General Electric Company said on Friday its backlog of orders and services for jet engines, oil pumps and dozens of other products jumped by four per cent sequentially in the second quarter, sending shares up nearly by five per cent.
Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said he was bullish on the company’s prospects for the rest of the year as GE tries to reduce the size of its finance unit and boost industrial-related sales.
GE’s order book, an indicator of how much work it has received from customers, rose to $223bn globally. The order book rose by 20 per cent in the United States alone.
“This is as close as GE comes to a positive surprise as possible,” said Tim Ghriskey of Solaris Asset Management, which owns GE shares.
Some analysts were wary though, hoping the conglomerate will be able to achieve its long-stated goal of boosting 2013 margins by 0.7 per cent. Its 2012 operating margin was 11.8 per cent.
“That will require Herculean improvement in the second half” of 2013, said Nick Heymann, an analyst at William Blair & Co, which trades GE shares.
Quarterly profit and revenue slipped, a sign of the company’s success in shrinking the finance unit. Still, earnings topped estimates.