Aerospace and power generation giant
General Electric
caught a downgrade. It isn’t really impacting the stock in early trading, showing just how strong investor sentiment is these days.
Oppenheimer analyst Christopher Glynn, in a Monday update, downgraded
GE
(ticker: GE) stock to the equivalent of Hold from Buy. He doesn’t have a target price for shares, according to FactSet.
It isn’t a very harsh downgrade. Glynn cites valuation, noting that recent gains are fundamentally based. He upgraded the stock in late 2020 when GE shares, adjusted for the
GE HealthCare Technologies
(GEHC) spinoff, were closer to $70. They closed Friday at $114.39.
The market is taking the cut in its stride. GE stock was up about 0.2% in premarket trading Monday, while
S&P 500
and
Dow Jones Industrial Average
futures were both up about 0.1%.
With the downgrade, now about 60% of analysts covering GE shares rate them Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%.
The average analyst price target for GE stock is about $125 a share. The average price target is up about $14 a share, from roughly $111, over the past few days. Better-than-expected second-quarter results were received well by analysts and investors.
GE reported earnings of 68 cents a share from $15.9 billion in sales. Wall Street was looking for earnings of 46 cents from sales of $14.8 billion. GE stock is up roughly 4% since it reported numbers on July 25.
Coming into Monday trading, GE shares are up about 75% so far this year. Shares of
GE HealthCare Technologies
are up about 33% so far in 2023. GE HealthCare was spun off to GE shareholders at the start of this year.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
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