Recovery, Earnings, and Stock Performance

GE Investors Look Past Finance Rut for Stabilization
General Electric Co. investors say profit declines may be easing, allowing them to look beyond the slump for signs that Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt is stabilizing the finance unit and driving industrial orders. GE, the world’s biggest maker of jet engines, power-plant turbines and medical-imaging equipment, may say tomorrow that profit from continuing operations fell to 16 cents a share from 26 cents a year earlier, analysts estimate. Earnings may improve enough later in the year that GE can raise its dividend in 2011, the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company said in March. The prospect has lifted GE to the highest since the midst of the U.S. financial crisis 18 months ago. “They may actually surprise on the upside with real revenue growth here, and the comparisons are kind of easy,” said Peter Sorrentino, a senior portfolio manager at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati who helps handle $12.8 billion, including more than 2.1 million GE shares as of March 31. “Any little surprises on, say like energy systems, that’s the kind of thing that people are going to latch onto and say, ‘Hey, the big kids are back in town.’” GE may be poised to show investors steadily improving profit margins, cash generation and order growth amid a buffer of free cash that the company has predicted to be about $25 billion at the end of 2010, said Steven Winoker, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.GE may see one more quarter of declining earnings before profits start to climb against year-earlier comparisons in the second half, analysts surveyed by Bloomberg estimate.

Shares set to trim gains; eyes on GE
European shares were seen falling on Friday, trimming lofty gains made over the past two sessions, as investors awaited quarterly results from global conglomerate General Electric (GE.N) and fresh insight on the outlook for company profits.

Income Falls, but G.E. Tops Forecasts
General Electric, reassured by signs that a global recovery was gaining momentum, said on Friday that its profit for the year might exceed expectations. General Electric's aviation plant in Durham, N.C. G.E.'s chief , Jeffrey R. Immelt, said he saw “encouraging economic signs.”  “We feel pretty good about where we’re positioned as the recovery continues,” the chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, told investors in a conference call about first-quarter results. He said G.E. might undertake additional cost-cutting as it refocused the business on its industrial components, which include production of items like wind turbines and jet engines.   G.E., based in Fairfield, Conn., said it was encouraged by indications that the tide of loan losses at its financial unit, GE Capital, was beginning to reverse. Credit card delinquencies have fallen, the company said, and losses on mortgages in Britain are easing.