General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) just cannot get its stride going. Despite a new CEO and a brief pop, dismal earnings and a sloppy dividend cut down to one cent per share have left the company gutted. And it hasn’t even helped that CEO Larry Culp acquired more shares.
Friday’s insult on top of injury came from a Wall Street analyst report going from bearish to even more bearish. JPMorgan’s Stephen Tusa reiterated his Underweight rating and also lowered his price target on GE to $6 from $10.
Tusa believes that GE is poised to keep sinking, and the recent target price cut is after earnings failed to impress even the lowest of expectations on a company that already has been battered and then some. His cash flow and earnings expectations continue to weaken. Tusa sees $100 billion in liabilities with zero enterprise cash flow even after lowering the dividend. The note said:
The outcome of GE results was worse than expected on almost all fronts. While liquidity is certainly debatable, we believe this is not really about liquidity, it’s about a deterioration in run rate fundamentals… While the stock is down approximately 70% from the peak of $30, this move still does not sufficiently reflect the fundamental facts, in our view.
Tusa sees more downside from the consensus estimates, and he noted that GE’s leverage looks ugly while its industrial businesses are getting worse. At the end of the day, Tusa believes that GE’s problems are just too big to expect a quick fix.
All eight business segments were reported as profitable just two years ago. Now JPMorgan is signaling that six of those eight now likely will be at or below zero in 2020.
GE shares were trading down 8.8% at $8.30 at midday Friday. GE also hit a multiyear low of $8.15 on Friday.
Will the last analyst to downgrade or lower their price target on GE please turn out the lights?
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