Will General Electric Stock Price (NYSE: GE) Get a Boost from Asset Sale?

The General Electric stock price (NYSE: GE) is up a solid 8% in 2015 - compared to the Dow's 0.32% year-to-date dip. And today's news from General Electric is yet another reason to be bullish on the GE stock price...

The industrial giant announced Tuesday it agreed to sell its U.S. private-equity lending business to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for $12 billion.

This is part of Fairfield, Conn.-based GE's plan to divest the bulk of GE Capital - which means shedding $200 billion in assets.

So what's GE going to do with an extra $12 billion? Will it help the General Electric stock price?

Let's take a look...

Is the General Electric Stock Price Going Up?

general electric stock priceThe short answer is yes, this sale will help the GE stock price.

GE's unit sales, repatriated cash, share buybacks, and dividends are expected to return some $90 billion to shareholders through 2018.

The deal should also boost the General Electric stock price since the market discounts financial earnings more aggressively than it does industrial earnings. That's due to the higher potential volatility of financials.

Another thing that will help the General Electric stock price long term is more smart acquisitions. It's clear GE will spend a chunk of its new billions on deals. The company has been on a spending spree.

GE is reportedly weighing a bid for a chunk of Halliburton Co.'s (NYSE: HAL) $5 billion to $10 billion assets up for sale. Parts of Halliburton have been put on the market because it needs the  Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) nod to complete its $34.6 billion merger with Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI). A GE bid is likely for some pieces.

In April 2014, GE agreed to buy Lufkin Industries, which provides artificial lift technologies for the oil and gas industry, for $3.3 billion. In November 2014, GE spent $13.5 billion for the energy business of Alstrom, the French power and transportation company.

In 2013, GE completed the purchase of the Avio's aviation business, an Italy-based manufacturer that provides components for GE Aviation and other engine companies, for $4.3 billion.

Also in 2013, GE formed a partnership with this product development startup that helps companies get products to market...

Quirky provides inventors with the opportunity to bring their products to life via its online collaborative platform. Through its global community, Quirky works with inventors and entrepreneurs from getting ideas off the ground to the selling process.

The partnership's primary focus is on home-automation technology, smartphone-controlled devices, and the explosive Internet of Things (IoT) market.

The duo can get ideas to market in as little as 29 days. The industry norm is 300 days.

This GE-Quirky partnership also helped GE be named among the top 10 of the top 100 exponential companies, which included tech giants Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), and Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG, GOOGL).

The carefully curated list was revealed June 3 at the Exponential Finance Conference in New York City.

Hosted by CNBC and Singularity University, the two-day conference brings together a who's who of tech experts gathered to inform financial service leaders how technology is impacting business and how they can stay relevant. Within the next decade, 40% of today's S&P 500 companies will not be here.

Salim Ismail, author of the book Exponential Originations, and a keynote speaker at the event, explained there is a framework of 10 factors that matter, but a company only needs four of them to be exponential.

Included among the 10 factors are operating like a lean startup. That's one reason GE snagged a spot on the coveted list.

"GE has put together one of the largest efforts in corporate history," Ismail told CNBC. The multinational giant has educated some 60,000 employees to think like a smaller, nimbler business, Ismail explained.

Maintaining a lean startup vision helps companies nurture innovation and quicken product development by building a not-quite-perfect version early, to obtain critical customer response. That allows a company to "pivot," or tweak the product as necessary.

This leads to one of the other 10 factors on the list: building a "minimum viable product" and then improving it.

"For many successful Web products like Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB), their initial product was quite flaky," Ismail continued, "but they iterated rapidly with initial customer data."

With its Quirky association, Ismail noted, GE has the potential to market successful products that might otherwise never had made it to the masses.

All of these partnerships are bullish for the long-term General Electric stock price.

Another great sign for GE stock investors is GE's big move into this massive tech opportunity...

Another Bullish Sign for the General Electric Stock Price

As one of the biggest industrial players, GE is in a good position to understand key issues and be a major player in the Internet of Things.

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Indeed, GE calls the Internet of Things the industrial Internet: the networking of machines and industrial gears.

GE aims to position its turbines, engines, and other equipment as smart gear that are connected via its software. GE is transitioning into a software and technology firm akin to International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM).

GE already monitors and analyzes more than 50 million data points from 10 million sensors. It has pacts with Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), and EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) to create "Predix Ready" devices. These devices will include metadata and open communication frameworks from sensors and devices to cloud-based services.

In October 2014, GE announced it is working with Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) to connect its machine-to-machine and cloud platforms to Predix. Under the alliance, Verizon and GE will offer remote monitoring, diagnostics, and maintenance fixes on GE's Predix platform. GE and Verizon will also collaborate on one global subscriber identity module (SIM) for global usage.

In addition to offering unprecedented growth potential, GE sports an attractive 3.35% dividend yield. The company has increased its dividend annually for the last five consecutive years.

The General Electric stock price is up 6.7% in the past few months. It has a one-year price target from analysts of $30.15 - a 10% climb from where the General Electric stock price is today.

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