UPDATED 22:26 EDT / JUNE 13 2019

EMERGING TECH

General Electric wants to sell its venture capital business to help pay off debt

General Electric Co. is looking to sell off its venture capital investment business, GE Ventures, which has a portfolio of more than 100 startups under its wing.

GE is selling the business in order to help stave off its mounting debts, CNBC reported. The company is said to be in a “difficult financial position,” with debts of more than $110 billion as of March 31. Even worse, that debt is still growing as the company is burning through cash while Chief Executive Officer Larry Culp tries to orchestrate a “multiyear turnaround,” the report said.

GE’s faltering finances have spooked investors, who have sent the firm’s stock down 23% in the past year. The company is also said to be under investigation over its accounting practices, relating to a $22 billion writedown of its failing power business last year.

The company has reportedly been trying to find a buyer for GE Ventures for several months. CNBC cites anonymous sources as saying GE has already held discussions with several other venture capital firms, as well as partners who invest in those funds. The company has hired investment bank Lazard to help manage the sale, CNBC added.

GE Ventures has quite a few attractive startups in its portfolio that might interest potential buyers. For example, it’s one of the main investors in Evidation Health Inc., a promising startup that’s focused on clinical trials, Verana Health Inc., a life sciences company, and Upskill, which sells augmented reality software.

But GE may have trouble getting the price it wants for its venture capital business as any potential buyer would also have to take on responsibility for the less successful businesses in its portfolio. And startups tend to fail more often than they succeed, hence it would be a risky buy for any investor, CNBC said. GE is complicating things further through its insistence on selling GE Ventures as a whole, rather than shop the businesses in which it has a stake on a piecemeal basis.

“During this time of transformation for GE, we are evaluating strategic options for GE Ventures to continue delivering returns for our shareholders and partners,” a spokesperson for GE said in a statement. “While we can’t comment specifically on that process, we remain committed to supporting our portfolio companies, business units and partnering with the entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

Analyst Ray Wang of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that despite GE’s debts, selling off its venture capital arm was a bad idea. He said GE Ventures is a significant and strategic asset for the company, as its team spent years scouring Silicon Valley for innovations that could benefit it.

“This led to GE having an outsized presence on Silicon Valley with great access to future innovation and a longer-range outlook on trends,” Wang said. “Selling these strategic assets while in distress may be one of the dumbest ideas GE can do. This is the type of short-term thinking that gets large companies in trouble. Yes, GE has a lot of debt to pay, but this is cutting off the nose to spite the face.”

In December it was reported that GE is also looking to spin-off its digital asset business, alongside its healthcare and railroad locomotive units. GE Digital was a big bet by the company on what it called the “industrial internet,” launched in 2015 under the watch of former CEO Jeff Immelt in 2015 as part of his vision to transform the firm into a “digital industrial” company.

Unfortunately for Immelt, that business never made the impact he hoped for, as it struggled against more established software firms such as Amazon Web Services Inc., IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp., not to mention dedicated industrial internet companies such as C3 Inc.

Immelt resigned his position in 2017, replaced by John Flannery, who was later ousted in favor of Culp.

Photo: Chuck Miller/Flickr

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