GE Healthcare

General Electric spun off GE Healthcare in January 2023 as the conglomerate executed its forced trifurcation. The healthcare business posted $19.7 billion in revenue for 2024, up 1% organically, with net income of $2.0 billion and a market cap of $38.7 billion. These numbers tell a story of delayed calving: had GE separated the healthcare business in 2010-2012 during peak market conditions, analysts estimate it would have commanded $60-80 billion in independent valuation. Instead, GE clung to the integrated structure until activist pressure and mounting debt forced the breakup a decade later.

The 2024 results show a healthy standalone business. Adjusted EBIT margin reached 16.3%, up 120 basis points from 2023, with segment revenue split across Imaging ($2.4 billion in Q4), Advanced Visualization Solutions ($1.4 billion), Patient Care Solutions ($827 million), and Pharmaceutical Diagnostics ($646 million). The company invested $2.2 billion in R&D since 2022, prioritizing AI-powered imaging, digital workflows, and connected care ecosystems. In November 2025, GE Healthcare announced a $2.3 billion acquisition of Intelerad Medical Systems, demonstrating capital deployment capability as an independent entity.

But the 2025 outlook reveals constraints. The company projects 2-3% organic revenue growth and 16.7-16.8% EBIT margin—steady but unspectacular. More concerning, free cash flow guidance dropped from $1.75 billion to $1.2 billion, largely due to tariff payment impacts. This is the cost of delayed separation: the optimal window for calving passed, and the entity that finally emerged faces a more challenging environment than it would have a decade earlier.

The biological parallel is clear. Controlled calving—planned separation when the offspring is viable and market conditions are favorable—creates two healthy organisms. Forced calving under stress produces diminished versions of both. GE Aerospace trades separately, GE Vernova (energy) trades separately, GE Healthcare trades separately, but the combined market caps lag what they could have been had separation occurred at the right developmental stage.

The company's July 2024 reorganization, moving Image Guided Therapies from Imaging to Advanced Visualization Solutions, signals ongoing structural adaptation. As a standalone entity for only two years, GE Healthcare is still determining its optimal form. The question is whether it can recover the value lost during the decade of delayed separation, or whether those losses are permanent—resources consumed by the parent organism that can never be regenerated.