通用電氣的生產范圍覆蓋從超聲波掃描儀到B-52發動機，再到核電站渦輪機等各個門類的產品，它能否重振傳奇般的工業業務，東山再起？

這是通用電氣新上任的明星首席執行官拉里·卡爾普的保證，他肯定通用電氣“基礎雄厚”，并承諾“改變公司的日常工作方式和經營方式。”

今天，圍繞通用電氣的頭條新聞不是其基礎業務的命運，而是哈利·馬科波洛斯的詐騙調查報告。這位揭露了詐騙犯伯尼·麥道夫的會計偵探稱，通用電氣隱瞞其長期護理保險業務（LTC）的巨額虧損，這家已經陷入困境的集團很快會因此破產。

如果仔細評估通用電氣的實體業務，可以看到它們目前的業績十分不盡人意，即使保險業務像通用電氣所言不會構成重大威脅，新管理層要想讓集團恢復盈利，任務也十分艱巨。一項十分可靠的財務指標顯示（我們將稍后討論），通用電氣龐大的資產基礎只能產生少量現金，這和一家成功制造商的目標背道而馳。

馬科波洛斯的報告讓投資者感到緊張，通用電氣的股價應聲下跌11%。但截至目前，市場對通用電氣將全面崩潰的說法并不買賬。華爾街大多都支持卡爾普和審計委員會主席萊斯利·塞德曼，后者曾任美國財務會計準則委員會（FASB）主席，是全美首席會計師。塞德曼反駁說，通用電氣擁有充足的準備金，足以支付LTC客戶日后的索賠。通用電氣的領導層還聲稱，馬科波洛斯不足為信，因為馬科波洛斯本人也承認，對通用電氣的抨擊可以讓這個“告密者”從中受益。馬科波洛斯透露，他正在與一家未具名的對沖基金合作，該基金將從做空通用電氣股票的利潤中拿出一部分支付給他。

問題是，即使卡爾普能夠逐步退出LTC業務而且不造成嚴重后果，通用電氣的未來也將取決于四大支柱產業的表現：電力、醫療保健、航空和可再生能源。通用電氣的失敗并不是因為其堅實的工業臂膀被一個陷入困境的保險部門拖累了——這臂膀本身就看起來十分孱弱。

十年動蕩

過去10年，通用電氣一直處于動蕩之中，因此掩蓋了其現有幸存業務的真實狀況。自2009年以來，該公司出售了十多個業務部門，包括媒體（NBC Universal）、家電、交通和通用電氣金融（GE Capital）的大部分融資業務，還經歷了和鐵路運輸公司阿爾斯通（Alstom）以及石油和天然氣公司貝克休斯（Baker Hughes）不成功的并購。通用電氣支付股息和回購股票的費用與其實際利潤毫無關系。這是因為它將出售資產所得的2000多億美元中大部分都用于上述兩項計劃的巨額開支。從2009年到2018年，該公司在股息和回購上總共花費了約1300億美元，比過去10年的凈利潤高出近800億美元。

未來，通用電氣將依賴于四大幸存支柱產業的現金流來回報股東。其中能夠衡量其經營狀況的一個可靠方法是COROA，即“資產的現金運營回報率”，該指標由會計專家杰克·西謝爾斯基發明。COROA衡量的是一家公司每年從投資于該業務的所有資產中產生的現金量。它顯示的是管理層通過利用股東委托給他們的工廠、信息技術、庫存和營運資本等資源所達到的盈利表現。

第一個基本要素是“運營現金流”。它指的是報告中的經營業務現金流量（也就是GAAP現金流量表上的數字），加上支付利息和稅收的現金，這就是經營業務產生的現金。分母是資產總額；也就是報告中的資產，加上“累計折舊和攤銷”。為什么要把這些加回去？因為這樣才能算出用于產生收益的資產總額。

通用電氣的數據歷年來穩步大幅下滑。2013年，該公司公布的運營現金流為350億美元；在接下來的五年里，該數字每年都在下降，2018年達到105億美元，降幅達70%。這主要是由于該公司基礎業務產生的現金出現下滑。其報告中的經營業務現金流量（加回利息和稅收之前）從2016年的300億美元下降到去年的42億美元。由于通用電氣退出的業務比收購的業務多得多，平均資產也出現了下降，但降幅沒有那么大，約為50%。因此，通用電氣的COROA——一個衡量公司盈利能力的關鍵指標，從已經疲軟的4.8%下降到2.7%。

