Earnings Preview: Is GE's Recovery Gaining Momentum?
The COVID-19 pandemic hurt most of General Electric's (NYSE: GE) business units in 2020. Nevertheless, the industrial giant reported strong sequential improvement in its financial results in the third quarter. Earnings still declined significantly on a year-over-year basis, but the company returned to profitability and generated positive free cash flow as business activity began to restart.
GE will report its fourth-quarter results tomorrow morning. Here are some key points for investors to focus on as they evaluate the company's turnaround progress.
Despite generating positive free cash flow in the third quarter, GE's core industrial business burned $3.76 billion of cash in the first nine months of 2020. However, management projected three months ago that GE would generate at least $2.5 billion of industrial free cash flow in the final quarter of 2020. (Historically, GE's cash flow tends to be seasonally strong in the fourth quarter.)
Source Fool.com
