With General Electric's earnings and stock price sagging for the last several years, many analysts say Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of the company since September 2001, should step down.
David Nelson, chief strategist at Belpointe Asset Management, is one of them. "Being the CEO of a big, awesome machine like this has got to be a lot of fun, but maybe it's time to end it,"
he told Yahoo. "The truth is that there may be no one that can run GE in its present form."
Most recently, the company has stumbled from its heavy investment in the energy sector as oil prices have dropped to 5 ½-year lows.
GE's revenue rose only 1.7 percent last year. And its stock price has lagged gains in the S&P 500 index since Immelt took over. The stock averaged an annual return of 12.7 percent in the last five years, compared with 15.7 percent for the S&P 500.
"For portfolio managers and analysts, you look at the stock and it's trading about 15 times [earnings], that's a slight discount to the market, but it's growing about 5 percent," Nelson said.
"I believe that GE broken apart has got to be worth more than the current stock price."
GE stock closed at $25.42 on Friday.
Morningstar analyst Barbara Noverini sees fair value at $30.
"In our opinion, wide-moat GE's resilience in the face of uncertain global macroeconomic conditions supports our belief that despite increased concentration on industrials, the portfolio's end markets and geographic exposure are well diversified," she writes on Morningstar.com.
"Persistent weakness in oil prices will likely continue to affect order growth and sales in the oil and gas segment. However, we remain optimistic that demand in power and water, aviation, transportation and healthcare will continue to produce solid results for GE in 2015."
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