GE's Power Division to Eliminate 12,000 Jobs -- Update

General Electric Co. said Thursday it was cutting 12,000 jobs in its power business, or nearly 20% of the unit's workforce, as the conglomerate slashes costs and battles overcapacity in its core business.

GE Power said the cuts "are driven by challenges in the power market worldwide" and cited softening markets like coal and gas. The move is part of a broader reorganization by the conglomerate, which last month cut its dividend by half and sharply lowered its profit targets.

The business, which makes turbines for coal and gas-fired power plants, is GE's largest by both revenue and number of employees. It generated about $27 billion in revenue last year employed 57,000 people at the start of the year. Its biggest rival Siemens AG said last month it would cut about 6,900 jobs to combat weak demand.

"This decision was painful but necessary for GE Power to respond to the disruption in the power market, which is driving significantly lower volumes in products and services," GE Power Chief Executive Russell Stokes said in prepared remarks. He said the company anticipates those challenges continuing.

GE CEO John Flannery, who took over in August, is focusing on GE's aviation, power and health-care divisions as he implements a sweeping turnaround effort at the 125-year-old conglomerate. At the end of 2016, GE had around 295,000 employees.

The company's power unit has faced problems with too much inventory and management's assessment of the market. Former CEO Jeff Immelt had made attempts to grow GE's power division through M&A, including the 2015 acquisition of power assets from Alstom SA.

Both GE and Siemens have been caught unprepared for governments' and companies' shift away from large, fossil fuel-powered plants to renewables, which make electricity in a decentralized way and without the need to move massive amounts of steam through one of the companies' turbines. Meanwhile, gas-powered plants haven't picked up the slack from embattled coal and nuclear businesses as quickly as both Siemens and GE had anticipated.

GE is hoping to cut $3.5 billion in structural costs this year and next. Mr. Flannery also wanted to step back from certain businesses, like GE Lighting and its transportation division. Year to date, the company's shares are down 44%. Shares of GE were up 0.3% in premarket trading.

Cara Lombardo contributed to this article

Write to Allison Prang at allison.prang@wsj.com and Thomas Gryta at thomas.gryta@wsj.com

General Electric Co. said Thursday it was cutting 12,000 jobs in its power business, or nearly 18% of the unit's workforce, as the conglomerate slashes costs and battles overcapacity in its core business.

GE's Power unit has been a major source of pain for the struggling company as global demand has dropped in tandem with GE integrating its acquisition of Alstom SA's power business. The company has said it misjudged the market as volume dropped in traditional coal and gas-fired power, while renewable energy sources grew.

The shrinking of the business is part of a broader reorganization at GE under new Chief Executive John Flannery, who last month cut the once-sacred dividend in half and sharply lowered profit targets.

The power business, which makes turbines for coal and gas-fired power plants, is one of the 125-year-old company's original businesses and produces a third of the world's electricity. It is GE's largest by both revenue and number of employees. It generated about $27 billion in revenue last year and employed 57,000 at the start of the year. But it has been revamped since then, merging with GE's Energy Connections division and selling water assets and other operations.

Its biggest rival, Siemens AG, said last month it would cut about 6,900 jobs to combat weak demand.

Mr. Flannery, who took over in August, is focusing on GE's power, aviation and health-care divisions as he implements a sweeping turnaround effort at the 125-year-old conglomerate. At the end of 2016, GE had around 295,000 employees.

In a presentation last month, Mr. Flannery highlighted GE's mistakes in the power business, saying it was a tough market "and we have exacerbated the market situation with some really poor execution. It's fixable."

Executives warned the business was sitting on too much unsold inventory and that operating profits in the business would fall 20% this year and another 25% in 2018. They also pledged to reduce costs and shrink its factory footprint.

Former CEO Jeff Immelt expanded GE's power business through acquisitions, including the 2015 purchase of assets from France's Alstom. The deal was a big bet on coal-fueled power, nearly doubling GE's fleet of large turbines in coal plants to more than 1,500 world-wide.

The job cuts will happen over the next 18 months with about half of them in Europe, where the power business has large factories in France, Germany and Switzerland, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company still expects to meet its obligations to the French government under the Alstom deal, which included a promise to create 1,000 high-skilled jobs by the end of 2018, the person said.

The unit has 153 manufacturing, repair and service sites around the globe. Two of its biggest U.S. facilities are in Schenectady, N.Y., and Greenville, S.C. Several hundred workers at those sites have been notified of layoffs, the person said.

The layoffs are in addition to 6,500 job cuts, mostly in Europe, that GE Power announced in early 2016 shortly after the Alston purchase closed.

The growth in electricity generation over the next couple of decades is expected to shift toward wind and solar, technologies that don't rely on the large turbines manufactured by GE. The Paris-based International Energy Agency predicts that renewable energy's global share of power will rise from 24% to 40% by 2040. This trend can be seen in emerging economies, such as India, where coal's share of power generation is expected to drop from 76% to about 50%, while wind and solar power rise dramatically.

This shift in new power generation is putting pressure on companies such as GE and Siemens that manufacture equipment at the heart of coal plants and gas-fired combined-cycle power plants. Solar-panel manufacturing is dominated by Chinese companies. GE has a significant presence in wind turbines, but the market is spread among several companies.

Siemens said last month that demand for gas turbines that generate more than 100 megawatts has fallen to about 110 turbines a year, compared with world-wide production capacity for Siemens and its competitors of some 400 of these turbines a year.

"The power-generation industry is experiencing disruption of unprecedented scope and speed," Lisa Davis, a Siemens board member with special oversight of the power-and-gas division, said last month.

What's more, wind and solar generation equipment tends to be less complex and requires fewer workers to manufacture, according to industry experts.

GE has a renewable energy business, which mostly manufactures wind turbines and which Mr. Immelt built up through acquisitions. It had revenue of about $9 billion last year and employed 12,000 people at the start of 2016. Last month, Mr. Flannery said the renewables market was growing but there was intense price competition hurting profits.

The problems at GE go beyond its power business, though Mr. Flannery has blamed its woes for much of the sudden deterioration of the company's performance. The longtime head of the unit, Steve Bolze, left the company in June and was replaced by Mr. Stokes, a 20-year GE veteran who previously ran its Energy Connections unit.

GE is hoping to cut $3.5 billion in structural costs this year and next. Mr. Flannery also wanted to step back from certain businesses, like GE Lighting and its transportation division. GE shares gained 1.4% in Thursday trading. Year to date, the company's shares are down about 44%.

Allison Prang and Russell Gold contributed to this article

Write to Thomas Gryta at thomas.gryta@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 07, 2017 12:10 ET (17:10 GMT)