May 15 (Bloomberg) -- General Electric Co.'s move away from consumer appliances may signal bigger divestitures by Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt this year, including the broader group that contains the century-old unit, analysts said.

General Electric may sell, spin off or seek a partner for the refrigerator, oven and dishwasher unit, people familiar with the situation said yesterday. Appliances accounted for more than half of last year's $13.3 billion in sales at the GE Consumer & Industrial segment, which also sells lighting and switches.

``GE could be exploring multiple strategic alternatives, including the sale or spin of all of Consumer & Industrial, as well as the potential sale of individual pieces,'' Credit Suisse analyst Nicole Parent, who rates the stock as ``neutral,'' wrote in a note to clients today.

Immelt, who surprised investors with a decline in profit last quarter, has been paring consumer-tied businesses to cope with a slower U.S. economy and declining home sales. Rival Whirlpool Corp.'s CEO, Jeff Fettig, told analysts April 24 that demand for appliances dropped for seven straight quarters. Whirlpool is the world's largest appliance maker and GE is the biggest supplier to newly built U.S. homes.

A sale may fetch about $3 billion to $8 billion, according to estimates from New York-based analysts including Parent, Jeffrey Sprague of Citigroup, Deane Dray of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Robert Cornell of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Gary Sheffer, a company spokesman, declined to comment on a possible sale. Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE fell 14 cents to $32.37 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange trading after a U.S. economic report showed a drop in April industrial production. The shares have declined 13 percent so far this year.

Immelt Presentation

Investors may learn more from Immelt's presentation at the Electrical Products Group in Florida next week, analysts including Dray and Cornell wrote in notes today. More aggressive moves may slow the company's long-term profit goal of 10 percent annual growth until 2010, Cornell said in his note.

Immelt's talk ``could include plans to accelerate and/or widen the range of potential portfolio moves,'' Dray wrote. ``It is our expectation that GE will be looking to simplify the organization and take out consumer finance risk and some of the industrial cyclicality, such as appliances and lighting.''

Divesting the entire GE Consumer & Industrial segment, which provided $1.05 billion in operating profit last year, may cut per-share income by 10 cents while eliminating the bulk of GE's slowest-growing assets, Parent wrote. GE had profit from continuing operations of $22.47 billion on sales of $172.7 billion last year. GE Commercial & Industrial is contained within one of GE's six main business groups.

GE Strategy

Since unveiling his basic plan to shift out of economically sensitive sectors in December 2002, Immelt has divested more than $75 billion in GE businesses, including the plastics and insurance units, while making more than $50 billion in purchases in faster-growing areas such as wind power and aviation.

In December, Immelt put the U.S. private-label credit card division on the block and he's also selling the consumer finance unit in Japan, called Lake. Buyers from emerging market countries may be more interested in U.S. assets because a weaker dollar makes them more affordable and because of lower manufacturing costs in their own countries. The dollar has declined about 10 percent in a year against the currencies of six trading partners in the Dollar Index traded on ICE Futures in New York.

Analysts including Nicholas Heymann of Sterne, Agee & Leach Inc. in New York said potential buyers include Haier Group, China's biggest appliance maker and an unsuccessful suitor for Maytag Corp., which Whirlpool acquired in 2006. Zhao Rui, a spokeswoman at Haier Group in Qingdao, declined to comment.

``Haier would definitely be interested because they've been trying for years to get a bigger share of the U.S. market,'' said Zhang Xiaoga, an analyst at Orient Securities Co. in Shanghai.

Other potential bidders mentioned in analyst reports today included South Korea's LG Electronics Inc. or Samsung Group, and Stockholm-based Electrolux AB, the maker of Frigidaire appliances.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rachel Layne in Boston at rlayne@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 15, 2008 16:05 EDT