Why GE Earnings Could Catch Analysts and Investors Off Guard by Wide Margin

Industrials

Published: July 21, 2016 2:05 pm

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 5:27 am

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) may be the king of conglomerates, but its stock also has had quite a strong performance. This will matter for GE’s earnings report on Friday morning, but GE’s performance metrics look somewhat mixed when compared to peers. 24/7 Wall St. is expecting a big fight between bulls and bears who follow GE. This is also one of those earnings reports that could catch analysts (and maybe investors) off their feet.

GE shares have risen just under 7% so far in 2016. That looks much more muted than peers like 3M, Honeywell and UTX — and it is even less than the S&P 500 Index’s year-to-date gain of 7.5%. Where this gets tricky is in a look back a year. Compared with a year ago, GE’s stock performance of 26% is much better than its peers and the S&P 500. GE’s stock is up 22% more than the broad market in the past year.

With a $300 billion market cap, GE remains one of Wall Street’s highest values by market cap. Having over 300,000 employees also makes GE more important than most other companies in the United States as well.

Wall Street analysts have mixed views on GE going into earnings. When 24/7 Wall St. ran its bullish and bearish case for 2016 at the start of this year, GE’s consensus analyst price was $31.77. That meant that GE was only expected to return about 5%, if its dividend yield of 2.95% is included. Now GE shares are at $32.75, and the consensus analyst price target is a tad higher at $33.36.

Thomson Reuters is calling for GE to report earnings of $0.46 per share on $31.76 billion in revenues. Yet, note that analysts often have a devil of a time getting estimates right when companies are in a state of flux. GE has been shedding its appliances unit at the same time it bought Alstom in Europe. GE also has been paring down its financial assets rapidly, and it is now well over halfway through that sale process. As a reminder, GE has now lost its too big to fail label, or SIFI (significantly important financial institution) designation.

What will still drive GE ahead is its ongoing transition to an industrial conglomerate. GE has a $2.00 per share earnings target for 2018, but those estimates from analysts (consensus) are $1.50 per share in 2016 and $1.74 in 2017.

Another driver for GE shares ahead will be how much GE common stock it can buy back. GE is looking to reduce its common share count down to around 8 billion shares by 2018. The old share count was 10 billion, as well as roughly 9.2 billion at the end of the most recent quarter.

Anytime a company this large has its future staked out two years or so, it can mean that there might be a lot of volatility from quarter to quarter. That is why analysts and investors alike may need to keep their eye on a longer-term thesis, rather than just on the second-quarter earnings.

GE has also said that it will not be engaging in many large acquisitions. Its latest efforts have been more of a bolt-on theme. Additional news worth considering into earnings: