Following a visit to General Electric's corporate headquarters in Boston late last week, William Blair analyst Nicholas Heymann believes the company's transformation, deleveraging and fundamentals "remain solidly on track." The analyst walked away with a "sense of optimism with continued progress" on GE's plan to optimize asset sale proceeds to enable it to deleverage its balance sheet to 2.5 times net debt/EBITDA. While no specific date has been provided for achieving this, the math from industrial asset sale proceeds and GE Capital portfolio liquidations would suggest year-end 2019, Heymann tells investors in a research note partially titled "GE's Here to Stay." The analyst believes GE is "reaching an inflection point for investor sentiment" and keeps an Outperform rating on the shares. He believes the stock is likely to offer "material upside potential over the near and intermediate time horizon." Shares of General Electric are down 6c to $12.89 in early trading after being last night's announcement of its removal from the Dow Jones Industrial Average.