Like much of the auto industry, General Motors has found itself wading through crisis after crisis in the past few years. Its balance sheet, however, contains surprisingly little evidence of such turmoil.

After earning a $10 billion profit in 2021, GM says it’s on pace for another huge year financially. It’s also on pace for a second consecutive double-digit profit margin in North America, despite persistent shortages and bottlenecks throughout the complex supply chain that have made building cars and trucks an even tougher task than usual. It has found creative ways to get around supply snags, keep plants running and have fewer lucrative vehicles sitting in holding lots because they’re missing components.

Such results are a credit to hard work at every level of the automaker’s operations, but the results point to the leadership of CFO Paul Jacobson, who came to GM from Delta Air Lines in late 2020. Jacobson was hired to succeed Dhivya Suryadevara, who had been viewed as a possible successor to CEO Mary Barra before she left the automaker to take a job in Silicon Valley.

With the numbers GM has achieved under his guidance, and at age 50, Jacobson appears to have upward potential as well.

As the automaker enters a period of rapid transformation, it has laid out plans to use the massive profits being generated from selling loaded-up pickups and SUVs to roll out a wide array of electric vehicles across a broad spectrum of price points. But Jacobson knows that GM’s EV lineup can’t be a money pit.

In August, he said GM had reached “an inflection point” allowing it to begin ramping up EV production more quickly. Within a few years, it plans to have at least three joint-venture battery plants open and EVs rolling out of multiple North American assembly plants.

“That’s where you start to see significant scale opportunities going forward,” Jacobson said.

Since Jacobson’s arrival, GM has made its long-term planning more visible to investors and set aggressive financial targets for the coming years. Last year, it projected that it will double its revenue by 2030 with the help of its upcoming EVs, software-related services and its Cruise self-driving vehicle. At an investor day this month, GM asserted that its EVs would be profitable by 2025.