GE REPORTS Q3 EARNINGS
GE released its third-quarter results for 2018, reporting adjusted earnings per share of $0.14, adjusted industrial free cash flow of $1.1 billion, and a loss of $2.63 per share from GAAP continuing operations. The company recorded a noncash goodwill impairment charge of $22 billion, before tax, related to GE Power.
Orders for the quarter were up 13% organically, with organic revenue up 1%, compared to third quarter 2017. GE’s Aviation, Healthcare and Transportation units performed well, supported by solid market fundamentals. This was offset by Power.
The company announced immediate actions to strengthen its balance sheet and position its businesses for success. First, GE plans to reduce its quarterly dividend from $0.12 to $0.01 per share beginning with the board’s next dividend declaration, which is expected to occur in December 2018. This change will allow GE to retain approximately $3.9 billion in cash per year, compared to the prior payout level.
GE also intends to reorganize its GE Power unit to accelerate the business’ operating and financial improvements. GE plans to create two units. The first is a unified Gas business combining GE’s gas product and services groups. The second unit will hold the portfolio of GE Power’s other assets, including the Steam, Grid Solutions, Nuclear and Power Conversion divisions.
Read more about our results and customer outcomes from the third quarter here.
(EM)POWERING BANGLADESH
Outages are a fact of life throughout Bangladesh, interrupting schools, businesses and even, on occasion, the parliament, but things are changing. The government of this lush South Asian nation of 166 million people has a plan to electrify the entire country and boost reliability of the grid through its “Power to All” objective for 2021. GE is playing a key role in this transformation.
Powering forward: Working in partnership with local entrepreneurs and Bangladeshi authorities, GE is adding 2 gigawatts of power a year, retrofitting some of the existing supply and even establishing import infrastructure for liquefied natural gas, LNG, to provide cheaper, cleaner fuel options. Electrification programs can have a massive knock-on effect. “The whole aspect of mechanization, from better productivity, better lives for children, to cold storage facilities for farm produce — it’s a positive spiral,” said Deepesh Nanda, CEO of GE Gas Power Systems for South Asia. “It is transforming lives.”
Read more about GE Power in Bangladesh here.
MORE POWER FOR OFFSHORE WIND
The Haliade-X turbine has the potential to power the offshore wind industry to the next level. Designed to stand 260 meters tall from its heel to blade tips, the turbine will generate 12 megawatts, 26% more than the current industry ceiling of 9.5 MW. But in order for the Haliade-X to produce this extraordinary amount of power, engineers at GE had to build a switchgear that can handle the 66,000 volts it generates.
Switch it up: The switchgear is similar to the fuse box in your home, only on a much larger scale. It allows the electricity generated by the turbine to flow into the power grid. The one for the Haliade-X is 30% smaller than comparable machines, measuring 2.4 meters high and 3.7 meters long. “The real challenge was to make it very compact because you don’t have a lot of space inside a wind turbine,” said Dirk Uhde, executive product manager for gas-insulated substations at GE’s Grid Solutions business. “In the coming years, the offshore wind market is going to require bigger and bigger wind turbines. Equipment like this will help make those turbines as efficient as possible.”
Read more about the switchgear here.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1 An army of influencers
Scientists at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have developed a computational model to predict individual behavior, reporting their findings in Frontiers in Physics. According to the Army, this hasn’t been done before: “No one had taken the computational information from a collective model (numerical solutions of, say, thousands of equations) and used it to exactly determine an individual’s behavior (reduced to one equation).”
2 Lifting and pulling microrobots
Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland and Stanford University have created bio-inspired robots called FlyCroTug that can lift and pull objects up to 40 times their weight. The robots have the potential to lift pieces of debris in disaster situations or carry cameras to evaluate dangerous areas.
3 Working to speed up EV charging
Researchers at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a 120-kilowatt wireless charging system for electric vehicles. They have set a goal to develop technology that delivers 350 to 400 kilowatts and can reduce charging time to 15 minutes or less.
Find out more in this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
Quote: GE Reports. Images: Getty Images.
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