General Electric Co. said Friday profit fell 47% in the second quarter, as the industrial giant navigated through a tougher economic environment with fewer sales and more credit defaults in its financial business.And from Environmental Capital:For the June quarter, the Fairfield, Conn., conglomerate and Dow Jones Industrial Average components said profit was $2.67 billion, or 24 cents a share, compared to $5.07 billion, or 51 cents, earned in the year-earlier period.
On a continuing-operations basis, earnings in the latest period were 26 cents a share, while analysts polled by FactSet Research were expecting earnings of 24 cents a share, on average.
Analyst earnings typically exclude discontinued operations.
GE builds jet engines, locomotives and water treatment plants, as well as provides financial backing, health-care products and entertainment, including NBC.
Revenue for the company fell to $39.08 billion from $46.84 billion in the 2008 second quarter. Wall Street was looking for sales of $41.7 billion.
"We are executing through the recession by aggressively controlling costs and driving working capital improvements while continuing to invest for future growth," said Jeff Immelt, chairman and chief executive, in a statement....MORE
Once again, the energy business saved General Electric’s bacon. Second-quarter profit at the conglomerate plunged 53% on a per-share basis—but things would have been a lot worse without the energy division, which outperformed other businesses in sales and earnings.
GE’s energy business reported second-quarter revenue of $9.57 billion, a slight drop from the second quarter of 2008. Despite the lower sales, segment profit rose 13% from the prior year to $1.79 billion. Energy was the only GE division where profits rose during the quarter. GE’s energy unit makes power-generation equipment, from wind turbines to nuclear power plant components.
To get an idea how important the energy business is becoming for GE: Energy accounted for about 20% of group sales and profit in the second quarter of 2008. This year, the energy business accounted for 24% of sales and 36.7% of segment profit....MORE
