not only is GE making a profit... they can tell for example, one of their appliance companies that's well known... lets say just to throw names out there, kitchenaid, to produce a high tier appliance, and they'll make whirlpool produce a shittier tier, but because whirlpool is currently deemed popular and worth the costs, they make a boatload off their products, while having a higher failure rate.... give a few year and they'll put more effort into whirlpool and turn kitchenaid products into crap.... so customers that get fed up with one product company, and go "well i'm not buying their junk, i'm buying this ones".... the jokes on them, they are being played by one parent entity.
This methodology was basically started in the 80's, when companies realized that having multiple daughter companies competing with each other could be used to feed off each other's custom bases that would get sick or learn that one company was doing shit work and leap onto the next best things.
that way everyone "believes" that certain companies are making progress when really, they are just dangling carrots out for customers to nibble on when sales start to slump for a company