M&A Rumors: Why General Electric (GE) is in the Spotlight

General Electric (NYSE:GE) fell a few notches down after-hours trading on April 5, following rumors that it is selling its electric bulbs segment. GE shares closed down 0.17% to $29.97, and fell further by 0.17% to $29.95 in after hours.

General Electric (NYSE:GE) is reportedly in talks with investment banks to the tune of $500 million to sell the segment, which does not include its commercial LED arm, according to the Associated Press, citing a report from the Wall Street Journal. If a deal ensues, it will become GE’s latest move away from the consumer-centric sector to focusing on complex equipment for businesses.

Nasdaq analyst research showed a consensus of a “strong buy” with a $34 consensus price target (12 months).

What Does The Smart Money Sentiment Say?

The smart money sentiment remained nearly consistent for the fourth quarter of 2016. Out of the 742 elite funds we track at Insider Monkey, 54 hedge funds owned shares amounting to $5.16 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, compared to 55 hedge funds with GE shares worth $5.08 billion in the third quarter of the same year.

Meanwhile, Nelson Peitz of Trian Partners have remained steadfast to its GE shares with no change in its activities in the last quarter. Peitz currently owns more than 67 million shares or a total of $2.13 billion in value.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 39.7% gains over the past 12 months and outperformed the 24.1% gain enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs. Our enhanced small-cap hedge fund strategy returned more than 45% over the last 12 months and outperformed SPY by more than 30 percentage points over the last 4.5 years (see details here).

The Bottom Line

Traders are slowly retreating from their shares of General Electric (NYSE:GE), following rumors of a business segment sale. Tired of mergers and acquisitions? Here’s an interesting read about the top 10 highest paying countries for electrical engineers.

Disclosure: none.