General Motors Corp. filed a delayed annual report with U.S. regulators today and said it will restate financial results since 2002 because of accounting problems at its home-mortgage unit.
GM is fixing errors in how its Residential Capital Corp. unit recorded cash flows for 2003, 2004 and part of 2005, the automaker said in a regulatory filing Tuesday. The changes won’t affect earnings for GM, ResCap or General Motors Acceptance Corp., the automaker’s finance unit.
The delayed filing has been a distraction for investors as GM chief executive officer Rick Wagoner works to cut costs and increase sales of new models to avert bankruptcy.
Moody’s Investors Service had threatened to downgrade GM’s credit ratings deeper into junk if GM didn’t file the report this week after missing a March 16 deadline because of the accounting issues.
“GM is showing tremendous progress, and this has been a distraction,” said Burnham Securities Inc. analyst David Healy.
“It’s a cash-flow restatement of a small part of a large company. If it wasn’t GM, people probably wouldn’t care.”
GM wants to sell a majority stake in GMAC to regain an investment-grade credit rating for the finance unit.
