Industrials

GE Enters 2020 With Big Gains, but Many Questions Still Lingering

Jon C. Ogg

Published: January 2, 2020 3:39 pm

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 11:38 am

The General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) of 2020 and beyond is likely to look quite different from the GE of a decade earlier. The GE of tomorrow is also going to be less diversified and less leveraged. With so many changes in the air, some investors might be wondering why GE was up 5% on the first trading day of 2020. Investors also have every right to wonder if its stock price has risen too far ahead of the actual progress in its ongoing recovery.

GE is no longer a member of the Dow Jones industrial average, and its market capitalization rate of $100 billion or so is no longer that impressive in the grand scheme of things. It is not even in the top 60 U.S. stocks by market capitalization within the S&P 500. That said, GE rallied about 50% over the last year, the most annual gain in two or three decades, and there are enough analysts and investors who remain negative that some investors are going to be worried about GE’s 2020 prospects.

With shares close to $11.70, GE has a consensus analyst target price of just $10.78 from the Refinitiv sell-side group. What happened was that GE’s shares rose nearly 30% over the fourth quarter of 2019 and many analysts have not yet adjusted their price targets and expectations ahead.

CEO Larry Culp is going to have to keep pressing on costs and working within the GE culture. There have been accusations that GE was knowingly issuing false data on the long-term care exposure. Still, GE somehow managed to beat earnings expectations in recent quarterly announcements in 2019. GE continues to gear down its leverage as well, targeting a ceiling of 2.5 times its Debt to EBITDA ratio. GE is also targeting a ceiling of 4.5 times its Debt to total capital from its lending operations as it continues to shrink that exposure.

Even under Larry Culp, pruning down GE Capital has been easier to discuss than to actually implement. GE has been in the process of ditching some of its biotech efforts and is working toward a full split away from the Baker Hughes acquisition it made (the company is not called “A GE Company any longer).

Despite a mixed analyst community, the consensus estimates are for earnings of $0.61 per share in 2019, followed by $0.67 per share in 2020 — and Wall Street has a consensus of about $0.82 in earnings per share in 2021. That may not make GE sound expensive on the outer year forecast, but many economists and investors are worried about how long the economic recovery can continue before another recession arises. And to be frank, it’s not likely to see that sort of earnings growth rekindled if the economy is not on solid ground.

The bulls have a hard time justifying what the future earnings power will be. GE remains diversified enough that it always seems to have a problem somewhere. The power unit has had problems, and the Boeing woes are weighing on GE aviation sales expectations. GE cannot just keep selling off operations either, otherwise it will have no series of operations that would keep it qualified as a conglomerate.

During December GE was upgraded to Buy from Neutral and the price target was raised to $14 from $10.50 at UBS. The other side of the coin is that JPMorgan remains firm with its Underweight rating and even has GE as a short-sell candidate. JPMorgan is not even thinking GE will post adjusted earnings that are half of what is expected in 2020 and 2021. One question to ask now is if that $5.00 street-low analyst target has just become to pessimistic even fore the grizzliest of the bears.

With GE’s consensus price target almost $1.00 under the shares after a 5% gain on Thursday, it is at least important to consider that GE has a wide range of targets ($5.00 to $14.00 is not narrow at all for close to an $11.70 stock).