General Electric's second-quarter profit fell 3.9 per cent, matching analysts' estimates on a per- share basis after a surprise earnings slump in the year's first three months that hurt its stock price.
Profit from continuing operations was $5.39 billion, or 54 cents a share, compared with $5.61 billion, or 54 cents, a year earlier, the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company said today in a statement.
Sales rose 11 per cent to $46.9 billion. Chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt is selling slower- growing units to help prop the stock, which has fallen 25 per cent since a surprise drop in first-quarter profit.
Earlier today he agreed to sell GE's consumer-lending operations in Japan for about $5.4 billion, one day after saying he will pursue the spinoff of GE's consumer lighting and electrical switches business in addition to the century-old appliances unit.
"That number is quite good, actually," James Hardesty, president of Hardesty Capital Management in Baltimore, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television after the results.
"A flat year in the second quarter is an exceptional performance given the underlying conditions" in financial markets.
In the quarter, higher sales of energy equipment and service contracts and helped temper declining profit in finance.
Mr Immelt repeated the 2008 profit forecast for $2.20 to $2.30 a share. GE, the world's biggest maker of power-plant turbines, jet engines and medical imaging equipment, plunged the most since 1987 on April 11th, when Mr Immelt said 2008 profit would grow less than he previously predicted. GE rose 45 cents to $27.64 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
Bloomberg