General Electric: money to play with General Electric must be reading the newspapers. With various companies - notably Apple - taking heat for having lazy balance sheets, GE decided late on Tuesday that as soon as the cash from selling its remaining stake in NBCUniversal comes in some time in March, it will go right out again, in the form of a stock buyback. For its 49 per cent NBCU stake, GE will realise about $13.5bn in after-tax cash; $10bn of that will go to buybacks in the coming year, doubling last year's level. One question investors may be asking is: why not a dividend? Sure, bumping up the ordinary dividend would be imprudent for a company that is already at its targeted payout ratio of 45 per cent. But instead of using the cash for a buyback, GE could have funded a neat $1 per share special payout. Better still, all shareholders would have participated equally - and each would be free to decide if they wanted to use the cash to buy more GE shares or not. GE might argue in return, however, that a buyback both protects shareholders from taxes (for the time being) and creates a cash flow benefit by reducing the company's future dividend payments. For example, the repurchase price of $25 would take out enough shares to save GE $300m annually. That should not ultimately have any effect on the overall value of the company, but it provides money to play with. But is GE getting a good deal on its own shares? Through yesterday, the share price is up almost 20 per cent over the past year but the forward earnings estimate is up only 9 per cent. The stock's earnings valuation, in other words, is getting richer. GE's shares are trading on a forward price/earnings of 13.4 times. That is not expensive compared with many blue-chip names nor relative to recent history. Still, how GE must wish it could have done a buyback a year ago.