General Electric (NYSE:GE) shares closed the day on the downturn after posting mixed second-quarter results compared to the consensus forecast.
The Boston-based company posted losses of -$2.1 billion, or -27¢ per share, on sales of $17.8 billion for the three months ended June 30, 2020, for a bottom-line slide into the red on a sales decline of -24.2%.
Adjusted to exclude one-time items, losses per share were -15¢, 5¢ behind Wall Street, where analysts were looking for sales of $17.1 billion.
GE’s healthcare segment posted sales of $3.9 billion, coming in -21% down from the same time last year when the company reported revenues of nearly $5 billion. Additionally, profits were down -43%, dropping from $958 million to $550 million in the segment.
The company attributed the segment’s downturn to the COVID-19 pandemic and the deferral of elective procedures, as well as a lower volume in pharmaceutical diagnostics. However, some losses were offset by elevated demand for COVID-19-related products.
“The GE team remains focused on protecting the safety of our people, serving our customers and communities, and preserving our strengths, and I want to thank all of my colleagues for their tireless efforts,” GE chairman & CEO H. Lawrence Culp said in a news release. “We had a very challenging second quarter that we met head-on, executing well operationally while we took actions to further de-risk our company. Our earnings performance was impacted by the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on our businesses, but Industrial free cash flow was better than our expectations and previously communicated range. We made faster progress on elements within our control, including our targeted cost and cash preservation actions.”
“We’re working through a still-difficult COVID-19 environment, and while it’s too early to predict the trajectory for the recovery of commercial aviation, we continue to plan for a prolonged return to prior levels of activity. Still, based on what we see today and the actions we’ve taken, sequential improvement in earnings and cash in the second half of the year is achievable. We expect to return to positive industrial free cash flow in 2021. We are accelerating our transformation to make GE stronger and drive long-term, profitable growth.”
GE shares closed the day down -4.4% at $6.59 per share, but ticked up 0.3% to $6.61 per share after hours. MassDevice’s MedTech 100 Index — which includes stocks of the world’s largest medical device companies — finished the day up 1.4%.
