GE shares up as analyst raises to "buy"

BOSTON (Reuters) - General Electric Co (GE.N) shares rose 4.5 percent in premarket trading on Tuesday after a J.P. Morgan analyst raised his rating on the largest U.S. conglomerate to "overweight" from "neutral," reasoning that most of the possible bad news has been priced into the shares.

"The stock continues to be held back by a persistent wall of worry" about the future of GE Capital, wrote analyst Stephen Tusa, in a note to clients, adding that GE is a stock "for which a little good news can still go a long way."

Shares of the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company have lost about half their value over the past year, a steeper drop than the almost 16 percent fall of the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI, and have traded as low as $5.73 in March amid investor concern about the future of its finance arm.

"There is no denying the shareholder value destroyed by the aggressive push into the finance business, and it's possible GECS could have failed without extraordinary government assistance," Tusa wrote, referring to its issuance of debt backed by the U.S. government.

Still, he reasoned that most of the remaining risks to the stock -- largely rising impairments at the finance operation or major regulatory changes -- would no longer come as a shock to investors.

On the upside, he noted that NBC Universal could be worth $30 billion to $35 billion if the company decided to sell its majority stake off entirely or in pieces.

Tusa raised his price target on the stock to $17, from $12.

GE shares were up 63 cents to $14.50 before the bell.

(Reporting by Scott Malone, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)