GM shares sinking despite posting first profitable year since ‘04

Shares of General Motors (NYSE: GM), despite having delivered its first profitable year of operations since 2004.

GM shares are down 6.16 percent to $32.43 per share as of 2:10 a.m. (EDT). This means that the stock is now trading below its initial public offering price of $33 per share from last November.

GM's net income totaled $4.7 billion last year, driven by robust sales in China and the U.S. The automaker earned $2.89 per share on revenue of $135.6 billion.

David Whiston, an auto analyst with Morningstar, was quoted in the press as suggesting that concerns about the impact of $4 per gallon gasoline and talk of GM's aging model lineup are possible reasons for the share tumble,.

Separately, the U.S. government, which still owns about one-third of GM shares as a result of the taxpayer-funded bailout, said it expects to quickly exit its position in the company, according to the Detroit News,

Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said “The writing is clearly on the wall that the government is getting out of the GM position. The government never wanted to be in the business of being majority shareholder of GM. It was only to prevent a wider spillover, negative event on the economy. So we’re trying to get out of that.”