與一流的工業集團企業相比，這個數字十分難看：賽默飛世爾科技（Thermo Fisher Scientific）為8.4%，霍尼韋爾（Honeywell）為11.8%，3M為15%。

但通用電氣并不完全是工業企業。雖然它已經退出了以前的大部分融資業務，但它仍然擁有LTC業務，盡管馬科波洛斯認為該業務將擊沉整個企業。如果通用金融真得敗得一塌涂地，是否說明該公司工業業務的利潤其實比看上去要高得多呢？

根據通用電氣2018年的10K報表，情況并非如此。報表第101頁的現金流量表顯示，通用電氣工業部門經營業務現金流量僅為22.58億美元。加上利息和稅收，它的運營現金流（來自于電力、航空、醫療保健、可再生能源部門以及一些小規模業務），總共只有62.6億美元，這些業務的平均資產為2880億美元。因此，通用電氣工業部門的COROA僅為2.17%。所以說，最大的問題并不是通用電氣金融——它是通用電氣保險業務的大本營（盡管未來可能會發生變化）。

62.6億美元的數字可能低估了該公司工業部門創造現金的能力。去年，該公司為其養老金計劃支付了63億美元，通用電氣表示，加上這筆資金將能滿足其2021年之前的需求。當然，為養老金計劃提供資金是企業經營的常規成本。即便如此，加上這筆錢的2/3（即通用電氣提前支付的41.9億美元）或許更公平。這樣，公司的運營現金流為104.5億美元（62.6億美元加41.9億美元）。

即使在調整之后，通用電氣的COROA也只有3.6%。今年上半年，通用電氣報告的經營業務現金流為負12億美元。卡爾普承諾要取得重大進展。他在第二季度的電話會議上宣布，預計“2020年工業部門的凈現金流將實現正值，之后將在2021年加速。隨著時間的推移，隨著我們的運營狀況得到改善，我們預計現金流將繼續得到顯著改善。”

只有一個拉里·卡爾普，通用電氣目前微不足道的COROA不會騰飛。卡爾普在2001年至2014年擔任丹納赫（Danaher）的首席執行官期間，創造了一個了不起的紀錄，在生產精密牙科器械和凈水設備的業務中，投入到工廠和庫存中的每一美元能夠榨出越來越多的現金。丹納赫一直在展示一個工業集團能夠做到什么，而通用電氣則是浪費資本的反面教材。卡爾普擔任丹納赫首席執行官的最后兩年里，平均COROA高達11.3%，比通用電氣工業部門2018年的三倍還要多。

如果卡爾普認為LTC不會構成威脅的觀點是正確的，那么他要努力一舉完成美國商業史上最偉大的兩件事：建立一個工業巨頭，拯救建立起美國工業模板卻已搖搖欲墜的巨人。（財富中文網）

譯者：Agatha

Can GE stage a comeback by reviving its fabled collection of industrial businesses that make everything from ultrasound scanners to B-52 engines to turbines for nuclear plants?

That’s the pledge from its newly-installed, superstar CEO Larry Culp, who has praised GE’s “strong fundamentals on which to build,” and promised to “transform the way that we actually work, and run these businesses day in and day out.”

Today, the big news about GE isn’t the fate of those bedrock businesses, but the scorched-earth report from Harry Markopolos. The accounting sleuth who exposed scamster Bernie Madoff charges that huge, hidden losses in its long-term care (LTC) insurance business will soon drive the troubled conglomerate into bankruptcy.

But a careful assessment of GE’s industrial businesses reveals that right now, they’re performing so poorly that even if the insurance side doesn’t pose a major threat, as GE claims, the new management faces a tough task in restoring the conglomerate to profitability. An excellent financial measure we’ll get to later reveals that GE is generating tiny dollops of cash on a giant base of assets, the opposite of what a successful manufacturer needs to achieve.

The Markpolos report made investors nervous, and has triggered an 11% drop in GE’s stock price. But so far, the markets aren’t buying the full-blown disaster scenario. Wall Street is mostly backing Culp and audit committee head Leslie Seidman, formerly America’s chief accountant as head of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), who’ve countered that GE’s holds fully adequate reserves to cover future claims on its LTC portfolio. GE’s leadership also asserts that Markopolos lacks all credibility because, as he’s acknowledged, the “whistleblower” is benefiting financially from trashing GE. Markopolos has disclosed that he’s working with an un-named hedge fund that's paying him a share of their profits from shorting GE stock.

The problem is, even if Culp can gradually exit LTC without the dire consequences, GE’s future will depend on the performance of four industrial mainstays: power, healthcare, aviation, and renewable energy. GE isn’t failing because a troubled insurance unit is dragging down a solid industrial arm—that arm looks feeble, too.

