GE’s Cash-Burn In Focus As Embattled Conglomerate Releases Q2 Earnings
Investing.com | Jul 30, 2019 09:08
- Reports Q2 2019 results on Wednesday, July 31, before the market open
- Revenue Expectation: $28.48b
- EPS Expectation: $0.12
Investors aren’t expecting a big surprise from the embattled industrial conglomerate General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) tomorrow when it announces its second-quarter earnings.
After the unravelling of the past two years, bottom-line profitability has taken a back seat. What investors are most concerned about is GE’s cash position and the update on its turnaround efforts.
According to the latest guidance, GE could burn between $1 billion to $2 billion in cash in Q2 as the maker of lightbulbs, power turbines and aircraft engines goes through a deep restructuring exercise to survive in an environment where demand for its flagship products has weakened and its debt load ballooned.
To preserve cash, the once-venerable giant almost eliminated its legendary rock-solid dividend last year, brought in Larry Culp as CEO, and started a massive asset sale program.
The share performance, so far, suggests that there's a long road ahead before Culp can restore investor confidence. Since October last year, when Culp took over as CEO—after the initial enthusiasm that pushed the shares more than 20% higher, they are now down about 4% since the date of his appointment, trading at $10.38 at yesterday's close.
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The largest challenge for Culp is to fix GE's Power division, which is bleeding millions of dollars in cash daily. GE Power lost more than $800 million last year. At $27 billion in revenue, it’s one of GE’s biggest businesses, yet investors value it at zero—or worse. With that, there is an ongoing probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission about the company’s accounting practices.
Very few analysts at the Street have changed their pessimistic view on the GE stock and one of them is JPMorgan’s Stephen Tusa, who has been the most accurate forecaster when it comes to GE.
In a note to clients last week, he advised investors to stay away from GE even if the company beats Q2 expectations. He said GE is “set up to beat” the Wall Street consensus on the company’s industrial free cash flows, but that might come with a simultaneous cut to the company’s future forecast. Said Tusa:
“We see the same dynamic here where despite a 4Q18 “beat” on free-cash flows, the forward FCF estimate has been cut by about 30%."
For Tusa, GE’s cash projections aren’t realistic mainly because its financial services division will continue to hemorrhage cash, while the industrial giant isn’t factoring in the possibility of a recession, which will require more asset sales than the market is anticipating.
Bottom Line
GE’s restructuring remains very much a work-in-progress with scant evidence of a turnaround taking hold. That means its stock will continue to trade at close to rock-bottom levels. But for high-risk takers this might be a good time to take a position. Before doing that, though, investors must be firm believers in Culp's leadership. We maintain our neutral position on this stock at this point.
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