What Exactly is GE Now?

GE’s stock is up 50 cents or so after their earnings report this morning.  I don’t know why, the company is in utter disarray…

From DealBook:

General Electric’s decision to shrink its commercial finance arm and eventually divest itself of NBC Universal couldn’t have come fast enough.

G.E.’s 19 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings may have beaten analyst estimates, but the firm’s bottom line was still hurt by continuing weakness in GE Capital, notably in commercial real estate, and NBC Universal.

The conglomerate’s $3 billion in earnings, off $41.1 billion in revenue, amounted to 28 cents a share, beating the consensus forecast of 26 cents a share according to Bloomberg News.

I don’t know what this company is anymore and I certainly don’t know what to make of the stock.  The divestitures, balance sheet shuffling, varying multiples based on disparate pieces of the conglomerate…it’s all too ugly and complicated for me to even wrap my head around.

Is it a value situation based on the “good” pieces being punished for the “bad” pieces?  Not with the losses and piker dividend it ain’t “value”.  Nor would a growth manager be able to look at this thing as growthy, a lot of the growth in GE’s earnings historically came from NBC Universal and GE Capital, now the sources of losses and embarrassment.

Let’s call the whole thing off. 

Source:

Commercial Real Estate and NBC Weigh Down GE (DealBook)