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GE’s $6.2 Billion Stumble Has CEO Talking Again of a Breakup

Flannery, CEO at General Electric, is weighting options of a possible break up of his company.

GE’s $6.2 Billion Stumble Has CEO Talking Again of a Breakup
John Flannery, chief executive officer, General Electric, listens during a Bloomberg Television interview in New York, U.S. (Photographer: Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- John Flannery promised a “reset” when he took over beleaguered General Electric Co. last year.

Now, the new chief executive officer is suggesting that the 125-year-old manufacturer might need a lot more. On Tuesday, he said he’s weighing a possible breakup of GE after the company disclosed its latest disappointment: a $6.2 billion charge related to an old portfolio of long-term care insurance.

Flannery pledged on a call with Wall Street analysts to consider changes such as separating GE’s primary businesses of aviation, power generation and health care into publicly traded companies. That’s a different tone than he had struck just two months ago, when he had emphasized to jittery investors that he’d focus GE on those three areas instead of splitting it apart.

GE’s $6.2 Billion Stumble Has CEO Talking Again of a Breakup

“We are looking aggressively at the best structure or structures for our portfolio to maximize the potential of our businesses,” Flannery said on a conference call with analysts. A review “could result in many, many different permutations, including separately traded assets really in any one of our units, if that’s what made sense.”

GE’s $6.2 Billion Stumble Has CEO Talking Again of a Breakup

The CEO suggested his openness to a breakup after disclosing the larger-than-expected charge related to an old portfolio of long-term care insurance. That renewed concerns about the unexpected issues that can crop up in such a sprawling enterprise -- and raised questions about whether GE can cut it in today’s business environment. 

“The viability of the conglomerate model is rapidly diminishing in relevance,” said Nicholas Heymann, an analyst at William Blair & Co. While GE may hang onto several of its biggest businesses, it’s becoming clear that “you have to simplify and narrow your focus.”

The shares fell 3.4 percent to $18.13 at 3:41 p.m. in New York after dropping as much as 4.3 percent for the biggest intraday decline in two months. GE had staged a modest rebound this year through Jan. 12, with a 7.5 percent advance.

Since taking over for Jeffrey Immelt, Flannery has cut costs and overhauled management as part of a broader turnaround. His efforts failed to halt a slide in GE’s shares, which posted last year’s biggest drop on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

In November, he said the company would sell $20 billion in other assets, taking the spotlight off the possibility of a more ambitious restructuring. Flannery said Tuesday he would update investors in the spring. The company reports fourth-quarter earnings Jan. 24.

GE’s $6.2 Billion Stumble Has CEO Talking Again of a Breakup

“Investors are looking at a wholesale breakup as the logical conclusion of this extended GE saga,” Deane Dray, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said Tuesday in a note. Whether GE follows through will depend on how successfully it can fix its power division, he said.

The company may also favor smaller moves, including an initial public offering in its jet-leasing business, Jeff Sprague, an analyst at Vertical Research Partners, said in a report.

Flannery’s comments stole attention from the disclosure that GE will take a $9.5 billion pretax charge related to GE Capital’s North American Life & Health portfolio. The after-tax impact of $6.2 billion will be $7.5 billion when adjusted to the rate following the recent U.S. tax overhaul, according to a company statement. GE’s finance unit will pay $15 billion over seven years to fill a shortfall in reserves.

The announcement came just two months after Flannery told investors that “soon we’re going to be proud of” GE’s performance. At that time, he said it would cut its quarterly dividend, shrink to a handful of businesses and essentially start anew.

“Needless to say, at a time when we are moving forward as a company, I am deeply disappointed at the magnitude of the charge,” Flannery said Tuesday on the call. “It’s especially frustrating to have this type of development when we’ve been making progress on many of our key objectives.”

The Boston-based company hasn’t done any new business in the long-term care market since 2006. Still, it was saddled with obligations on contracts written years ago. The liabilities can swell when claims costs are higher than expected or when investment income fails to meet projections -- a problem exacerbated by low interest rates.

GE said dividends from GE Capital to the parent company would remain suspended for the “foreseeable future” after the payment was halted during the portfolio review.

Investors have been bracing since GE warned last year about potential problems in its long-term care portfolio. At a shareholder meeting in November, Chief Financial Officer Jamie Miller said the company was likely to take a charge in excess of $3 billion, which is the amount GE Capital would have paid in a second-half dividend.

Long-term care insurance policies, which emerged in their modern form in the 1980s, cover health-related costs not paid by Medicare or standard health insurance. But the products were undermined by faulty assumptions such as how long people would live and how expensive their care would be. Low interest rates also hurt insurers’ ability to offset certain costs.

While an “outsized charge” had been anticipated, the financial impact is “far in excess” of even the worst-case scenario expectations, Tom Gallagher, an analyst at Evercore, said in a note to clients.

--With assistance from Katherine Chiglinsky

To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Clough in New York at rclough9@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Case at bcase4@bloomberg.net, Larry Reibstein

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