通用汽车为何要放弃欧洲市场？

本周一，美国通用汽车公司决定将其欧洲业务出售给法国的标志雪铁龙集团（PSA）。此举表明通用汽车着眼于汽车行业越来越依赖软件和服务的实际，宁可牺牲一部分全球市场，也要提升利润的决心。

如果不算在德国的欧宝和在英国的沃克斯豪尔这两个子品牌，去年通用的全球销量大约是880万辆汽车，在争夺全球最大汽车厂商的竞争中，远远落后于德国大众和日本丰田。

2016年，欧宝和沃克斯豪尔两大品牌合计销售了近120万辆汽车，总收益约为187亿美元，约占通用汽车总营收的11%。

不过，尽管通用在欧洲使尽了浑身解数——比如投资于新车型设计，研发更环保的发动机，想方设法提高欧洲工厂的效率，给38,000多名员工发薪水等等，但这些努力却并没有什么明显成效，通用的欧洲部门自1999年以来便一直陷入亏损。

通用汽车公司本周一表示，如果该公司去年就卖掉了欧宝，那么凭借这20亿美元的转手费，通用就有了足够的现金储备进行股票回购，每购收益也将增长5个百分点，虽然公司营收将不可避免地下降10%。

尽管欧洲业务历经多年挣扎依然无法止损，但通用的北美业务却呈现了井喷。在经历了2009年美国政府主导下的破产重组后，通用汽车的国内市场业务得到了浴火重生，虽然它旗下的品牌和经销商数量乃至员工人数都有所缩减，但是它欠债权人和退休员工的钱却也少了很多。

2009年以来，借着低油价的东风，北美市场的高性能皮卡和SUV的销量强势反弹。2016年，通用的北美市场税前利润成功突破了10%。

为了让北美市场的利润机器继续开足马力，通用必须继续追加对SUV和皮卡车型的投资，同时也要斥巨资于环保技术的研发，使这些车辆能够满足日益苛刻的联邦能源经济指标。

欧洲也同样需要更环保的车型。然而欧洲市场是以柴油车和小排量汽油车当道的，就算通用花了大价钱针对这些发动机进行了优化，同样的技术对美国市场也并无裨益，毕竟美国市场的半壁江山是由大排量汽油车撑起的——不少皮卡使用的都是八缸引擎。

通用汽车CEO玛丽•博拉本周一对分析师表示：“通用在欧洲的产品组合，与它在其他市场的产品组合只有20%的重叠。”因此通用认为，光靠其欧洲部门自身，是无法在排放技术上实现规模经济效益的。

PSA集团CEO唐唯实（Carlos Tavares）相信，欧宝的营收入和销量将使PSA在与大众和雷诺等欧洲厂商的竞争中占据一定优势。PSA旗下品牌主要有标志、雪铁龙和DS。通用对PSA的发展似乎也十分看好，它还将认购PSA集团4.2%的无表决股权。

2009年，通用汽车董事会否决了将欧宝和沃克斯豪尔出售给以汽车零部件供应商麦格纳国际（Magna International）和俄罗斯联邦储蓄银行（Sberbank）为首的一个财团的动议。而今年通用汽车终于决定撤出西欧市场，这也反映出了2009年以来，国际汽车市场的两个重大变化。

第一个变化是中国成为了全球最大的汽车市场，2016年，中国的汽车销量达到了近2800万辆，预计未来还将继续增长。

随着中国市场的增长，通用必须将更多工程研发资金和资本投资转向中国，而中国市场的增量最终也将能够取代出售欧宝所牺牲掉的部分全球销量。

2016年，光是通用在华的高端子品牌别克的销量就超过了欧宝和沃克斯豪尔，上汽通用（即通用与上海汽车工业集团的合资公司）主打小型商务车市场的五菱品牌的销量也超过了这两家公司。

第二大变化是，自2009年以来，各大汽车厂商纷纷开始研发以电能驱动的智能汽车。这种汽车的一大特点是它们是以里程付费的，而不是像传统汽车那样可以以车贷的形式购买。

上个月当博拉被问到通用汽车是否需要更激进的重组以推高股价时，博拉表示：“在我们对未来的投资上，我认为‘交通即服务’（Transportation-as-a-service）将是一个巨大的商机”，并表示“用科技推动产业转型的机遇”很可能将改变通用汽车的估值。

博拉还表示，通用并不需要欧洲工厂为公司在欧洲提供专车服务。

不过投资者们尚未改变他们的看法。毕马威会计事务所美洲汽车业务部的负责人盖瑞•西尔博格认为，以谷歌母公司Alphabet为代表的一些硅谷企业，以及以Uber为代表的专车服务在汽车数字化系统上拥有很大优势。另外，汽车厂商要想成功开发出自动驾驶功能，首先需要解决的就是处理海量数据的问题。

西尔伯格指出：“人才战争对于赢得市场绝对是至关重要的，”而那些人工智能系统领域的人才“是不会为汽车公司工作的”。

去年，通用斥资5亿美元（甚至可能追加了金额）收购了旧金山的一家机器人驾驶技术创业公司Cruise Automation，这种收购已经成为汽车行业的一种新业态。就在通用汽车出手后不久，福特汽车公司也斥资10亿美元收购了一家机器人驾驶技术创业公司Argo AI，并将继续追加投资推动该公司的后续研发。

