The 8 Biggest Wild Cards to Factor Into GE Earnings

If there is one conglomerate and mega-cap U.S. corporate giant that every investor and financial watcher cares about at the start of each earnings season, chances are high that it is General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE). The conglomerate is set to report earnings on Friday morning, and expectations will be high. 24/7 Wall St. has already noted that the actual earnings report will be hard to interpret. The reality is that there are at least eight serious wild cards that could greatly boost or greatly skew the reaction to GE’s report on Friday morning.

It goes without question that GE currently remains in the 10 stocks to own for the next decade. Still, there are many moving parts to this long-term assessment, and all these wild cards could amplify or mute that view of how long investors should hold GE.

Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF) plays a deep role in what may be a complicated report, and this is the first of the wild cards. Here is what is expected from GE in the formal report:

• GE is expected to post earnings of $0.28 per share on revenue of $28.7 billion.
• For 2015, GE’s estimates are $1.29 in earnings per share (EPS) on $31.04 billion in revenue.
• For 2016, the consensus estimates for GE are $1.55 EPS and $130.7 billion in revenue.
• Synchrony’s second-quarter consensus estimates are $0.62 EPS and $2.77 billion in revenue.
• For 2015, Synchrony’s estimates are $2.58 in EPS and $11.45 billion in revenue.
• For 2016, Synchrony has consensus estimates of $2.72 in EPS and revenue of $12.21 billion.

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Synchrony — or Discord?

As far as why Synchrony is the first wild card, it has to be removed from GE earnings and revenues ahead, and we are likely to get an update on how that spin-off will formally take place and more details on the timing and ratios. Synchrony earnings and revenues have to be backed out of 2016 estimates, and perhaps they will be backed out of the 2015 estimates as well.

No GE Appliances Sale?

The second wild card is the pending sale of GE Appliances to Electrolux for $3.3 billion. The U.S. Department of Justice is now challenging that merger, calling it a creation of a duopoly. GE wanted out of this business back before the recession. Now it has a shot to exit the business, and if suits and negotiations are not able to thwart a regulatory block then the estimates for this unit will have to be added back into 2015 and 2016 earnings and revenues expectations.

Financial Asset Sales

Another wild card is the ongoing financial asset and operational sales underway. GE has announced the sale of billions of dollars in financial assets, what appears to be about $55 billion on last look, and with a goal of $100 billion in financial asset sales.

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All these sales have kept analysts valuing GE somewhat as a bank combined with a conglomerate, but finance is a profit center and all these numbers have to be backed out of the 2016 earnings and revenue estimates and have to be backed out of the 2016 balance sheet expectations. We previously warned that financial asset sales even come with added risks for GE.

Alstom Acquisition

Another wild card is Alstom. GE has run into repeated issues over its $17 billion planned Alstom buyout in Europe. The regulatory issues are coming from Europe. GE has stood by its efforts to date, but some investors have to wonder just how much the deal will be worth in the long-run if GE has to divest or throw out too much to get this deal approved.

What if the deal is ultimately called off? Buying a foreign operation comes with much risk, and it is not as if GE has never been criticized over its payment of U.S. taxes before.

Black Gold May Not Be Gold

GE’s Oil & Gas operations almost certainly will act as a huge wild card. GE had warned previously that lower oil prices were hurting the results. GE may even update whether this unit is now running at a loss, which of course matters for Jeff Immelt’s future since he went deeper into oil and gas. Many forecasts have factored in that oil prices might not go back to $100 again.

Of course anything is possible when it comes to oil prices, and guessing whether oil is headed higher or lower is hard enough for the biggest oil giants in the world. That means GE is in the same boat as the rest of the world’s energy players — oil prices and oil demand are outside of their control.

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Hating a Strong U.S. Dollar

Another wild card for GE is the same as other industrial giants with global sales and global operations — that pesky strong dollar. All U.S.-based multinational companies have complained about the drag that the current strong dollar is having. This makes it harder for U.S. companies to compete on price, and it also has an impact on the profitability and margin when sales do get made. GE is not, and simply cannot be, immune to the strong dollar.

Almost every company has complained about strong dollar affecting results. Johnson & Johnson was hit by as much as 8%, and companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and everyone else that operates globally has complained about the strong dollar. Hedging for foreign exchange is just too difficult for many companies.

Big Buyback and Dividend Trends?

Buybacks and dividends are the last wild card we are looking at. Our understanding is that GE will skip a dividend hike this year and will resume then afterward. Likely that is in 2016, but with the Synchrony spin-off our take is that GE could easily represent that the combined dividend after Synchrony’s spin-off takes place and after Synchrony starts paying a dividend.

GE is planning to shrink its float handily via buybacks. As a reminder, GE has already among the largest stock buybacks of all time. If GE is able to get its float down to 8.0 billion or 8.5 billion shares, that is expected to offset the negative earnings impact from exiting all the financial operations and financial assets.

Long-Term Operational Shrinkage

One issue that GE has to contend with in the weeks, months and years ahead is that earnings and revenues might not be growing on the surface like investors traditionally want to see. When you spin off Synchrony, eliminate $100 billion in financial assets, sell the appliances unit and have declines in oil and gas, the end result is that the growth Wall Street loves from companies becomes very hard to see. The risk is that analysts and the investing public just are not smart enough to read through all the footnotes to be able to see what a “core-GE” will look like in the year 2017.

A shrinking float from share buybacks makes the EPS calculation just that much more difficult in the years ahead. Either way, investors may spend the coming years pointing to how the GE of 2018 has gone the wrong way on sales and earnings compared to GE’s growth trajectory of the 1990s and 2000s.

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The long and short of the matter is that GE has even more wild cards than what has been addressed here. The company has many moving parts. GE wants to shed its status as a “Systemically Important” company under the Treasury’s Financial Stability Oversight Council standards.

It is also important to keep in mind that over 60% of analysts have a Buy rating (or the equivalent rating) on GE. Trading at $26.90 the afternoon ahead of earnings, GE has a 52-week range of $23.41 to $28.68. GE also has a consensus analyst price target of $30.15, and its highest analyst price target is up at $33.00.

GE’s report is generally released very early in the morning, several hours before the 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time opening bell.