Industrial giant General Electric will split into three companies following years of seeing its stock underperform, the company announced on Tuesday.
The company will be divided into separate units focused on aviation, health care and energy. GE plans to spin off the health-care unit by early 2023 and the energy unit by early 2024, the company said in a news release.
GE shares, which are already up 55 percent over the last 12 months, jumped 12 percent in premarket trading
The conglomerate expanded rapidly in the 1980s under the late Jack Welch, getting into financial services and back into broadcasting with the purchase of NBC.
“By creating three industry-leading, global public companies, each can benefit from greater focus, tailored capital allocation, and strategic flexibility to drive long-term growth and value for customers, investors, and employees,” CEO Lawrence Culp said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “We are putting our technology expertise, leadership, and global reach to work to better serve our customers.”
The name GE will live on with the aviation company after the move is complete, and Culp will continue to lead that unit, the company said.
General Electric was co-founded in the late 1800s by Thomas Edison and went through several transformations over the last century as the U.S. economy changed, becoming a leader in appliances, jet engines and power turbines.
The conglomerate expanded rapidly in the 1980s under the late Jack Welch, getting into financial services and back into broadcasting with the purchase of NBC, sporting enviable earnings growth and returns for investors along the way.
GE spent periods as the largest company by market value as recently as the early-2000s, but then the financial crisis hit. Weighed down by its troubled financial arm, GE was never able to climb back on top under Welch’s successor Jeff Immelt. The stock was dumped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2018 after being one of the original members of the blue chip index, going back to 1896.
Despite the recent outperformance, GE shares have badly underperformed the market over the last two decades. The stock has lost 2 percent annually since 2009, compared to a 9 percent annual return for the S&P 500, according to FactSet.
The company has been plagued by high levels of debt in recent years that have drawn skepticism on Wall Street. The capital structures of the new firms will be announced at a later date, GE said. The company said it will use proceeds from he recent sale of its aviation financing unit to pay down debt.