通用汽车CEO博拉此前曾向投资者承诺，要使投资者回报率达到20%或以上。该公司本周一表示，在完成欧洲部门的出售后，该公司将拥有20亿美元现金用于股权回购，而公司的资本支出每年也将下降10亿美元。

博拉和其他公司高管此前表示，由于公司面临着要向股东贡献更高收益的压力，因而不得不做出一些艰难的决定。抛弃一个拥有近80年历史的老品牌，显然是通用汽车历史上最大的大事之一。此举的成败也将决定博拉未来将给通用汽车留下哪些遗产。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

General Motors Co’s deal on Monday to sell its European operations to France's PSA Group doubles down on a bet that the company can win by being less global but more profitable in an auto industry increasingly dependent on software and services.

Without the German Opel and British Vauxhall brands, GM last year would have sold about 8.8 million vehicles, far behind Germany's Volkswagen AG and Japan's Toyota Motor Corp in the race to be the world's largest automaker.

Opel and Vauxhall combined sold nearly 1.2 million vehicles and generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2016, about 11 percent of GM's total.

However, all of GM's activity in Europe - the investments in new model designs and cleaner engines, the efforts to make factories more efficient and the wages paid to 38,000 employees - has generated nothing but losses since 1999.

GM said on Monday that if it had not had Opel last year and had instead used the $2 billion shedding the unit will free up from its cash reserves to buy back stock, earnings per share would have risen 5 percent, even though revenue would have been 10 percent lower.

Meanwhile, business in North America has boomed. GM's home market operations were reborn as a smaller company due in part to the U.S. government-led bankruptcy in 2009, with fewer brands, fewer dealers, fewer employees and far less money owed to creditors and retirees.

Since 2009, cheap gasoline has powered a boom in sales of high-profit pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, lifting GM's North American pretax profit margins to just above 10 percent in 2016.

To keep the North American profit machine revved up, GM must invest in new SUVs and trucks, as well as expensive technology to enable them to meet rising federal fuel economy targets.

Europe is demanding cleaner cars, too. But far less of the technology GM would buy to clean up European diesels and tiny gasoline engines would be useful in the United States, where larger gasoline engines – including eight-cylinder motors used in pickup trucks – dominate the market.

"Only 20 percent of the (European) portfolio overlapped with rest of General Motors' portfolio," Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra told analysts on Monday. That is why GM has concluded it cannot achieve significant economies of scale in emissions technology for Europe on its own.

PSA CEO Carlos Tavares is betting Opel's revenue and sales volume would help give his company, which makes Peugeot, Citroen and DS cars, an advantage against rivals such as Volkswagen and Renault SA. GM is in on that bet because it will receive warrants equivalent to a 4.2 percent non-voting stake in the French company.

GM's decision to walk away from Western Europe highlights two other profound shifts since 2009, when the board scuttled a deal to sell Opel and Vauxhall to a group led by auto supplier Magna International and Russia's Sberbank.

The first is China, now the world's largest auto market, with roughly 28 million vehicles sold in 2016 and more growth forecast to come.

As China grows, GM will need to shift more vehicle engineering money and capital investment to feed that market, which could eventually replace much of the global sales volume sacrificed by the sale of Opel.

Buick, GM's primary brand in China, outsold Opel and Vauxhall in 2016. So did the Wuling brand of small commercial vehicles the company builds with partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.

Also since 2009, automakers have begun racing to transform cars into electrified, intelligent devices that are paid for by the mile instead of purchased on installment plans.

Asked last month whether GM needed more radical restructuring to lift its share price, Barra said "the way that we are investing in the future, which I think is a huge opportunity, with transportation-as-a-service" and "the opportunity that technology has to transform this industry" could change how the company is valued.

GM does not need factories in Europe to offer ride services there, she said.

However, investors have not changed their views yet. Gary Silberg, head of KPMG's Americas automotive practice, said Silicon Valley companies such as Alphabet Inc and ride services leader Uber Technologies Inc had the edge in the digital systems and the people needed to work with the terabytes of data required to make a car drive itself.

"The war for talent is absolutely essential to winning in the marketplace," Silberg said. And those adept in artificial intelligence systems "are not going to work for the auto industry."

GM demonstrated the industry's new economics last year when it agreed to pay $500 million, and potentially more, for tiny San Francisco robotic driving technology startup Cruise Automation. Ford Motor Co followed suit with a $1 billion deal to bring aboard and fund the future work of robotic vehicle startup Argo AI.

GM's Barra has promised investors returns of 20 percent or more. The company said on Monday that after completing the European sale, it would have $2 billion to accelerate share repurchases, and capital spending would be reduced by about $1 billion a year.

The pressure on GM to deliver high returns to shareholders forces tough decisions, Barra and other senior GM executives have said. The decision to abandon Opel after nearly 80 years is the most momentous yet, and the success or failure of that bet could define her legacy.