General Motors Co. on Friday "clarified" Chairman Edward Whitacre Jr.'s comments this week that shares in the company would likely be priced between $20 and $25 when GM launches its initial public stock offering.
In a filing Friday with the Security and Exchange Commission, GM said a price range for its initial public offering has not been determined and the automaker cannot predict when the shares will be priced or what the price will be, reported The Detroit News.
Whitacre's comments were reported Wednesday by Reuters, who spoke to the executive at a business event near his home in San Antonio. "It's a little too early to say, but it is going to be somewhere in the $20 range … $20, $25, something like that would be my guess," Whitacre told Reuters.
Reuters also quoted Whitacre as saying, "I can't say how much we'll sell, but I can say we'll have a successful IPO sometime in November." Whitacre told Reuters he predicted the IPO would successfully reduce the U.S. government's 61 percent stake in GM.
GM has declined to comment on the terms of the IPO, citing federal regulations that call for a "quiet period" before the offering, when officials are not supposed to speak publicly about the sale.
In Friday's filing, GM appeared to be distancing itself from Whitacre's statements. Under a section called Corrections and Clarifications, GM said that it cannot predict whether the offering will be successful or help the government sell off its stake in the automaker.
The filing says Whitacre's comments "were not intended and should not be considered as offering material."
GM does not claim Whitacre was misquoted by the Reuters report. GM officials earlier this week declined comment on Whitacre's statements.
Sources, however, have previously told The Detroit News that GM shares will likely split 4-to-1 to make them more affordable at an individual share price between $20 and $35. These sources also have said the IPO is timed for mid-November with a "road show" to court investors starting after the Nov. 2 midterm elections.
The Treasury Department's special inspector general said the government needs to get $133.78 a share to break even on the bailout. The government holds about 304 million shares of common stock and another $2.1 billion in preferred stock.
