earnings-heavy week, Morningstar analyst David Whiston, who covers GM, Ford, and other auto retailers, told CFO Brew that on top of “the general expectation” that the auto industry will start passing tariff costs on to consumers in 2026, there’s a lot of, you guessed it, uncertainty.

“You’ve got the threat of possibly a slowing economy,” he noted. “There’s a lot of concerns about vehicle affordability. There’s concerns about loan delinquencies.”

But “despite all the volatility, all the economic news that has people spinning around, we’re still going to end up with a relatively decent, if not healthy, automotive market [from a] sales perspective by the end of the year,” Erin Keating, executive analyst for Cox Automotive, told us.

Looking ahead to 2026, adaptability and strategic clarity are the name of the game, she said: “Those that are able to navigate these geopolitical shifts and make decisions and stick to them strategically, even with some uncertainty…are going to be the ones that are going to be able to sustain themselves throughout next year and beyond.”

So let’s see how everyone’s doing, shall we?

Reunion ready. In Q3 2025, General Motors seemed like someone a little too excited to go to their high school reunion: They’re not just doing fine or pretty good…they’re doing great, actually, thanks for asking.

The company raised its 2025 fiscal guidance, and better yet, expects 2026 to outperform this year.

“Looking ahead to 2026, we have multiple levers to carry our current momentum forward, including progress on [electric vehicle] losses, warranty costs, tariff offsets, regulatory requirements and fixed costs,” CFO Paul Jacobson said during an earnings call October 21. “As a result, we expect next year to be even better than 2025.”

Of course, that’s the kind of thing investors love to hear. “Usually they won’t say anything about the upcoming year until they report fourth quarter results in January of that year,” Whiston noted. “The fact they’re willing to say that early is a good sign.”

The automaker also lowered its expected tariff impact this year, now anticipating costs of between $3.5 billion and $4.5 billion, down from the previously expected $4 billion to $5 billion.

“[GM] continue[s] to have inventory discipline and pricing strength that just really keeps them pumping along at good average transaction prices, balancing volume of profitability,” Keating said. “They obviously want to focus on the bigger, more profitable models that honestly sell best in the US, and I think that’s part of the reason they’re relatively positive on their outlook.”

Burn notice. Ford also had cost impacts to share. In September, a fire shut down a Novelis aluminum plant in Oswego, New York. That was bad news for Ford, which relied on the supplier for its vehicle production.

The automaker said it anticipates the fire will cost it between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, though it has plans to mitigate that; CEO Jim Farley said in the company’s earnings report that Ford is “working intensively with Novelis and others to source aluminum” that can be made in the operational section of the plant “while also working to restore overall plant production.”

In its October 23 earnings report, Ford now expects adjusted earnings before interest and taxes to come in between $6 billion and $6.5 billion, down from its previous forecast of $6.5 billion to $7 billion.

Temper tantrum? Over at Tesla, CEO Elon Musk is seeking a trillion-dollar pay package because, among other things, he wouldn’t feel comfortable building “a robot army” at Tesla if he were at risk of “being ousted.”

“I wish I could say the temper tantrum around the paycheck for Elon was out of the ordinary, but I fully expected him to bring that up on the call and to speak to his need to be involved with the company,” Keating said.

According to its October 22 earnings report, Tesla’s profit fell 37% YoY. Revenue climbed 12% to $28.1 billion, with Tesla selling more cars between July and September than in Q3 2024. Notably, though, the company offered significant discounts to boost sales, meaning Tesla earned less money per car on those sales.