General Electric (NYSE: GE) was a darling of Wall Street for a couple of decades under the tutelage of legendary CEO Jack Welch. Mr. Welch retired in September 2001 turning the reins over to hand-picked successor Jeffrey Immelt. Give Immelt a break for the first 18 months as he had to guide the company through the 9-11 tragedy and of course the normal honeymoon period. Since that grace period expired in early 2003, GE has severely under performed the market and time has come for Mr. Immelt to hand the reigns over to someone else.

It is very difficult following a "legend" as Jack Welch. Many business schools model a course or two on management based on Welch's methods of letting an executive run a division creatively and freely--just return the expected numbers and all is well. Jack Welch "raised" Jeffrey Immelt in this style and picked him as the CEO to replace himself. The styles however were not transferable. Times and the global landscape have changed since Welch's departure.

General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) has a webcast of the one hour long webcast done this morning at 8:30am. It covers GE's 3rd Quarter Financial Report and their 4th Quarter outlook. Here is a summary of the webcast.

Jeff Immelt comes on and reviews that it was a strong quarter for GE. Their environment is solid, global infrastructure spending is up, emerging market growth is strong, and the US consumer is strong. Inflation and interest rate are there, but are factored in. Plastics hasn't been able to offset inflation, however. GE is looking to improve on that next year. Again, the overall environment is very strong for GE.

There are five key performance metrics, and all of them show improvement and growth. Revenue was up, assets were up, earnings per share were up, return on capital was up, and margins were all up.

GE's long term strategy, Jeff Immelt reiterated, was to build great business. Infrastructure segment was up, NBC is rebounding, and Jeff expects NBC to show positive growth in the fourth quarter. Profit growth was up around the company, and NBC was mentioned again, this time pointing out that their primetime ratings were up 15%. Across GE orders were up 15%, organic growth is up for the 3rd quarter in a row, and service growth was up as well.

Growth is a big push inside the company, and GE has enjoyed seven quarters in a row of growth at 2-3X GDP thanks to technology and services. Aviation has a big backlog. The imagination breakthroughs are delivering growth and products. Global growth is up, and growth in developing countries is up 22%.

At this point Jeff Immelt hands off the webcast to Keith, who starts delving into the nitty gritty.