GE's CEO and his stock win a boost after a long dry spell

By Lewis Krauskopf

(Reuters) - General Electric Co Chief Executive Jeff Immelt has had a bumpy ride for the past seven years, navigating economic turbulence, swapping in and out of businesses and struggling to energize his sluggish stock.

Against that backdrop, Friday was a very good day.

Immelt unveiled a surprise move to sell off most of GE's finance operations over the next few years, thereby reducing a unit that comprised more than half of the U.S. conglomerate's profits before the 2008 credit crisis down to 10 percent by 2018.

In a telephone interview Friday, Immelt said he sees GE valued as "a premium industrial" company.

"That's our vision for it. But ultimately investors vote on that," he said.

GE shares had their best day since March 2009, jumping 10.8 percent in heavy trading to close at $28.51 on the New York Stock Exchange. The value of Immelt's own 2.1 million shares rose by $5.8 million to nearly $60 million.

Immelt has endured criticism for buying businesses at high prices, including a spate of acquisitions in the oil and gas sector ahead of the recent slide in oil prices, and for not moving fast enough to shed GE Capital.

The process of shedding finance assets started more than five years ago, the CEO said. "There have been moments in the past when there weren't a lot of buyers. Now there are."

Over the next three years, GE will have to hone in on boosting earnings from manufacturing big-ticket industrial products such as jet engines, power turbines and locomotives, operations the company says will contribute 90 percent of GE's profits by 2018.

"The stock is having a great day today. It doesn't offset a difficult ten years," said Chuck Harris, director of research at ClearBridge Investments, which owned more than 35 million GE shares as of the end of 2014. "Jeff's responsibility is going to be to run the business in a day-to-day, no-excuses environment."

GE shares are lower than they were before the financial crisis and are off some 28 percent since Immelt took charge in September of 2001.

Friday's moves could quiet talk that Immelt, who is 59, might leave his post soon.

Asked how long he expected to serve as CEO, Immelt said: "I love the company. I love how we're positioned. There's a right day for that discussion. It's not today."

(Additional reporting by David Gaffen. Editing by Joseph White and Ted Botha)