GE Appoints John Flannery As CEO, Expands Predix Platform

Leading industrial giant, General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) recently announced the appointment of John Flannery as CEO, effective Aug 1, 2017. The company’s existing CEO Jeff Immelt will be stepping down after serving the company for over 15 years. He will remain Chairman of the Board till his retirement on Dec 31, 2017. John Flannery will take over the position of General Electric’s Chairman and CEO from Jan 1, 2018. The company’s share price moved up 3.58% post the release of this news.

Immelt succeeded “legendary” CEO Jack Welch in 2001, shortly before the attacks of 9/11. During that time, the company was already seeing a decline from its all-time peak around the turn of the millennium. It moved further downhill toward the end of 2008 when the Great Recession hit, prompting Immelt to divest most of the financial businesses of the company to focus on core industrial operations.

Flannery began his career with the company in 1987. Since then, he has led several businesses including GE Healthcare, GE India, and the company’s business development team through the successful acquisition of Alstom’s energy and grid businesses. Flannery also played a major role in managing GE Capital’s $200 billion exit strategy, the Synchrony Financial IPO in 2014 and the disposal of GE Appliances, which was closed in 2016. Flannery’s expertise and experience is likely to help the company’s stock gain in the near future.

In addition to Flannery’s appointment, the company also announced the promotion of CFO Jeff Bornstein to Vice Chairman of GE. GE Healthcare Life Sciences’ president and CEO Kieran Murphy has been promoted to President and CEO of GE Healthcare.

Amid these management changes, the company launched the expanded Predix-based software applications suite. With the latest ‘Digital Utility’ solutions, energy traders are connected to valuable, real-time plant productivity and capacity data to permit more profitable, analytics-informed trading.

Digital Utility solutions are designed to help electricity businesses keep up with the rapidly changing markets. Low demand growth, declining wholesale power prices, excess capacity from the growth of renewable energy sources, and investments in thermal generation are affecting power and utility businesses to a large extent.

In addition to the latest Digital Utility suite, the company has also announced updates and new capabilities for the entire Predix range of solutions. The constant enhancements of its solutions will help the company stay ahead of its peers.

However, General Electric has underperformed the Zacks categorized Diversified Operations industry in the last three months owing to macroeconomic challenges and fluctuations in currency exchanges. The company reported an average loss of 2% against 5.7% gain for the industry. We expect the company to improve its performance based on its strategic decisions and constant product launches.

General Electric currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the industry include 3M Company (NYSE:MMM) , Barloworld Limited (OTC:BRRAY) and Bunzl (LON:BNZL) plc (OTC:BZLFY) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

3M has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 9.7%. It has a positive earnings surprise history with an average of 1.3% in the trailing four quarters, beating estimates thrice.

Barloworld has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 17.2%.

Bunzl has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 3.2%.

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