What To Expect After General Electric’s Second Quarter Earnings Reports

second quarter earnings

General Electric (NYSE:$GE) will be announcing its second quarter earnings reports before the market opens on July 21, 2017. It will be CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s last quarterly report before John Flannery, current head of GE’s healthcare sector, assumes the company’s CEO position.

During June of this year, GE announced that Immelt will be stepping down as CEO on August 1 after 16 years with the company. As such, analysts may ask for further details about what the company’s future might look like under Flannery’s leadership, as well as what position Immelt will set the company in during his last few months as CEO.

Some analysts believe that GE will continue to work on revamping its core industrial businesses while letting go of other ones. The re-focus began in 2015, when GE announced plans that it will be working towards creating a much simpler company. Part of the plan included GE exiting most of the operations of GE Capital.

Besides re-focusing on its core businesses, GE has also made use of mergers and acquisitions to further strengthen some of its other businesses. Just recently, GE’s Oil & Gas business successfully merged with Baker Hughes (NYSE:$BHGE), one of the world’s biggest oil companies. As a result, analysts will also probably be asking for further information on the merger, particularly regarding oil-and-gas equipment sales, during the company’s earnings call for 2017’s second quarter. Oil and gas sales across the board have been suffering as their prices have hit new lows.

Along with GE’s future under new leadership, as well as the expected results of its mergers and acquisitions, analysts may also try and prod for further details regarding the company’s backlog. The backlog is important because it means potential revenue for the company once the products are delivered to its consumers. GE’s backlog includes a number of businesses, including energy, healthcare, aviation, transportation, and more. Analysts and investors alike may want to keep an eye on the state of these businesses in different parts of the world due to GE’s global scope as a company.

What to expect: GE’s Earnings

The average analyst expectation of GE’s earnings per share (EPS) for 2017’s second quarter is $0.25 per share, a decrease from the $0.51 per share the company saw in 2016’s second quarter. The revenue is expected to be around $29.12 billion.

While GE has been consistent in meeting earnings expectations for the past two years, the company’s revenues have been inconsistent. As a result, GE’s stock has fallen for the past six quarters whenever it announced its earnings reports.

In the beginning of July, GE’s stock traded around $27 before falling to $25.85 on July 10. Since then, however, the stock has been slowly getting back to the level it was at in late June-early July. Traders are expecting either a 2.5% increase or decrease when the earnings reports are released, according to the Market Maker Move indicator.

Investors should definitely keep an eye out for GE’s stock as it releases its earnings report before the trading session on July 21, as GE’s implied volatility sits quite high at 64%.

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About the author: Grace is currently studying at UBC to achieve her BA in Computer Science. She is due to graduate in 2020. As a content creator, Grace has written financial analysis, stock market news, and informational investing articles. She also worked as an editor with her university publication 'UBC Undergraduate Journal of Art History'.