In 2009, GM earned net income of $104,821 million. It began the year with stockholders equity of $28,247 million.

A return on equity of 37.19 percent is considered very healthy. But the following year, 2001, GMs net income plummeted, and so did its ROE. The company posted net income of $6,172 million (compared with $104,821 million the previous year), on shareholder equity of $36,180 million. Follow the formula: Net income for the year (after taxes) Shareholders' equity (from the start of the year) = Return on equity and we come up with an ROE of just 17.06 percent which is very low return for the shareholders investment. For the Gross profit margin on sales, in the income statement, the companys gross profit margin went down from 2008 to 2009 and increased slightly from 2009 to 2010. Thats not quite a positive sign for the company. Another measure of GM financial strength is profitability; return on assets is calculated by dividing the companys income after taxes by its total assets. It is expressed as a percentage. From the table, companys ROA in 2008 is -33.99 percent which is absolutely very poor. However good news comes in 2009 when ROA is surprisingly 76.91 percent which could be considered excellent. The next year, 2010, ROA is only 4.44 percent, a little below average. For the debt-to-equity ratio, companys D/E during these periods are quite low which is a good signal for the investors.