A GE Stock Sale Should Be on the Table
An equity raise would give the industrial conglomerate much needed wiggle room to fix its power unit and restore its balance sheet.
An available lever.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
General Electric Co. shouldn’t be so quick to rule out tapping the stock market to raise cash.
The embattled industrial conglomerate took a good first step toward bolstering its ailing balance sheet on Tuesday when it announced plans to slash its quarterly dividend to a token penny per share. But new CEO Larry Culp rebuffed the idea of an equity raise. He gave little explanation for why he felt confident that such a step wouldn’t be necessary and declined to elaborate when pressed by an analyst on a conference call to discuss GE’s third-quarter earnings, which were also released on Tuesday.