GENERAL ELECTRIC

General Electric Company, headquartered in Boston, is an American-based multinational conglomerate operating through segments pertaining to aviation, healthcare, power, renewable energy, and several others.

General Electric Company has a rich history which started during 1889 with Thomas Edison who had business interests in several electricity-related companies.

Edison had numerous lighting experiments and research which was financed by Drexel, Morgan & Co., with the founder, J.P. Morgan assisting Edison in merging Bergmann & Company along with Edison Electric Light Company.

The result was one corporation called Edison General Electric Company which was incorporated in 1889.

During 1880, the American Electric Company was founded by Gerald Waldo and it was subsequently merged a few years later with Thomson-Houston Electric Company which was led by Charles Coffin.

General Electric Company was formed in a merger between Edison General Electric Company and Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1880 along with the support of Drexel, Morgan & Co.

During the same timeframe, Canadian General Electric, General Electric Company’s Canadian counterpart was formed.

In 1896 General Electric Company became one of the original 12 companies that listed on the DJIA and even though not consistently, it formed part of the index for the greater part of 122 years.

The National Electric Lamp Association, otherwise known as NELA, was absorbed into General Electric Company in 1911 and during 1927, General Electric Company made the very first of its television broadcasts.

General Electric Company moved into power generation business by developing turbo superchargers for aircraft during the first World War and production continued even into the interwar period.

The wind power assets of Enron was acquired by General Electric Company when Enron became bankrupt in 2002 with Enron Wind being the only manufacturer of large wind turbines at the time in the United States.

By increasing both the engineering and the supplies needed for the Wind Division, General Electric Company was able to double the annual sales of wind turbines to $1.2 million by 2003, subsequently followed by the acquisition of ScanWind in 2009.

General Electric Company held its position as one of eight major companies during the 1960s alongside the likes of IBM, NCR, Honeywell, and RCA, to name a few, with an impressive line of both general and special purpose computers.

During 1962, the GECOS, later renamed GCOS, operating system started development and although it was originally designed for batch processing, it later extended to timesharing as well as transaction processing with versions of GCOS still being used today.

General Electric Company specifically emerged in the business of manufacturing computers due to becoming one of the largest user of computers outside of the US Federal Government.

Aside from this, General Electric Company had been the first business in the world to possess a computer.

In collaboration with Quirky in 2014, General Electric Company announced the LED bulb called Link with the purpose of communicating with smartphones and tablets by using a mobile application called Wink.

From the mid-1980s until 2017, General Electric Company made several acquisitions which included, but is not limited to, RCA, 80% of Universal Pictures, Smiths Aerospace, Lineage Power Holdings, Inc., Lufkin Industries, and more.

Even until today, both the Edison General Electric Company and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company plants continue to operate under the General Electric banner.

General Electric Company oversees a comprehensive high-value portfolio of products that include aircraft engines, electrical distribution, electric motors, energy, finance, healthcare, lighting, software, and wind turbines.

As of early 2025, the staff compliment of General Electric comprised of around 205,000 employees. General Electric Company, to date, has a total of 11 subsidiaries which includes, but is not limited to GE Additive, GE Aviation, GE Capital, GE Digital, and several others.

General Electric Company has shown a consistent financial performance in recent years with revenues amounting to $121,615 million in 2018 with a contrasting reduction in quarterly dividends from $0.12 to $0.01 within the same year.

From 1907 until 2018, General Electric Company had been one of the 30 components on the DJIA, providing it with the prestigious title of maintaining the longest presence of any company on the index.

General Electric Company was ranked 14th on the Fortune 20 in 2011 as the most profitable company followed by ranking among the Fortune 500 companies as the 21st largest firm in the United States by gross revenue alone.

With the emergence and spread of Covid-19 a significant amount of businesses have been negatively affected, having to scramble to keep cash reserves to carry them through the pandemic, allowing them to emerge from it in a favourable position.

General Electric Company is no exception and analysis experts have had contrasting thoughts on whether General Electric Company will need to raise equity to survive the pandemic or whether it has enough liquidity to bear up.

There is not enough recent data that would suggest that General Electric Company is considering an equity capital raise, but reports have shown a severe impact on stock prices, especially where aerospace is concerned.

Despite this, General Electric Company has indicated the belief that balance sheets remain strong, especially considering the sale of the BioPharma business to the value of $20 billion in addition to the $36 million that General Electric Company started 2025 with.

Due to the grounding of domestic and international flights since the situation surrounding Covid-19 intensified early in 2025, the demand for spare engines for aircraft has reduced substantially followed by order cancellations from both Boeing and Airbus.

Due to the sheer drop in oil prices, General Electric’s 36.85 stake in oil services has seen severe and significant reductions.

According to a company update, General Electric Healthcare has barely managed as a reduction in the demand for specific equipment has decreased due to elective procedures being either postponed or cancelled.

Despite this, General Electric Company is in possession of ample equity which has been boosted significantly through the BioPharma sale in addition to having options along with tools in reducing dept.

Aside from growing concerns and controversies in the current and forecasted performance for General Electric Company, the company is set to maintain delivery on the multiyear turnaround.

General Electric Company trades its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the stock symbol GE and forms part of the S&P 100 and S&P 500 components.

Data pertaining to an analysis done on the market performance for the first quarter of 2025, which ended in March, indicated total revenues of $20.5 billion in addition to an industrial profit margin of 34.9% and total orders valued at $19.5 billion.

The continuing EPS was $0.72 which included a $11.1 billion after-tax gain resulting form the sale of BioPharma.

General Electric Company targeted more than $2 billion in operational cost out in addition to $3 billion cash preservation in order to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on its financials.

In addition, General Electric Company has taken a series of actions not only to enhance but also extend the company’s liquidity in addition to reducing industrial debt by more than $7 billion.

At this current time, General Electric Company is unable to forecast with any reasonable accuracy either the full duration, magnitude, nor the pace of recovery which is spread across all end markets along with operations and supply chains.

Shareholders who buy or sell shares can yet expect solid dividends and returns in quarters to come.

Industrials

Speciality Industrial Machinery

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• Can I buy General Electric Company shares in South Africa?
  Yes, you can.

• How to buy General Electric Company shares
  By simply opening a free account on SA Shares, or by clicking the “Buy this Share” button to get started.

• What is the current share price?
  By clicking on the link provided above, you can view the real-time General Electric Company share price on the platform.

• Is General Electric Company a good share to buy?
  No, not at the present time. General Electric Company has seen a sharp decline in stock of around 35% which present investors with a near- and medium-term risk with General Electric Company’s aviation section taking the heaviest blow, with further declines forecasted.

• Can I buy General Electric Company CFD through SA Shares?
  Yes, you can.