General Electric Doesn’t Relinquish Rank as Dow’s Worst Performing Stock

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) was not the worst performing Dow stock last week, but the shares dropped more than 3%, enough to virtually cement GE’s place as the index’s worst performer of the year to date. Shares are down about 25.2% so far in 2018.

The second-worst Dow Jones industrial average stock so far this year is Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG), which is down 14.6%. That is followed by Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT), down 12.2%, and DowDuPont Inc. (NYSE: DWDP) and Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), both down 10.5%.

The Dow dropped 170 points over the past week and closed at 23,932.76, down less than 1% for the week.

GE began the week with an announcement that it will sell part of its health care IT business to Veritas Capital for $1.05 billion. GE’s health care business posted sales of about $19 billion last year, and the part that was sold includes only the health care staffing and payroll services software.

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On Wednesday the company said it would restate results for 2016 and 2017 by April 13 to reflect a new accounting standard. GE already had announced a first-quarter charge of $4.2 billion related to the change.

Then on Thursday, proxy advisor Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that GE dump KPMG as its accounting firm. Glass, Lewis & Co., another proxy advisory firm, had recommended similar action earlier in the week. KPMG has been GE’s accounting firm for 109 years.

GE stock closed at $13.06 on Friday, down 2.8% for the day, in a 52-week range of $12.73 to $30.54. The 12-month consensus price target on the stock is $17.78.

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