This has not been a good year for General Electric (GE). On June 19, 2018, GE's more than 100-year run on the Dow Jones Industrial Average came to an end and the last remaining original component of the Dow was dropped from the index. Just five months later on November 9, 2018, shares of GE plunged 8.9 percent in pre-market trading, dropping below $9 per share for the first time since the financial crisis.
Despite GE’s well-publicized free fall, investors are still very much attuned to the rise and fall one of the most iconic American companies. All eyes are on GE's newly minted CEO, H. Lawrence Culp Jr., who assumed the position of CEO in October 2018. Market analysts threw Culp a bone on Dec. 13, 2018, after JPMorgan raised its two-year rating on GE to 'neutral' from 'underweight.' GE surged by 12.7 percent to $7.52 a share before market open, in what has become the company's largest single-day gain in more than five years.
General Electric certainly isn't out of the running yet, but there's work to be done. In this article, we take a closer look at the rise and fall of a company that has come to define American industry and corporate culture.
1892: GE and the Birth of American Innovation
When most Americans think “GE,” they probably think about light bulbs, televisions, and washing machines. GE was born out of the race to provide affordable light and electricity to fuel the growth of industrial America and quickly became a household name. It was incorporated in 1892 as a result of a merger between the Thomson-Houston Company and the Edison General Electric Company.
GE’s earliest products were incandescent light bulbs, an electric locomotive, early x-ray machines, and an electric stove. The company began mass-producing electric home appliances in the 1920s and was soon credited for changing the landscape of the American home.
In the years that followed, GE developed vacuum technology that enabled the invention of the microwave and radar systems. It supplied the military with equipment and executives during World War II, and in 1949 introduced the J-47, the most popular jet engine in history.
In the 1960s and 70s, GE was a pioneer in laser light technology and medical imaging.
Ge Motor Serial Number Lookup1981: ‘Neutron’ Jack Welch’s GE
After former chemical engineer John F. Welch Jr. Angel molds for plaster. assumed the top spot at GE in 1981, GE acquired RCA and NBC and expanded into the financial services sector. A titan in the business world, Welch was known for his aggressive winnowing of unnecessary personnel. He earned the nickname of “Neutron Jack” because of his tactic of eliminating GE’s employees but leaving its physical assets intact.
By the time Welch stepped down in 2001, he had transformed GE from a $25 billion manufacturing company into a $130 billion conglomerate of “boundary-less” segments.
2008: GE In Crisis
Psychology free course with certificate. The 2008 financial crisis hit GE hard. The company’s stock fell 42 percent during the year, and after Welch’s departure, it became clear that GE was overstretched and bloated. The GE Capital financial segment nearly toppled the company during the Great Recession because it did not have a competitive advantage over other financial services companies. To this day, the segment is still the subject of complaints that its balance sheet is too opaque and unwieldy.
Warren Buffett famously stepped in and invested $3 billion in 2008 to stabilize GE’s operations. And GE’s troubles didn’t end with the financial crisis. Its $9.5 billion purchase of French transportation company Alstom’s power business in 2015 was widely considered a flop.
Under Jeffrey R. Immelt, the former head of GE Medical Systems and Welch’s successor, the company was forced to strip down GE Capital and return to its roots in manufacturing. GE also divested billions of dollars in loans and real estate and jettisoned NBCUniversal, GE Plastics, and GE Water, and GE Appliances.
In 2009, the company slashed its yearly dividend from $1.24 to $0.82. Dividends fell even further in 2010. Immelt served as CEO of General Electric for 16 years and stepped down in earlier than expected 2017. He later accepted the position of chairman at Athenahealth.
$3 billion
The amount of money that Warren Buffett famously stepped in and invested to stabilize GE’s operations.
2017: GE Tries to Weather the Storm
The General Electric Company celebrates its 125th anniversary in 2017, has been widely reputed as one of the most reliable performers in the stock market. But lately, GE has weathered some of its worst years in recent history.
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Shares have fallen a whopping 69.05 percent since January of 2017 when the company announced it would cut 12,000 jobs in 2017, and the December dividend was slashed by 50 percent. The company’s market cap, which stood at $107 billion in August 2018, has fallen more than the entire market cap of competitor Honeywell International Inc. After General Electric's most recent tumble on November 9, 2018, the company was valued at $72.63 billion.
In November 2017, GE announced plans for a broad restructuring and halved their quarterly dividend for 24 to 12 cents a share. That same month, GE laid off thousands of employees across all divisions of the country. The company's stock fell 3.5 percent following the announcement. On October 1, 2018, GE announced that H. Lawrence Culp would replace John Flannery as Chairman and CEO of the company effective immediately. Flannery, who had vowed to trim GE’s business segments was replaced in just about a year of serving in the position as mounting losses continued to pressure the company. This is the latest in a series of measures that GE has undertaken in order to boost its financials.
The industrial conglomerate is struggling, but it has been trying hard to script a turnaround for some time now. In an effort to streamline operations, GE announced in June 2018 that it planned to spin off its healthcare unit as a standalone business. The company also revealed that it will sell off its stake in its oil services company Baker Hughes, hoping these actions will allow it to focus on the aviation, power, and renewable energy units.
The company’s healthcare unit, GE Healthcare, announced in April 2018 that it would sell its IT business to Veritas Capital for $1.05 billion. The business segments acquired by Veritas include its financial management, ambulatory care, and workforce management software assets, according to a statement by GE. This sale was the first of a planned divestment of $20 billion in assets aimed at creating a “simpler, more focused GE.” Then later, in December, General Electric filed paperwork for an IPO of GE Healthcare, news that sent the company's stock surging by more than 8 percent. The public offering would make GE Healthcare, which produced close to $19 billion in revenue last year, one of the largest public healthcare companies in the world.
