Based on the aggregated intelligence of 170,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, industrial behemoth General Electric (NYSE: GE) has earned a respected four-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at GE's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

GE facts

Headquarters (founded) Fairfield, Conn. (1892)
Market Cap $169.7 billion
Industry Industrial conglomerates
Trailing-12-Month Revenue $151.37 billion
Management

CEO Jeffrey Immelt (since 2001)

CFO Keith Sherin (since 1998)
Return on Equity (average, past 3 years) 13.1%
Cash/Debt $78.4 billion / $494.8 billion
Dividend Yield 3%
Competitors

Siemens (NYSE: SI)

Honeywell (NYSE: HON)

United Technologies (NYSE: UTX)

Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's) and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 93% of the 15,724 members who have rated GE believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include DonkeyJunk and davfoo.

Earlier this month, DonkeyJunk tapped GE as an ideal reinvestment candidate:

With the number of growing areas GE is dumping R&D cash into, specifically energy and health care products, I am perfectly happy to add money into a flatlined stock, adding more shares via DRIP, and waiting to reap the benefits of a recovering credit sector as this company reestablishes itself among the truly mighty blue-chip conglomerates.

GE's massive global presence, exciting growth prospects (with its renewed focus on clean energy infrastructure), and tasty dividend continue to support its four-star CAPS status. Currently, GE sports a dividend yield (3%) in line with foreign counterparts such as Siemens (3.3%) and Koninklijke Philips (NYSE: PHG) (3.1%), and higher than that of U.S.-based industrial foes Eaton (NYSE: ETN) (2.4%), Honeywell (2.4%), and United Tech (2.2%).

CAPS davfoo expands on the powerful opportunity:

GE is poised to take advantage of the huge energy and infrastructure changes that are needed and will be needed in the next decade. Global warming is real. Coal has other more immediate health and environmental consequences which will be cost a lot to mitigate in the future. In the short run, energy efficiency, and wind power, hydro and geothermal will boom. In the longer term we may see Nuclear power reemerging. GE will benefit for all these trends.

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