General Electric Shares Keep Falling, On Track for Fourth Straight Session of Declines

By Saumya Vaishampayan 

General Electric Co. shares tumbled further Monday as investors continued to question the viability of the once-storied industrial conglomerate.

Shares dropped 6.1% to $8.06, on track for their fourth straight day of declines. The stock has slumped nearly 30% since the company unveiled plans two weeks ago to cut its dividend to a penny a share.

The latest slide comes after Chief Executive Larry Culp said the company's power business is "getting close" to a bottom in an interview with CNBC on Monday, indicating that woes for the unit could continue. That business has been plagued by issues like dropping global demand and turbine blade failures, which have contributed to the stock's swoon in recent months.

GE shares also slumped Friday after analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. slashed their price target on the stock to $6 a share, a move fueled by the company's high leverage and limited available cash, disappointing results and its decision to cut its dividend. The company last month also disclosed it was the subject of a criminal accounting probe.

With the latest declines, the stock is now down by more than 50% so far this year and is trading around levels last hit during the financial crisis. It's the latest sign of gloom for GE, which was once the most valuable American company in the early 2000s and an original member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. GE was removed from the 30-stock Dow industrials in June.

Kate Moore, chief equity strategist at BlackRock, said GE's stock slump doesn't indicate "something sinister happening in industrial conglomerates or the broader economy."

"Investors are certainly watching price movement in a lot of these bellwether stocks, but I would suggest that there's unlikely to be a huge sentiment contagion because this is a specific security issue," she added.

--Corrie Driebusch contributed to this article.

Write to Saumya Vaishampayan at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 12, 2018 11:34 ET (16:34 GMT)

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