General Motors just posted another soft sales quarter, dragged down by electric vehicles that shoppers are no longer rushing to buy. Yet a growing chorus on Wall Street thinks the stock looks like a bargain. The reasons have little to do with today’s showroom traffic. They come down to where the company is quietly placing its next big bet.
- GM’s second-quarter U.S. sales fell 4.2% to just under 715,000 vehicles, with EVs doing most of the damage.
- The automaker is moving into energy storage, a market that could reach at least $250 billion by the early 2030s.
- With the stock down more than 5% this year and a forward P/E in the single digits, some investors see a cheap entry point.
The Sales Slump Is Real, and EVs Are the Culprit
Let’s start with the bad news, because there’s no point pretending it isn’t there. GM sold just under 715,000 vehicles in the U.S. during the second quarter, a 4.2% drop from a year earlier. The weak spot was electric vehicles. American buyers have cooled on EVs, and the federal incentives that once nudged them toward the dealership are fading away. Without those tax breaks, demand has hit a wall. Readers interested in the broader context can also explore GM’s recent earnings picture.
That puts GM in an awkward spot. The company spent heavily to build out its EV lineup, and now the market it planned for is slower to arrive than anyone hoped. For a lot of investors, that headline number is where the story ends. Falling sales, cooling demand, move on. But the folks calling GM a buy are reading past the top line.
A Surprising Bet on Energy Storage
Here is the part that has Wall Street paying attention. GM recently pushed into energy storage, and the timing could hardly be better. Demand for storage is climbing fast, driven in large part by the AI data centers popping up across the country. Those facilities draw enormous amounts of power, and the electrical grid is straining to keep up. Storage helps smooth out that pressure, and the companies that can supply it stand to do well. For authoritative background, GM investor relations offers useful context.
GM has an advantage most newcomers don’t. It can repurpose plenty of the assets it already owns, from battery know-how to manufacturing capacity, without starting from scratch. The total market for energy storage could reach at least $250 billion by the early 2030s, according to research. Even a modest slice of that would move the needle for a company GM’s size.
The catch is patience. This is not a quick win. The energy strategy will take years to pay off, and anyone expecting it to lift the next earnings report will be disappointed. Investors who buy into the idea are betting on sustained energy demand through the next decade, not the next quarter.
Trucks and SUVs Still Pay the Bills
While the EV side struggles and the energy plan slowly takes shape, GM’s bread and butter keeps humming along. The company remains the top-selling maker of trucks and SUVs in the U.S. Those gas-powered workhorses generate steady cash, and they give GM room to fund newer projects without betting the whole business on any single idea.
That combination matters. A strong combustion-engine lineup covers the bills today, and the energy pivot offers a shot at growth tomorrow. It’s a more balanced picture than the sales headline suggests, and it’s a big reason the bullish case holds together.
Why the Price Tag Looks Tempting
Then there’s the valuation. GM stock is down more than 5% in 2026, and shares recently traded around $76.72, well within a 52-week range that runs from roughly $48.87 to $87.62. The forward price-to-earnings ratio sits in the single digits, which is cheap by almost any measure for a company this large. The stock also carries a dividend yield near 0.85%, so shareholders get paid a little while they wait.
Cheap stocks are sometimes cheap for good reason, and GM’s sales slide is a fair worry. But value investors love a solid business trading at a discount, especially one with a plausible new growth engine bolted on. That’s the core of the argument for buying now.
What Patient Investors Should Watch From Here
GM isn’t a stock for someone chasing a fast pop. The EV troubles are genuine, and the energy business needs time to prove itself. But for buyers with a longer horizon, the math is appealing. You get a profitable truck and SUV franchise, a low valuation, a modest dividend, and a real option on the booming demand for energy storage. Keep an eye on how quickly the storage projects scale and whether EV sales stabilize. If those pieces fall into place, today’s price could look like a smart entry point a few years down the road.
Source URLs:
https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/07/09/why-investors-should-be-bullish-on-general-motors/
