GM stock offering: ‘Not there yet’ on the specifics

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Waiting for details on General Motors Corp.’s initial public stock offering?

Wait some more.

GM Chief Executive Edward Whitacre on Thursday refused to be pinned down on the timing of an IPO, despite the recent barrage of market rumors indicating that the company would file IPO-related documents this month and float the stock before the November elections.

Speaking to reporters after a speech in Acme, Mich., Whitacre said he didn’t expect a filing within the next couple of weeks.

The company, which emerged from bankruptcy a year ago with $50 billion in federal help and now is 61% owned by the Treasury, still is working to set up a $5-billion line of credit from banks, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“We’re not there yet,” Whitacre said about IPO preparations, according to the Journal. But he made clear that he’s eager to get a stock offering done, which would allow the government to begin cashing out its stake in the company.

“We don’t like this label of Government Motors,” Whitacre said, according to Bloomberg News. “We know it turns off customers. It turns us off.”

GM next week is expected to report robust second-quarter earnings, which would further help set the table for an IPO. “If you liked our first-quarter earnings, stay tuned for our results next week,” Whitacre said in his speech.

Activity has picked up in the IPO market this year as investors have become more receptive to new issues. Seventy-eight companies have floated IPOs in the U.S. market since Jan. 1, compared with 63 in all of 2009, according to ipohome.com.

President Obama said Thursday that he expected taxpayers to “get back all the money my administration has invested in GM’ once the company again becomes shareholder-owned.

‘Over time, that is going to be extraordinarily significant,” Obama said in an interview with CNBC. “It means we stood up for this industry and you know what, we got a good return.’

But the president wouldn’t address the question of whether GM should float an IPO via the so-called Dutch auction process, which in theory would allow average investors (i.e., taxpayers who footed the bailout bill) to get a piece of the action -- as opposed to the standard IPO process, which favors big investors.

Obama said he couldn’t comment, saying he needed to “make sure that we are not breaching any registration rules or any requirements on the SEC.”

-- Tom Petruno