Acquisitions, sell-offs, and IPOs aside, we should not overlook that GE has customers in over 180 countries and employs 313,000 people worldwide. It operates in several massive industrial segments, including power, renewable energy, oil & gas, aviation, healthcare, transportation, lighting. GE Power is the largest generator of revenue for GE, earning nearly $36 billion in 2017. The next most profitable segment was GE Aviation at about $27.4 billion.
As GE strives to trim its excess weight, it continues to contend with less than enthusiastic forecasts from analysts who wonder if a bottom is in sight for the stock.
The General Electric Company has a history that dates back to the late 1870s and today is one of the largest corporations in the world building everything from jet engines to kitchen appliances and light bulbs. Their introduction into the locomotive manufacturing market began as early as 1918 and they built modest diesel switchers during the 1930s and 1940s. The company also built locomotives in conjunction with the American Locomotive Company (Alco) during this time, which partly explains why GE did not more vigorously compete in the market. However, during the mid-1950s the company broke ranks with Alco and entered the main line diesel locomotive road switcher market. General Electric diesel locomotives quickly proved to be reliable machines and by the 1980s the company had reached the summit, taking away the number one production spot from then industry leader General Motors' Electro-Motive Division (today Electro-Motive Diesel), a position it still holds today. Interestingly, GE is credited with commercially producing the very first diesel-electric locomotive in 1918, a motor car design built for the Jay Street Connecting Railroad, #4. In November, 2017 GE reported its intentions to sell its locomotive division, GE Transportation. This was made official in a press release made public at 7 AM on May 21, 2018 when it was announced that the Wabtec Corporation and GE Transportation would merge. The marriage took place on February 25, 2019. The company is now known as Wabtec Freight.
Designated as model GM-50 it was essentially a diesel powered motor car, somewhat similar to an interurban car, and built in conjunction with Alco and Ingersoll-Rand. Later, in 1924 the three companies built a 300 hp, 60-ton boxcab design that would be purchased by the Central Railroad of New Jersey, followed by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. In the following years General Electric diesel locomotives continued to remain small in nature and produced primarily for light branch, yard, and industrial duty. From 1928 through 1930 GE built box and some center-cab designs ranging from 300 to 600 horsepower. By 1940 the company would introduce its most successful switcher to date, the ubiquitous 380-horsepower, 44-tonner that was loved by industries for its lightweight design and ability to navigate tight curves, which were quite common within plants. When production ended in 1956 GE had built 373 44-tonners.
GE's Notable Road-Switcher Models
The U25B, GE's Enters the Locomotive Market
The U33C, Driving Alco Out Of The Market
The Popular Six-Axle C30-7
The 'Super 7' Series Rebuild Program
The C40-8/W Series, Surpassing EMD
The C40-9/W Variant
The C44-9W, Cementing Its Dominance
The Popular AC4400CW, Designed For Drag Service Continuing Its Reign, The Evolution Series
For more information about GE's modern locomotives please click here to visit their website. After the end of World War II GE followed up the success it was having with its 44-tonner model with two heavier models, a 70 and 95-tonner, both end-cab designs. The switchers were meant for branch line work on main line railroads and GE would wind up selling 385 of both models by the time production ended in 1959. In 1954 GE ended its partnership with Alco and for the rest of the 1950s the company experimented with different road unit designs (such as an A-B-B-A set of cab units known simply as GE 750) selling a short batch of its first commercial design the UD18 in 1956. The model, however, that would be the stepping stone for GE becoming the industrial leader was its U25B, first produced in 1959.
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The model would come to be known as the 'U-boat' with the “U” standing for the Universal series, 25 for the unit’s overall horsepower (2,500), and B for the number of axles per truck (for instance, B-B trucks carry two axles and C-C trucks carry three axles). There was nothing fancy about the U25B, especially its carbody, which carried simple straight lines from back to front and a short stubby square nose. However, the unit was durable and overall easy to maintain which the railroads loved, especially the maintenance crews who were tasked with keeping the locomotives running.
General Electric's Universal series would ultimately span a total of six different designs in comparable B-B and C-C setups. Ranging between 2,500 and 3,500 horsepower all of the models only saw a few hundred of each built. However, beginning with its 'Dash 7' series of the latter 1970s, and following with the 'Dash 8' and 'Dash 9' series' GE propelled itself into the lead of the diesel locomotive manufacturing race with EMD. In the 1990s through early 2000s GE further solidified itself as the leading locomotive builder by producing the successful AC series (AC4400CW and AC6000CW) that sold thousands of units. For information regarding GE's many different diesel models it has manufactured over the years please click here.
![]() General Electric Diesel Locomotives and Models
GE Diesel Switchers
GE Road Switchers
The ES40DC, ES44DC, and ES44AC are part of the newest General Electric locomotives known as Evolution Series. Not included in the above tables are the variants and foreign examples of these designs such as the ES40ACi, ES44AC-H, ES44C4, ES44DCi, and ES58ACi. In any event, the Evolution Series followed the builder’s Dash 9 models and is designed to offer just as much horsepower as conventional diesels but by burning much less fuel and in turn producing fewer emissions. The series was designed to meet the EPA’s Tier 2 requirement of emissions standards and is powered by a GEVO 12-cylinder prime mover. So far these new series contiues to sell well for GE, sustaining it as the premier locomotive builder nationwide. With the marriage of GE Transportation and Wabtec, made official on February 25, 2019, the new corporation was referred to as Wabtec Freight. In their first year they are expect to earn $8.4 billion producing locomotives and parts, mining equipment, heavy-duty diesel engines, railroad components, information services, and transit systems. Home ›Diesel Locomotives ›General Electric Diesel Locomotives
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