GE (GE) May Not Do So Badly

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 27, 9:59PM EDT · Published Jan 22, 6:38AM EST

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Blue_hills_2 Nearly everyone on Wall St. believes that GE (GE) will miss its earnings estimates and post a poor forecast for 2009. This sentiment has pushed its stock to a multi-year low and put pressure on the company’s board again to consider breaking the place into pieces.

The assumptions of analysts are that at least three of GE’s large business have hit very hard times.

NBCU, GE’s entertainment unit, may have modest results, but they are not likely to be terrible. Network TV and the firm’s studio probably did well enough so that the division will have positive operating income.

GE’s industrial unit may have been hit by the recession, but it is in enough businesses so that whatever trouble it has encountered will not be catastrophic.

GE’s infrastructure business is its largest. It is in the process of building out huge projects around the world. It has been counting on growth in emerging markets to ramp up earnings. It will make money, but perhaps less than Wall St. expected.

GE’s medical products operation may have been hit by the downturn in health care spending, but, since it sell some products which are essential to doctors and hospitals, it may outperform expectations.

That leave GE’s financial operations. This is where Wall St. believes that the conglomerate’s earnings will fall apart. But, is also may be where the company posts a pleasant surprise. As is true with most large pools of capital and credit, it is, at least to the outside world, a black box. The shock may be that the box is still working.

GE’s dividend and credit rating still may be safe.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.