$GE Beats the Street and Backlog Hits Record High

“General Electric Co. (GE) reported higher profit than analysts estimated as earnings rose at all of its industrial businesses for a second straight quarter.

Adjusted income from continuing operations gained 13 percent to $4.67 billion, or 44 cents a share, in the last three months of 2012, GE said today in a statement. That topped an averageprojection of 43 cents a share in a Bloomberg survey of 13 analysts. Sales climbed 4 percent to $39.3 billion.

GE overcame a year-end slump that deepened as President Barack Obama and his opponents in Congress negotiated to avoid $600 billion of automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that had been scheduled to begin taking effect on Jan. 1. Orders for industrial equipment from grew 2 percent in the fourth quarter, pushing its backlog to a record $210 billion.
“You see the slow but steady transition to industrial leadership to drive GE’s growth,” said Nick Heymann, an analyst at William Blair & Co. in New York, in an interview on Bloomberg TV with Tom Keene. “Order growth, while it slowed, didn’t stall and you continue to see better pricing.”
GE gained 3.4 percent to $22.03 at 7:38 a.m. in pre-market New York trading. The stock climbed 17.2 percent last year compared with a 13.4 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index….”

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