Over the last decade, GE missed out on the longest bull market in history. Having recovered to more than $30 in 2016, the shares fell last year to the lowest level since March 2009—even as the broader market reached new heights.
After Immelt stepped down as CEO in August 2017, John Flannery took the reins. He was gone a little more than a year later as the board turned to Culp. In the new boss’s debut on a third-quarter earnings call, the company revealed an expanded federal probe into its accounting, a vastly diminished dividend and a battered power business.

The once-titanic company is now rushing to find solutions to its compounding problems. A big challenge for Culp: narrowing GE’s leverage from five times net debt-to-Ebitda, as calculated by CreditSights, to a target ratio of 2.5. Over the past four months, the cost to protect GE’s debt against default for five years has nearly tripled. While that doesn’t suggest imminent default, the increase suggests that concerns about the company’s finances have intensified.
Under Flannery, GE was trying to cut costs, sell assets and reduce its debt load. A few weeks into his tenure, Culp pledged during a television interview to “look at everything and all of our options again with a sense of urgency.” The company has said that it can service its debt, thanks to planned asset sales, cash flow from remaining operations and credit lines with major U.S. banks, even if it is unable to sell new bonds. What remains to be seen is how much GE can garner from unloading businesses.

GE has staged a mini rally since mid-December, and Culp’s turnaround effort is still in its early stages. Nicholas Heymann, an analyst at William Blair & Co., sees an “end of apocalypse.” But asset sales will reduce future earnings and have the potential to trigger additional writedowns. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Steve Tusa warns that the cards are still stacked against GE and says the industrial giant will need to raise $25 billion of equity to survive. For GE, the never-ending storm may pass, but at the moment, its future looks cloudy.
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