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Shares of the company, hammered by tens of billions of dollars
in writeoffs over the past year and one of Wall Street's
worst-performing stocks, were down 2 percent in premarket
trading on Thursday, after earlier falling as much as 4 percent
following the release of the forecast.
The U.S. industrial conglomerate, which spooked investors last
week by warning of a net cash outflow from its industrial
businesses this year, said adjusted industrial free cash flow
would be between negative $2 billion and zero.
"GE's challenges in 2019 are complex but clear," Culp said in a
statement that reiterated his priorities of trimming GE's debt
and improving the performance of its industrial businesses,
especially the ailing power-plant division.
The company said it expects adjusted industrial free cash flow
to be positive in 2020, with the pace of improvement
accelerating in 2021, but provided no target figures.
It said it expects free cash flow for its power business to
remain negative in 2020 before turning positive in 2021.
Investors are looking closely at GE's cash and earnings after
the company lost nearly $23 billion last year.
Since becoming the first outside CEO to lead the 127-year-old
company last October, Culp has taken a series of steps to
restore profit and boost its stock, which has tumbled to less
than a third of its value since mid-2016.
Last year, Culp slashed GE's quarterly dividend to a penny a
share. He struck a deal to sell the company's biopharma unit to
Danaher Corp in February for $21.4 billion. The proceeds will be
used trim debt, which totaled $121 billion in December.
(Reporting by Rachit Vats, Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru and
Alwyn Scott in New York; Editing by James Emmanuel and
Bernadette Baum)
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