GM's balance sheet, valuation make it a buy: Strategist

It's a battle of the auto stocks in this week's edition of Good Buy or Goodbye.

Freedom Capital Markets Managing Director Michael Ward tells Yahoo Finance's Josh Lipton that shares of General Motors (GM) are a "good buy" right now. Ward likes the automaker's balance sheet. He also says GM has a lot of cash on hand and an attractive valuation.

Ward is saying "goodbye" to Carvana (CVNA). Ward argues that the e-commerce vehicle seller has struggled to consistently generate positive cash from operations. He also says Carvana has to spend more money on marketing than traditional car dealers and he notes the price volatility the company faces in acquiring used cars. Overall, Ward says Carvana is "trading as a hyper-growth company and it's not."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video transcript

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JOSH LIPTON: It's a big noise universe of stocks out there. Welcome to Good Buy or Goodbye. Our goal is to help cut through that noise to navigate the best moves for your portfolio. And today we're tapping into the auto industry sticky inflation and elevated rates adding fuel to the competitive vehicle market as competition heats up for auto sales. What's the best way to play the space? Well, I'm here with Michael Ward Freedom Capital Markets Managing Director. Mike, it is good to see you.

MICHAEL WARD: Thank you Josh for having me.

JOSH LIPTON: All right. So let's start with one name that you do like Mike. So we can call it up here, the first name we're going to like is General Motors. That's a buy. There's a few reasons for this one Mike. So let's go over them. One is, we'll start here your first bullet. Balance sheet is in great shape Mike.

MICHAEL WARD: And people forget. If you looked on Bloomberg or FactSet or anything and you looked up General Motors, it would show that they had $100 million of debt. That includes GM Financial. If you look at just the auto company, GM ended the year last year with about $5 billion of positive cash. So total cash less debt.

JOSH LIPTON: Got it. Second bullet. Mike, let's go over this one. Surplus cash expectations in 24 and 25.

MICHAEL WARD: GM generated about 24% of its market cap in surplus cash from its auto operations. This year, you're going to probably see somewhere between $5 and $10 million of surplus cash. That's operating cash flow less cap spending. And their current market cap is about $45 billion.

JOSH LIPTON: All right. Sounds pretty good. Final point here Mike in your bull thesis attractive valuation, how come?

MICHAEL WARD: If you look at General Motors, I think there's this sentiment towards General Motors. And the auto sector in general. Apathy is the best way to describe it. The least amount of interest in the group that I've seen in the 40 years that I've followed the stocks, that's always a buy signal to me. General Motors right now is valued at under 2 times 24 and 25 on an EV to EBITDA basis.

It should be trading 3 to 5. Over the last couple of years it's been trading at 4 plus.

JOSH LIPTON: All right. So it's looking-- it's looking cheap based on those metrics. Before they pile in though Mike, what should viewers know about risk? What's the risk to the bull call?

MICHAEL WARD: Always risks with the autos. I always tell people in the autos their capital intensive, labor intensive, cyclical, low growth, highly competitive, highly regulated.

JOSH LIPTON: Got it.

MICHAEL WARD: If that doesn't scare you away, nothing does.

JOSH LIPTON: All right. So that's the bull. Let's talk about a name Mike, you don't like. So a name to avoid in your opinion Carvana. Let's go through some of the reasons here as well. First reason scaled back growth plans.

MICHAEL WARD: Carvana is a great company. They've created a great brand on the used vehicle side of the market. It's a 40-- it's $1 trillion market. And they establish a brand name. What I worry about is valuation. Last year, they got into trouble with an acquisition. Too much debt, not generating positive cash. They had to scale back growth objectives. It's trading as a hypergrowth company and it's not. It had negative growth last year, single digit growth in 24 and 25.

JOSH LIPTON: Second reason here, investors are saying about you said inconsistently in making positive cash flow from operations.

MICHAEL WARD: Yeah. They're generating negative cash. Last year, they had some one time items that produced 800 million of surplus cash. But this company is going to generate negative cash of a 1/2 billion to $1 billion this year. Next they have a heavy debt load. And so you to me that eventually will catch up to them.

JOSH LIPTON: Final reason you would steer clear of this Mike. Let's talk about price volatility obtaining cars and higher marketing spend.

MICHAEL WARD: Yeah. The brand name is key. And everybody's seen the machines that they sell the cars with the vending machines. You have to spend a lot of money marketing to get that point across. When they go out to get their inventory to sell, they have to buy the cars in the used vehicle market. Everything with COVID and shortages and everything else, it caused a lot of volatility. You look at the CPI data just the other day.

A 1.8% decline in vehicle prices is huge. You're talking about price that usually go up fractions of a percentage point. They have to buy the vehicles at the market, fix them up and then sell them retail. That creates risk to the model. A new vehicle dealer knows exactly what they're paying for a vehicle and everybody else is paying the same price. If Carvana gets guesses wrong and buys a lemon or used vehicle prices go the other way, they're going to be stuck paying more for inventory and make less money.

JOSH LIPTON: All right. Final idea here Mike though. So you've got to sell on this name. But what are the upside risks to that call?

MICHAEL WARD: Look, it is a great brand name. They establish a very good brand name. If we saw a flattening out in used vehicle prices, we saw them get it together from an operating cash flow standpoint and they were starting to generate positive cash. That would be a big plus. You already saw the earnings better than expected and you had a big short squeeze. It had a huge short position in the stock. So between operating cash and the short squeeze, I didn't see the latest data on the short numbers.

But I'm guessing a lot of that was cleared up with 4Q earnings.

JOSH LIPTON: Got it. All right. So Mike, let's sum this up for our viewers here. So investors, you're saying buy GM with its attractive valuation balance sheets in great shape. And the expectations and future surplus cash. On the other hand, you're saying avoid Carvana. I mean, the disadvantages it faces, new vehicle dealerships. Its inability to consistently generate positive cash Thank you so much for watching Good Buy or Goodbye. We're going to begin bringing you new episodes three times a week at 3:30 PM Eastern.