A Republican tax overhaul designed to bolster the U.S. economy is, for now, simply adding to the financial challenges facing General Electric, one of the country's largest manufacturers.
The Boston-based company expects a charge of $3.4 billion from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for the last three months of 2017, primarily related to a one-time levy on overseas holdings and the revaluation of tax breaks related to prior-year losses. That will compound the blow from a $6.2 billion charge related to rising liabilities at a life and health insurance business whose policyholders are growing older and sicker.
The difference, ultimately, is that the tax bill will provide benefits, executives said. The insurance charge is just one more hit from a business GE entered in the 1980s and has been winding down for more than a decade, frustrating new CEO John Flannery's efforts to turn around a historic company grappling with tough markets for some of its biggest manufacturing businesses.
"Needless to say at a time when we are moving forward as a company, I am deeply disappointed at the magnitude of the charge in this legacy portfolio," Flannery told investors on a conference call Tuesday. "It's especially frustrating to have this type of development when we've been making progress on many of our key objectives."
Since succeeding Jeffrey Immelt in the top job in August, Flannery has shaken up GE's executive ranks while refocusing on core industrial businesses, which he identified as power, medical equipment, and jet engines. He expects to continue shrinking GE Capital, the once-sprawling lending arm that also houses the insurance business, which his predecessor began winding down in 2015.
Immelt had exited the bulk of the insurance about a decade before that, selling $130 billion in policies but retaining some units, such as reinsurer North American Life & Health the operation responsible for the charge announced Tuesday. Reinsurers provide backup for so-called primary insurers, taking on some of the risk of massive payouts in catastrophe-level events.
"The decision to retain the current books of insurance-related business was based on a view at that time that a gradual runoff would yield a better economic result," Flannery explained. "Clearly in hindsight, we underappreciated the risk in this book."
Holders who bought policies decades ago, when they were younger and in better health, are now making higher-than-anticipated claims to cover expensive new treatments and for longer periods of time, since medical advances have prolonged life expectancy. That means reserves have to be expanded to cover potential payouts.
The charge for that, combined with the costs of the tax bill, will drag full-year earnings to the lower end of the range of $1.05 to $1.10 a share that GE set last year, Chief Financial Officer Jamie Miller said on the call.
While there's an initial cost from the tax bill, too, she said GE likes the new business framework.
"These are good changes," Miller explained. Adopting a territorial system, where earnings are taxed only in the jurisdiction where the business is located, levels the playing field for U.S. companies that previously faced additional levies when bringing foreign earnings home.
The new system, which charges only a one-time levy of 15.5 percent on cash holdings overseas and 8 percent on everything else, means GE "can access future foreign earnings without paying incremental U.S. tax upon repatriation," Miller said.
