General Electric CEO Culp says company has too much debt

General Electric Co Chief Executive Officer Larry Culp said on Monday the conglomerate was saddled with too much debt and would urgently sell assets to reduce the indebtedness, sending its shares down as much as 10 percent.

Culp, who took over as CEO on Oct. 1, also said in an interview with CNBC that GE`s power business is "getting close" to bottoming out after more than a year of declining revenue and profit. The unit lost $631 million in the latest quarter and wrote down $22 billion in goodwill assets because expected future profits in the unit now appear unlikely.

"We have no higher priority right now than bringing leverage levels down," Culp told CNBC. "We have plenty of opportunity to do that through asset sales."

GE shares were down 5.9 percent at $8.07 and fell as low as $7.72.

GE is facing growing concerns about its high debt-to-equity ratio, which stood at 3.7 percent at the end of the third quarter, more than four times the industry average of 0.77 percent, according to Refinitv data.

Former GE CEO John Flannery announced $20 billion in planned asset sales a year ago, but many are either in the works or have not yielded enough cash to bring debt in line with peers. 

GE`s largest deal so far, merging it railroad locomotive unit with Wabtec Corp, netted just $2.9 billion in proceeds and 9.9 percent of the combined company. 

Culp said GE was considering potential deals involving its "crown jewel" aviation unit, which shares significant technology with power, but such moves were not a high priority. 

"There are a lot of opportunities here," Culp said of aviation. "We wouldn`t say no for all time to various options." 

But breaking the unit out, monetizing it or raising equity were "not high on our list" of strategic moves, Culp said.