General Electric Company has reported a slightly higher-than-expected quarterly profit, with cost cuts that helped boost margins across its industrial businesses offsetting revenue that missed analysts' targets.

Shares of GE rose 3.4 per cent to $25.07 as the US conglomerate also posted a 22 per cent jump in orders for jet engines, locomotives and other industrial equipment and services.

GE reported a 4 per cent rise in organic revenue, which excludes acquisitions, at its industrial manufacturing businesses, where chief executive Jeff Immelt is increasingly focusing the company.

Although that quarterly growth did not meet some analysts' expectations, GE said such revenue was on track to hit the higher end of its projected range of 4 per cent to 7 per cent growth for 2014.

Reaching that high end 'would be quite a pickup,' said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management, which owns GE shares.

'They were able to engineer the earnings in industrials,' Ghriskey said. 'It's just that the revenues were relatively weak.

'The stock is reflecting more forward-looking statements than third-quarter results.'

Like those of other diverse US manufacturers, GE's shares had been underperforming the broader market this year amid concerns about a soft global economy, after a big run-up in 2013.

Asked on a call with analysts about the global economy, Immelt said: 'The underlying activity is still reasonably healthy, but not universal.' He added that 'the US is probably the best we've seen it since the financial crisis.'

Immelt is seeking to boost GE's earnings contribution from its industrials businesses to 75 per cent by 2016 from 55 per cent last year, while reducing its exposure to the GE Capital finance unit.

GE's third-quarter net income rose 10.8 per cent to $3.54 billion, or 35 cents per share.

Excluding pension costs and other special items, earnings of 38 cents per share topped the analysts' average estimate by one cent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose 1 per cent to $36.17 billion, below the $36.79 billion that analysts expected.

Sales fell 2 per cent at the power and water segment, which sells energy-producing turbines and is GE's biggest industrial division. But GE projected sales growth of at least 10 per cent in the division for the fourth quarter.

GE's profit margin for its industrial businesses came in at 16.3 per cent, expanding by 0.9 percentage points from a year earlier.

The company pointed to its efforts to simplify its operations through cost cuts and a wider gap between the price of its products and the expense of producing them.

GE has targeted increasing its industrial profit margins to 17 per cent by 2016 from 15.7 per cent last year.

The expansion in the quarter indicated the company was 'well on their way' to meeting that goal, said Northwestern Bank portfolio manager Perry Adams.-Reuters