(Bloomberg) -- General Electric Co. sank after Chief Executive Officer Larry Culp surprised investors by warning that the beleaguered manufacturer would burn through cash this year.

Hurdles in the company’s power division and other operational pressures will push the company into negative industrial free cash flow, Culp said Tuesday. GE brought in $4.5 billion last year by that closely watched metric, which measures leftover cash generated by the company’s manufacturing units after accounting for operating and other expenses.

“We think this is a transformation in the making, but we need to pay the piper,” Culp said at a JPMorgan Chase & Co. conference in New York.

Culp’s disappointing forecast underscored how far he has to go in turning around a company struggling with challenges across multiple business lines. The shares had surged 43 percent this year through Monday, buoyed by the CEO’s focus on cutting debt and shedding assets -- a sharp rebound from a 2018 slide that marked the stock’s worst year since at least 1972.

The shares sank 4.4 percent to $9.92 at 2:18 p.m. in New York after sliding as much as 7.7 percent for the biggest intraday decline since Nov. 12.

Significant headwinds to 2019 cash flow will “meaningfully lessen” in 2020 and 2021, GE said in slides accompanying Culp’s presentation.

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.