Shares of General Electric dropped to its lowest level in close to a decade as it undergoes deeper regulatory accounting investigations while new CEO Larry Culp struggles to revive the once-heralded corporation.
GE plunged 10.48% as of 2:00 p.m. ET. In the past month, the stock has slid over 20% and 46% year-to-date.
ETFs with the largest holdings of GE were mixed, such as Davis Select US Equity ETF (NasdaqGM: DUSA), Oppenheimer S&P Ultra Dividend Rev ETF (NYSEArca: RDIV) and Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEArca: XLI). DUSA was slightly down at 0.08%, XLI fell 0.77% and RDIV eked out a 0.17% gain.
GE said that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in conjunction with the Department of Justice are looking into a $22 billion write-down from its power division. Furthermore, its power unit will undergo a restructuring as it cuts its quarterly dividend down to $0.01 per share.
In July, it was delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average after over 100 years as one of its original members. Culp, who took the helm as CEO on October 1, has more than his work cut out for him.
“My priorities in my first 100 days are positioning our businesses to win, starting with Power, and accelerating deleveraging,” said Culp in a press release.
Culp’s predecessor, John Flannery, lasted just 14 months.
Related: General Electric CEO John Flannery On New GE Strategy
Ongoing Issues at GE
Last month, shares of GE took a hit when a turbine issue was purportedly discovered by one of its customers, energy company Exelon, citing an “oxidation issue” with the turbine’s fan blades at two plants located in Texas. As a result of the issue, the operation life of the turbines were compromised, forcing a shutdown of the plants, which apparently is not the first time this occurrence has taken place.
GE shares were further depressed by investment firm J.P. Morgan effectively lowering its GE price target to $10 per share versus its initial $11 per share last week as a result of the turbine failures, citing the turbine incident as “a negative development for a company that has little wiggle room.”
“Bottom line, while we give GE some benefit of the doubt in its comments [minimizing the issue], we think the mere occurrence is significant in the context of the state of the story,” J.P. Morgan analyst Stephen Tusa said in a note.
GE has experienced an unceremonious fall from grace since its days when its market value was close to $600 billion in August 2000. Since then, its value has nosedived, particularly after the financial crisis in 2009, but has come back to as much as $300 billion by December 2015.
Since then, however, GE is struggling to recapture investor confidence since January 2017 when its shares were trading at about $31 per share–the stock is currently trading just under $10.
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