General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) keeps moving closer and closer to being an industrial conglomerate rather than a conglomerate that is part industrial and part bank. While the company has been rapidly selling off financial assets of GE Capital, GE has now finally been notified by the U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council that GE was voted to remove GE Capital’s label as a “systemically important financial institution.” This also means that GE’s financial operations are no longer in the “too big to fail” category.

Having the “SIFI” designation removed effectively means that General Electric’s financial operations are no longer in the “too big to fail” category. It was the endless financial exposure that GE had ahead of and during the recession which made GE’s stock price fare much worse than peers like 3M, Honeywell and United Tech.

It was back in April 2015 when GE’s Jeff Immelt and Keith Sherin announced that GE would seek to have that SIFI status removed. By selling off so much of the financial services operations and by selling off most of GE Capital, GE can now be evaluated like an industrial conglomerate.

At that time, GE’s lending business was one of the nation’s largest banking businesses with assets of close to $500 billion. This move will also lower capital reserves and regulatory costs for GE and GE Capital. Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF) has now been spun out of GE and all share exchanges have been formalized and done for quite some time. The recent weakness in Synchrony has not even had any real spillover impact on GE. That should be further representation that GE is moving up and on in its quest to be an industrial focused company.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt has said that the new market conditions and a higher regulation climate put GE Capital’s necessary returns under its goals for staying in the business. GE Capital’s Keith Sherin also identified that GE would be able to save hundreds of millions in operating costs due to lower capital reserve requirements and regulatory costs.

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Another milestone here for the nation’s largest conglomerate is that this was the first SIFI removal with the oversight committee’s backing. GE Capital will also send an $18 billion dividend up to the parent company. That capital is being used for multiple purposes of course, but GE’s massive stock buyback is being targeted at this time to eventually get closer to 8 billion shares outstanding from the 10 billion prior amount. GE’s buyback efforts have taken its outstanding share count down to about 9.2 billion common shares.

GE Capital has now signed sales agreements for roughly $180 billion worth of businesses and assets. It has also closed on more than $15 billion of those announced sales, and it has simultaneously derisked its business since the recession.

Roughly half of GE’s profits were tied to financial lending and financial services at the peak before the recession. Moving forward, that number is shrinking rapidly and may ultimately be under 10% of GE’s future profits.

When so much of GE’s profits came from financial operations, that eventually ended up dragging GE into the danger zone going into the recession. To prove that point, GE’s common stock quarterly dividend of $0.23 per share has been in place since the end of 2014 — but that is still far shy of the $0.31 quarterly payout that was being paid in 2008 and into 2009.

One thing that will be easier to understand ahead, quite contrary from a decade ago, is that GE’s balance sheet will be significantly easier to understand. Analysts will have an easier time understanding the company’s operating metrics as a result. Just keep in mind that 2016 will still be a transition year for GE before its analysts can unilaterally know exactly what it is that they are supposed to be analyzing.

Now investors just have to wait for more analysts to opine on whether or not GE can really hit that$2.00 in earnings per share (EPS) target for Fiscal Year 2018. Its reported earnings was $1.31 EPS in 2015, and Thomson First Call has consensus estimates pegged at $1.50 EPS for 2016 and $1.74 EPS for 2017.

GE shares were up on Wednesday with the broader markets continuing to recover. GE was up 2%at$30.55 late on Wednesday. Its consensus analyst price target is $32.47 and its 52-week range is $19.37 to $32.05. GE has a $281 billion market cap.

In a post-news flash analyst report, Merrill Lynch’s Andrew Obin reiterated his Buy rating and $33.00 price objective. Obin signaled that the firm was expecting GE’s SIFI review process to take a longer period of time and that the earlier de-designation was a positive surprise. His report said:

The rescission of SIFI should enable GE to accelerate its buyback program, as well as optimize its under-levered balance sheet. GE’s ability to pull forward buyback earlier into 2017 should provide 2-3c/sh EPS cushion. If we assume 1.5x Net Debt / EBITDA for GE Industrial’s balance sheet (in line with the group average) vs. being effectively debt-free, we estimate that the company has capacity for an incremental >$30 billion of capital to redeploy through 2017 towards buyback or M&A (>10% of existing market cap). Our 2018 EPS estimate of $1.83 is below the company’s target of $2.00 due to more conservative end market growth assumptions, but we estimate that the cash optionality on the balance sheet can bridge EPS to the $2 target.

Merrill Lynch’s investment rational, the basis for its $33 objective and targets ahead, said:

We forecast GE to post double-digit EPS growth in its Industrial business, which puts it as one of the highest growth large-cap Industrial names. The April 10 announcement of a staged exit of most GECC businesses may translate to more regulatory visibility at GECC, allowing it to upstream more capital to the parent and GE utilizing its industrial balance sheet more efficiently.

Management commentary on this matter has been included below.

GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, said:

We have transformed GE by exiting most of financial services, acquiring Alstom, and investing to be a leader in the Industrial Internet. I am proud of the tremendous execution of the GE Capital team. Going forward, GE Capital will continue to be part of the “GE Store,” supporting the growth of our Industrial businesses.

GE Capital Chairman and CEO Keith Sherin, said:

This decision is a result of the transformation of GE Capital into a smaller, safer financial services company that meaningfully contributes to the success of GE’s industrial businesses. We will continue to re-evaluate our capital requirements to reflect our reduced risk profile and right size our organization as we go forward.

We are highly appreciative of the cooperative working relationship we have had with the Federal Reserve and the FSOC and their expeditious consideration of our SIFI rescission request.

We are rapidly shedding the remainder of our overseas assets not aligned with GE and once complete we will go forward with a business portfolio that is properly capitalized and directly aligned with GE’s industrial businesses.

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