General Electric...a little slice of America?

[GRG55]

One thing jumped out in the GE results announced today. Reminded me of something EJ posted recently...

GE revenue falls short

Fri Jul 17, 2009 7:27am EDT
BOSTON (Reuters) - General Electric Co said profit fell by almost half, on a deeper drop in revenue than Wall Street expected, as the slump that has gripped its finance and media businesses took hold of its heavy industrial units.

The largest U.S. conglomerate, whose shares fell 3.2 percent in premarket trading, reported earnings that topped Wall Street's expectations, but posted a 17-percent drop in revenue that was far deeper than the 10-percent decline analysts expected.

Earnings tumbled at all its businesses except for the energy infrastructure unit, which makes equipment including electricity-producing turbines and gear used in oil and gas production...

[jk]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

"Profit tumbled 80 percent at the company's GE Capital unit..."

a little slice of america, too, in how much it came to rely on earnings from its finance arm instead of its manufacturing units.

[don]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

EJ's latest posting shows FIRE to be 10 times the size of the production/consumption economy. What's a fella to do ;)

[GRG55]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

...and soon a slightly smaller slice...:p

Think there's any correlation here? Think the Ontario politicians will accept that possibility? Think they will admit there's no free lunch, and in the process of saving the world someone, somewhere will have to pay the costs...

Just wonderin'...

Ontario to ban 'old' light bulbs

Apr 18, 2007

It will soon be lights out for incandescent light bulbs.

The Ontario government said Wednesday it plans to ban the current bulbs and what it calls other inefficient lighting technologies by 2012 in an effort to reduce the province's electricity consumption and lower the greenhouse gases that cause global warming...

...The move makes Ontario the first province in Canada - and the first jurisdiction in North America - to commit to a ban on inefficient lighting...


GE to close Oakville bulb plant

Reuters
August 04, 2009

General Electric Co. said Tuesday that it plans to cease manufacturing light bulbs at its Oakville, Ontario plant.

The plant currently employs about 160 people in manufacturing, who produce incandescent, fluorescent and halogen light bulbs. Their jobs will be phased out through August 2010, with the manufacturing functions shifting to other GE-owned as well as outsourced factories...

[GRG55]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

...and soon a slightly smaller slice...:p

Think there's any correlation here? Think the Ontario politicians will accept that possibility? Think they will admit there's no free lunch, and in the process of saving the world someone, somewhere will have to pay the costs...

Just wonderin'...

Ontario to ban 'old' light bulbs

Apr 18, 2007

It will soon be lights out for incandescent light bulbs.

The Ontario government said Wednesday it plans to ban the current bulbs and what it calls other inefficient lighting technologies by 2012 in an effort to reduce the province's electricity consumption and lower the greenhouse gases that cause global warming...

...The move makes Ontario the first province in Canada - and the first jurisdiction in North America - to commit to a ban on inefficient lighting...


GE to close Oakville bulb plant

Reuters
August 04, 2009

General Electric Co. said Tuesday that it plans to cease manufacturing light bulbs at its Oakville, Ontario plant.

The plant currently employs about 160 people in manufacturing, who produce incandescent, fluorescent and halogen light bulbs. Their jobs will be phased out through August 2010, with the manufacturing functions shifting to other GE-owned as well as outsourced factories...

And of course here's the predictable response...

Gov't action needed to keep G.E. jobs, 'green' technology in Ontario


OAKVILLE, ON, Aug. 4 /CNW Telbec/ - Canada's largest energy workers' union says the Ontario Premier should hang his head in shame at his government's lack of action to keep jobs in the province, following today's announcement by GE-Canada that it will cease all operations at its Oakville Lamp Plant...

[Starving Steve]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

Of all my stoxx, GE has been the absolute WORST. I bought it at $33 last summer, and now it's $13.86. And they had a beautiful 11% dividend which they just cut in June to a mere 10c per share ( 2.88% per year ).

To-day, Aug 4th, 2009, GE was fined $50 million by the SEC in the U.S. for falsified accounting. Their books seemed so wonderful, but they were all Bologna Sausage.

GE seemed like such a good investment; what am I missing?:confused:

[GRG55]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

Of all my stoxx, GE has been the absolute WORST. I bought it at $33 last summer, and now it's $13.86. And they had a beautiful 11% dividend which they just cut in June to a mere 10c per share ( 2.88% per year ).

To-day, Aug 4th, 2009, GE was fined $50 million by the SEC in the U.S. for falsified accounting. Their books seemed so wonderful, but they were all Bologna Sausage.

GE seemed like such a good investment; what am I missing?:confused:

I am not in the habit of giving specific investment advice Steve, but if I was you I would take a very, very close look at the liabilities that GE currently carries [here's a link to GE's latest 10-Q filing]. I think you will find that its potential financial business unit liabilities [GE Capital] absolutely dwarf any potential global earnings from all other business segments combined. [You will have to do some "reading between the lines" because just like most other financial entities its books are anything but transparent].

IMO the only reason the stock has any value is because the market is convinced that GE will continue to get bailed out as the corporate strip tease increasingly reveals its precarious financial position. The market may be correct about the bail out...but that doesn't mean the common stockholders will get anything...other than screwed.

Sometimes your first loss is your "cheapest" loss...

[jk]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

jack welch took a fine, diversified manufacturing company and turned into a financial company in drag. the "good stock" with a "good dividend" was no different than citigroup, bac, jpm, et al. all formerly "good stocks" that used to have "good dividends." it's similar in a way to gm, which looked like a car company but on closer inspection was a finance company with a sideline in automobiles, but on still closer inspection was a pension and health insurance company, with a finance company to generate revenues and an automobile company to provide the opportunity for making more loans.

[Finster]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

...[INDENT][INDENT]Ontario to ban 'old' light bulbs

Apr 18, 2007

It will soon be lights out for incandescent light bulbs.

...

...The move makes Ontario the first province in Canada - and the first jurisdiction in North America - to commit to a ban on inefficient lighting...

Not only that, but it shows politician's ignorance of physics, too. The "waste" product of supposedly "inefficient" incandescent light bulbs is ... heat, something that for probably three quarters of the year is not waste at all in an average Ontario household...

[thunderdownunder]

Re: General Electric...a little slice of America?

Sometimes a company becomes so large that all of its divisions lack proper direct management so it flounders for direction and finds difficulty in growing.
GE is such a company. The best outcome would be to break it up into self managed and separately listed sections to be run autonomously by the managers who grow and know the business thus avoiding the long, slow and ill informed chain of command.
The sum of the parts would then be more adaptive and profitable as each section is frees itself from the "Dinosaur syndrome" of to big to adapt and slow to react.
Shareholders would have better transparency and accuracy in reporting.The employees end up working for their company instead of the company

If they ever do it - jump in -you won't be sorry because it really is a good stock thats lost direction and needs to be decluttered to grow strong.
Look at the sad case of AOL/Time Warner. Getting BIG means getting screwed (if your a shareholder) and that applies to 95% of all mergers.