Larry Culp, General Electric’s chief executive officer.
Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg
General Electric CEO Larry Culp ripped a page from the playbook of another CEO—Tesla‘s Elon Musk—and took his message directly to investors Monday.
Culp didn’t mirror Musk exactly—Culp posted on the career networking website LinkedIn and Musk is a Twitter (ticker: TWTR) devotee—but the aim was the same: to speak about his company without going through a filter like the mainstream media.
In his post, Culp laid out his vision for General Electric ( GE
) in the coming months and years. He started out simply with “Team,” addressing all GE stakeholders. He’s plainly including investors in the group.
Culp is transforming GE. There’s simply no other way to put it. In the three years since Culp took the reins, GE has paid down more than $80 billion in debt. And now it’s splitting into three companies–one dedicated to healthcare, one to commercial aerospace, and one to power generation.
Still, since GE announced the split in early November, shares are down about 11%. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are both down about 1% over the same period.
Investors are worried about the stock becoming dead money. The split won’t be wrapped up for about two years, giving investors a long time to wait for the valuation creation that might come from breaking up into three parts.
Culp is standing firm, though. “We are on a path to become three stronger, more-focused companies positioned to lead in the important high-growth sectors of aviation, healthcare, and energy,” he wrote in his post.
The last thing that Culp wants, of course, is for investors to abandon the stock between now and the split. “Our continued deleveraging and scaling of lean company-wide will further solidify our financial position and allow GE to play more offense through organic and inorganic growth opportunities,” he added. Acquisitions and more changes are possible between now and the time the spins come to fruition.
Wall Street analysts are siding with Culp in the dead-money debate. About 70% of them covering the stock rate shares Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%.
The average analyst price target is about $120 a share, up more than 20% from the price of the past few days. The upside implied by analyst target prices has averaged about 11% over the past year.
The selloff since the split announcement has left investors a little more cushion with the shares than usual.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
