NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - General Electric, the company that could do no wrong in the 1990s, now faces a raft of skeptics ready to second guess its second-quarter results due Friday.

The complicated company's strategy of growing and diversifying through acquisitions helped drive its share price up 200 percent between 1997 and 2000.

But those shares are now back near 1998 levels as General Electric, a financial services, media and manufacturing conglomerate, suffers from investor distaste for large firms with labyrinth-like balance sheets.

"GE gets lumped into that, given their complexity and size," said Jeff Graff, an analyst at Victory Capital Management, which owns about 28 million GE shares. "Everyone's attacking steady growth and getting suspicious."

Steady growth should continue. Analysts surveyed by First Call expect that GE's earnings per share rose 13 percent to 44 cents in the June quarter from 39 cents a year ago. The results are due before markets open.

GE, which has vowed to make its finances more transparent, will continue that trend Friday with its second earnings conference call in the company's 110 years.

Analysts expect good things from GE's power systems division, where second-quarter earnings are seen leaping 65 percent. But the slowing economy likely hurt results at its appliance unit. GE's biggest profit driver, GE Capital, will be closely watched.

As usual, a series of one-time charges and gains will be excluded from the numbers.

"I think there's going to be a lot of noise in this quarter," said Tom Giles, director of research at Dean Investment Associates. Giles believes that GE shares, trading at 15 times next year's estimated profits, are a buy.

Those shares rose 30 cents to $27.25 Thursday, narrowing their year-to-date losses to 38 percent.

A maker of light bulbs, engine parts, and medical equipment, GE's business is a kind of proxy on an economy whose recovery remains in doubt. Faced with the sluggishness, some economists expect the Federal Reserve to keep short-term interest rates at 40-year lows through early next year.

A one-time second-quarter charge is expected when GE's insurance division writes down losses from WorldCom bonds. In other non-recurring items, the company benefited from early termination fees paid by a series of power plants and won a lawsuit related to export tax credits. But some of that will be offset by reinsurance charges, GE said last month.

"I don't think there's going to be a lot of surprises in the quarter," said Victory Capital's Graff, who will be watching order trends.

Graff, who said that GE's cash flow figures are in line with company earnings, blames shifting investor philosophy for the skepticism toward GE, the only original member of the Dow Jones industrial average.

That philosophy began changing last year when energy trader Enron shocked the markets by revealing it overstated profits before filing for bankruptcy.

Tyco, which has never restated results, has still seen its shares collapse amid worries about how the conglomerate accounted for its many acquisitions. WorldCom last month said it was able to inflate results for five quarters by hiding expenses.

Throughout it all, GE, based in Fairfield, Conn., has affirmed and reaffirmed expectations for double-digit growth this year. It has said it expects to earn $16.5 billion in 2002 before one-time accounting changes, or between $1.65 and $1.67 per share.

Nicholas Heymann, a Prudential Securities analyst who rates GE shares a "buy" says "people are concerned about the quality of the earnings."

"We'll get a better handle about how can this company, in a non-growth environment ,can grow at an above-average rate," Heymann said.

Second-quarter sales, according to the consensus estimate, are expected to have risen to $35 billion from $29 billion a year ago.

"It think they will match the numbers," said Donald Selkin, director of research at Joseph Stevens, a GE shareholder, who nonetheless worries about the company's marketplace perception.

"They have to get credibility," he said.

GE prepared long ago for the departure of CEO Jack Welch, the fabled leader who over 20 years nurtured and pruned the company with 993 acquisitions and many more layoffs. He retired last September.

In a letter to employees obtained by Dow Jones, the new CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, Thursday distanced GE from the deepening corporate scandals like the one involving WorldCom.

Immelt said he has "complete confidence in the integrity of our financial reporting and the way we do business," according to Dow Jones. He noted that everyone at GE signs an "integrity policy" and said the company's "number one value is integrity."

The declining stock price allowed Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates) last month to overtake General Electric (GE: Research, Estimates) as the No. 1 firm by market capitalization.

At the time, David Frail, a GE spokesman, repeated vows that the company is on track for 17 percent to 18 percent profit growth this year.

But that hasn't stopped the questions.

GE "has increased transparency," Dean Investment's Giles said. "The question is: Will Wall Street reward that transparency?"