A decade of upheaval

In the last decade, GE has been in a state of constant upheaval that’s obscured the condition of its surviving businesses. Since 2009, it’s sold more than a dozen units including media (NBC Universal), appliances, transportation, and most of the GE Capital financing operations, while pursuing unsuccessful mergers with Alstom (rail transport) and Baker Hughes (oil and gas). What GE paid in dividends and spent on share repurchases bore no relation to its actual profits. That’s because it used much of the over-$200 billion in proceeds from asset sales to fund gigantic outlays for both. From 2009 to 2018, it spent roughly $130 billion on the dividends and buybacks combined, almost $80 billion more than its net profits over those ten years.

Going forward, GE will need to rely on cash flows from those four chosen survivors to reward shareholders. A reliable measure of how well they’re doing is COROA, or “Cash Operating Return on Assets,” a yardstick developed by accounting expert Jack Ciesielski. COROA measures how much cash a company generates each year from all of the assets invested in the business. It shows how profitably management is deploying the plants, IT, inventories, and working capital entrusted to them by shareholders.

The first building block is “operating cash flow.” It's simply the reported cash from operating activities, as reported on the GAAP cash flow statement, plus cash paid for interest and taxes, which results in the cash produced from running the business. The denominator consists of all the dollars invested in assets; that’s assets as reported, plus “accumulated depreciation and amortization.” Why add those back? Because adding them back arrives at the total dollars spent on the assets being deployed to generate a return.

GE’s numbers chronicle a steep and ongoing decline. In 2013, it posted operating cash flow of $35 billion; it’s fallen in every one of the five succeeding year, hitting $10.5 billion in 2018, a drop of 70%. This resulted mainly from a slide in the cash it books from running its basic businesses. Its reported cash from operations (before adding back cash interest and taxes) dropped from $30 billion in 2016 to $4.2 billion last year. Because GE was exiting a lot more businesses than it was buying, its average assets also fell, but not nearly as far, a declining by around half. As a result, GE’s COROA, a crucial measure of its profitability, dropped from an already weak 4.8% to just 2.7%.

That compares poorly to leading industrial conglomerates: Thermo Fisher Scientific at 8.4%, Honeywell at 11.8%, and 3M at 15%.

But GE isn’t all industrial. Though it’s exited most of its former financing businesses, the GE Capital unit still holds the LTC franchise that Markopolos believes will sink the entire enterprise. What if GE Capital is a huge loser, so that the industrial side is really far more profitable than it might appear?

According to GE’s 10K for 2018, that’s not the case. The cash flow statement on page 101 reports that GE’s industrial businesses had cash from operations of a measly $2.258 billion. Add back interest and taxes, and its operating cash flow (from the power, aviation, healthcare and renewable energy units, and some smaller operations), totalled only $6.26 billion in cash, on average assets in those businesses of $288 billion. Hence, the industrial side’s COROA was an tiny 2.17%. So the problem wasn’t primarily GE Capital, home of the insurance franchise (though that could change going forward).

It’s possible that the $6.26 billion number is understating the industrial side’s ability to generate cash. Last year, it made $6.3 billion contribution to its pension plan, a addition that, GE says, covers its needs through 2021. Of course, funding a pension plan is a regular cost of doing business. Even so, it might be fair to add back two-thirds of that number, or $4.19 billion, the amount GE is effectively pre-paying. That would bring its operating cash flows to $10.45 billion ($6.26 plus $4.19 billion).

Even after that adjustment, GE’s COROA is a weak 3.6%. And in the first half of this year, GE reported negative cash from operations of $1.2 billion. Culp is promising big improvements. He declared on the Q2 conference call that he expects “industrial free cash flow to be in positive territory in 2020 and accelerate thereafter in 2021. Over time, as our operational improvements take hold, we continue to expect significantly better cash results.”

GE’s currently puny COROA won’t fly with a Larry Culp. As the chief of Danaher from 2001 to 2014, he forged a fantastic record squeezing more and more cash from every dollar invested in the plants and inventories that produced its precision dental instruments and water purification equipment. Danaher kept showing what an industrial conglomerate can accomplish, while GE proved a case study in squandering capital. In his final two years at CEO, Culp achieved average COROA of 11.3%, more than three times the GE industrial side's record for 2018.

If Culp’s right that LTC doesn’t pose a threat, he’ll be striving for one of the great twofers in the annals of American business, building one industrial giant, and rescuing the foundering colossus that established the template.