GE - Sector: Conglomerates---Industry: Conglomerates - Consumer Financial Servi

[daiwa]

Technically speaking, troubles ahead.



Regards

Daiwa
http://just-charts.blogspot.com/

[daiwa]

Where´s surprising part of it ? 


Regards,

-Daiwa, scanning stockmarket end-week coral reefs... 

http://just-charts.blogspot.com/


General Electric posted a surprising first-quarter earnings miss Friday, deflating investors' hopes that the conglomerate could rise above an economic slowdown.

Shares of GE - a Dow Jones industrial average component - tumbled 9.5% in premarket trading, and the results sent stock futures tumbling.

GE's (GE, Fortune 500) reported net income fell 6% to $4.3 billion after reporting income of $4.6 billion in the first quarter of 2007.

Earnings from continuing operations were 44 cents per share, down from 48 cents per share a year earlier and well below the 51-cent-a-share consensus forecast of analysts polled by Thomson Financial

Only once since the start of 2006 has GE failed to deliver earnings that exactly met First Call's forecast, according to the earnings tracker. That was in the second quarter of 2007, when it beat the earnings per share forecast by a penny.

With businesses in a multitude of sectors, such as health care, finance, energy, consumer electronics, industry and media, many consider GE to be a barometer for the health of the U.S. economy.

But even with strong exposure in markets overseas, the multi-faceted corporation could not avoid taking a hit to its financial services division amid a U.S. credit crisis.

"Our primary shortfall was a decline in financial services earnings," said GE chairman and chief executive Jeff Immelt. "We knew the first quarter was going to be challenging, but the extraordinary disruption in the capital markets in March affected our ability to complete asset sales and resulted in higher mark-to-market losses and impairments."

Sales rose 8% to $42.2 billion, which missed analysts' forecast of $43.7 billion. A year ago, GE reported revenue of $39.2 billion.

"While we are disappointed with our results, the fundamentals of our businesses are strong," Immelt said. "Nevertheless, we failed to meet our expectations.

[BigSully1]

Good call. With GE being a  bellwhether for the economy, this does not bode well for the markets,IMO.

[setravis]

CEO of GE saw compensation jump to $15.2 million
AP - Mon Mar 14, 8:09PM CDT

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) — General Electric Co. Chairman and CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt's 2010 compensation more than doubled to $15.2 million as the company benefited from a recovering economy.

Immelt's $3.3 million salary was unchanged from the previous year, according to an Associated Press analysis of a company filing on Monday. But he got a $4 million bonus in February for his work in 2010, after getting no bonus for two years in a row. And the company gave him stock options valued at $7.4 million.

His 2009 compensation package amounted to about $5.6 million.

The options for 2 million shares, granted in March 2010, were given "to increase the equity-based portion of Mr. Immelt's compensation and to underscore the board's confidence in his leadership," the company wrote. Immelt, 55, gets half of the options after three years and the other half after five years as long as he stays with the company.

GE's directors decided that Immelt "performed very well in 2010" and beat their goals for him in four financial measures, including earnings from continuing operations, cash generated, and profit margins, according to the filing.

Immelt also received $389,809 in other compensation, almost all of it for his personal use of the company plane. GE said that on Nov. 22, the company and Immelt made a deal where he will lease aircraft from GE for his personal use and pay the actual expenses for each specific flight.

GE also said that in February it canceled performance share units given to Immelt in 2006 because the company did not meet the goals attached to them. GE said its cash from operations did not grow at an average of more than 10 percent per year from 2006 to 2010, and shareholder returns including dividends did not beat the performance of the Standard & Poors 500 index during those years. The 250,000 performance shares had been valued at $6.3 million under accounting rules when they were granted in September 2006, according to GE's 2007 proxy statement.

The Associated Press formula is designed to isolate the value the company's board placed on the executive's total compensation package during the last fiscal year. It includes salary, bonus, performance-related bonuses, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year.

The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which reflect the size of the accounting charge taken for the executive's compensation in the previous fiscal year.

GE, which makes products from dishwashers to wind turbines, and finances large projects around the globe, said in January that net income in the final three months of the year rose 52 percent to $4.46 billion from the same period a year earlier.

GE plans to hold its annual meeting on April 27 in Salt Lake City.

During 2010, GE shares rose almost 21 percent to finish the year at $18.29. On Monday, they fell 44 cents, or 2.2 percent, to close at $19.92.