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General Electric (GE) had good news coming almost out of every division, as earnings for the third quarter increased by a strong 14 percent. The only category the company dropped in was their health care unit.

"GE delivered a solid quarter in spite of extreme volatility in the financial services market and some one-time items in our industrial businesses," chairman and chief executive Jeff Immelt said.

The company ended up with $5.54 billion dollars net profit on $42.58 billion in sales for the quarter for July-September. That was an increase of 12 percent for overall revenue.

Part of the profit performance was connected to the sale of the company's plastics unit to a group from Saudi Arabia. That resulted in a gain of $1.8 billion. The sale to Saudi Basic Industries Corporation totaled $11.6 billion.

Some of that gain was offset by a $600 million restructuring charge, along with a charge of $1.4 billion for the discontinued Japanese personal loan business and its U.S. finance unit WMC, which was connected to the subprime mortgage industry.

The company looks like it'll continue solid growth, as overall orders increased by 20 percent to $24 billion, while its backlog grew to $19 billion; growing by 43 percent.

Revenue for their infrastructure division performed especially well, increasing by 19 percent, with profits growing by 12 percent.

The commercial financial unit also performed strongly, with revenue growing by 17 percent, and profits also increasing by 12 percent there, to reache $1.45 billion. The personal finance unit also performed surprisingly strong, with revenue up by 23 percent, and profits reaching $942 million, up 13 percent.