Hard to imagine General Electric without thinking "refrigerator" or "clothes washer." It's hard (if you're my age, anyway) to think of them as a media company (NBC) or a financial conglomerate (GE finance) but that's what they are.
In fact the third largest company in the world, with a tax return that runs 24,000 pages (nice if you're their CPA, yuk, yuk, yuk).
Arguably, you could say (I have said it) that buying GE stock is buying a play on the U.S. economy -or in fact the world economy.
GE - "We bring good things to life..."
GE, the biggest maker of appliances for new U.S. homes, hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to explore options that include a spinoff or auction, according to one of the people, who declined to be identified by name. A sale may bring as much as $8 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt, who took over from Jack Welch in 2001 and surprised investors with a decline in profit last quarter, has been paring consumer businesses to cope with a slower U.S. economy. The units he's selling don't expand fast enough to help GE reach its goal of 10 percent annual profit growth. Appliances, which like light bulbs are the GE products most familiar to consumers, were just 4.1 percent of 2007 sales.
``We would positively perceive a more aggressive approach to selling off slow-growth businesses,'' Robert Schenosky, a New York-based analyst with Jefferies & Co. who rates the shares ``hold'' and doesn't own any, said in an interview.
Prices for some appliances haven't increased in more than half a century. In 1953, an 11-cubic-foot refrigerator was advertised for more than $500. Today, an 18.2-cubic-foot GE model lists for as little as $519 on the NexTag.com shopping site.
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