General Electric's Hidden Gem

Summary Points:

- General Electric's Renewable Energy unit does not get enough attention because this business has promising long-term prospects.

- The company comes with a lot of risk but I believe that GE's stock has almost bottomed. Does the biggest General Electric bear agree?

- I recently reduced my General Electric position (sold 1/3 of my shares) but I plan to stay long the stock.

General Electric ($GE) is a company that is widely covered here on Seeking Alpha ("SA") and, as you can expect, there are people with strong opinions on both sides of the aisle. It has, however, been very easy to be a bear over the past three years as the company's stock price fell from the $30 range to under $15 per share.

Anyone that follows me on SA knows that I have been a GE bull for years, which unfortunately means that I have been wrong for years, but I still believe that there are reasons to own this industrial conglomerate.

Another SA author, Mr. Victor Dergunov, recently posted "GE: Undervalued By About $53 Billion" and, of course, the author's analysis/conclusion was criticized by the bears. While I do not agree with everything that Mr. Dergunov stated in his well-written article, I do believe that his overall takeaway was sound [i.e., GE still has some great (and valuable) businesses in its portfolio]. To this point, I will spend a few minutes covering a business that I believe is a real hidden gem, which is the Renewable Energy operating unit.