In this segment from the Industry Focus: Energy podcast, Sean O'Reilly and Tyler Crowe talk about what might make General Electric (GE 1.49%) so appealing to investors -- from its solid work toward shedding off GE Capital's SIFI designation, to moving into renewables, and more.
A full transcript follows the video.
This podcast was recorded on April 22, 2016.
Sean O'Reilly: Given GE's shift that they're in the midst of making toward getting back to their roots of being a good old American manufacturer, I don't think I'd be going out on a limb to say they're a decent bet if you want to get in on the alternative-energy, high-value manufacturing game.
Tyler Crowe: They are doing a lot of things that are very impressive. They are really trying to divest themselves from GE Capital. They said in their release there are about $166 billion worth of that has been divested. They're a little ahead of schedule on that. When they get rid of all these GE Capital that are kind of ancillary to the typical financing arm that you'd see at a Caterpillar or John Deere, or something like that, to help fund the purchase of a major piece of equipment -- once they get rid of that, they're going to be able to get rid of their SIFI designation, basically saying they're too big to fail as a financial institution.
O'Reilly: We don't matter to the financial industry anymore.
Crowe: Right. They want to get rid of that. In doing so, they free up a lot of their capital and cash and things like that, that they can then return to shareholders that are looking at doing a massive buyback, a sizable dividend increase. Once that capital aspect of it and they get back to being a true industrial manufacturer, and you look at those numbers, they're becoming a pretty good industrial manufacturer again. Things do look very promising for GE. Like Caterpillar, GE is another thing that I have been watching pretty attentively as of late.
