GE (GE) Beats The Street, NBCU Still A Dog

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 11, 5:45AM EDT

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GE (GE) hit Wall St.’s EPS forecast at $.54 and beat revenue estimates coming in at $46.9 billion above the $45.3 billion concensus.

The revenue increase was 11% over the same quarter last year. GE also reaffirmed its EPS forecast for the year at $2.20 to $2.30.

The company’s powerful infrastructure group had a 24% increase in segement profit. The number was amazing give the unit’s size. Its revenue for the quarter was $17.6 billion.

GE’s commercial financial unit pulled its weight with segment profit up 7% to $1.4 billion. Revenue for the business was $6.6 billion. Healthcare had moderate results with segment profit rising to $747 million up 8%.

NBC Universal made a significant case that it should not be part of the company as it continued to be a drag on earnings. Its revenue rose 7% to $3.9 billion, but segment profit moved up only 1% to $909 million. While GE’s industrial unit continues to do poorly with segment profit down 32% to $300 million, it is at least likely to be spun-off.

The NBC Universal number bolster the argument that old media is no place for GE to be. The recent results from companies like CBS (CBS) and News Corp (NWS) have been modest. A recession is likely to hit advertising revenue hard.

GE won’t have much credibility on Wall St. while it holds it NBCU assets.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.