General Electric is cutting its dividend for the third time in a decade, a move that will save $3.9 billion a year, as new Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Culp works to restore the conglomerate's fortunes after a large, ill-timed expansion in its power business.

The Boston-based manufacturer will reduce its quarterly payout to 1 cent a share from 12 cents, a reduction of 92 percent, Culp said Tuesday after GE posted a quarterly loss of $22.9 billion, largely due to a $22 billion writedown in the power unit. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice are reviewing the charge.

“After my first few weeks on the job, it’s clear to me that GE is a fundamentally strong company," Culp, who has been on the job less than a month, told investors on a call. "The global reach of the GE brand and its relationships are truly impressive, but GE needs to change and my team knows this."

Culp, the former CEO of Danaher, was appointed to GE's top job at the start of October, replacing John Flannery, who presided over a 54 percent drop in the company's stock during a little more than a year at the helm after Jeff Immelt's departure. GE, once known for its leadership training strategies, has struggled after a sharp downturn in the electrical-generation market following Immelt's $10 billion acquisition of France-based Alstom SA's power business left it unable to meet cash-generation targets in 2017.

Flannery, who took over amid the fallout, "was largely a victim of his forthrightness in communicating about GE's problems as he uncovered them," Jim Corridore, an analyst with CFRA Research, said earlier this month. "Investors grew impatient with the lack of improvement and with the sheer scale of the problems uncovered; however, these problems were not created under his tenure."

Activist investor Trian, which holds a 0.8 percent stake in GE that has dropped by about half since its initial purchase, had been pushing the firm to improve its financial performance and return cash to investors when Flannery took over in 2017. He announced a turnaround plan last November that included selling $20 billion of the company's businesses while cutting its 24-cent quarterly dividend in half.

GE had last cut its dividend in 2009, frustrating small investors, as then-CEO Immelt grappled with frozen credit markets the company had relied on to fund a sprawling and lucrative lending business. In the aftermath, Immelt began streamlining GE to focus on core manufacturing businesses, including power generation.

Culp now plans to split that division in two, with one portion focused on gas power and the other on steam, nuclear and electrical-grid services.

"We're seeing some progress, but we're not seeing the pace of operational improvement we expected," Chief Financial Officer Jamie Miller said Tuesday. Orders fell 18 percent in the business during the three months through September, driven by a decline in heavy-duty gas turbine sales. "The market size continues to be in line with our expectations," she said.

The SEC's review of the power writedown, driven largely by the Alstom acquisition, joins the agency's scrutiny of a $6.2 billion charge for the accumulation of insurance liabilities at GE Capital and some other accounting practices. The insurance charge, related to a life and health business where claims are increasing as policyholders grow older and sicker, was disclosed in January.

The company's loss of $2.63 a share in the third quarter of 2018 compared with the average profit estimate of 20 cents from analysts surveyed by FactSet. Companywide revenue of $29.6 billion trailed Wall Street's projection of $29.8 billion. GE tumbled 8.8 percent to $10.18 in New York trading after the figures were disclosed, its worst drop since December 2008 and the lowest price since April 2009.

The new GE chief, who led industrial conglomerate Danaher Corp. for a 14-year period in which it grew at five times the pace of S&P 500, said he oversaw numerous acquisitions while at that company and routinely worked to convince employees of the purchased company that change was necessary.

"Our GE team needs no convincing," he said. "They really want direction to know how to change. And while I don't have all the answers after one month, I do have a few early impressions. We could use a lot more 'out' and a good bit less 'up' around here, meaning we need to focus more on customers and competition and, frankly, less on corporate."

GE's available cash has sunk 25 percent to $61.7 billion so far this year, compared with debt of $115 billion, as free cash flow shrank.

"The dividend cut to close to zero will help on this front, but we also don’t think the cut is a silver bullet, and the severity highlights the challenged capital position here," Steve Tusa, an analyst with JPMorgan Chase, said in a report. " Bottom line, there is still much information to come and wood to chop for the new CEO."