Breaking Down GE's Commercial Finance Business: A BloggingStocks series

I estimate that General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) Commercial Finance segment is worth between $43.5 billion and $64.1 billion.

GE's Commercial Finance segment, which constituted 14.6%, 14.0%, and 14.5% of GE's consolidated revenues in 2006, 2005, and 2004, respectively, offers loans, leases, and other financial services to manufacturers, distributors, and end-users for a variety of equipment and major capital assets. These assets include industrial-related facilities and equipment; commercial and residential real estate; vehicles; corporate aircraft; and equipment used in the construction, manufacturing, telecommunications, and health care industries.

GE Commercial Finance looks to me like it's benefiting from the surge in orders for GE Infrastructure.commercial finance profits were up 18% in the second quarter. While developing countries use GE Commercial Finance to purchase capital equipment, the risk in this business is in lending to commercial and residential real estate which seems far from bottoming out.

Assuming that GE Commercial Finance generates net income of $4.5 billion in 2007, here are the range of valuations based on the Price/Earnings ratios of the following peer companies:

• CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT) P/E: 14.3. $64.1 billion
• Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) P/E: 11. $49.3 billion
• JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) P/E: 9.7. $43.5 billion

Next: Breaking Down GE Money

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns General Electric shares and has no financial interest in the other securities mentioned in this post.