• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 15, 2009

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt said Tuesday that NBC Universal will lose an estimated $200 million on the February Olympics. GE is "counting on having tough economics around the Olympics," Immelt said.

"It's just a tough time for a big event like that," he said.

NBCU would post an operating profit increase in 2010, Immelt said, but the Winter Olympics will instead bring a decrease.

Speaking on other matters at an annual investor conference, Immelt declined to predict when the government may approve the proposed NBCU joint venture with Comcast.

But he expressed optimism that the 49% stake that GE would have in the new business "strength(ens) our media assets and priorities." And it will provide a stream of cash that GE can use to make investments in other businesses.

For the time being, Immelt said "the ad market is quite good right now" for NBCU's networks.

Looking back at 2009, Immelt offered no new insight, saying that the cable ad market has been "positive," but "we've had a tough year in network and movies."

Going forward, once a Comcast deal is closed, Immelt said GE will be a "more focused" company, emphasizing its high-tech infrastructure and financial services operations.

Immelt looked back on NBCU over the past decade, saying the "strategy was to make the asset more valuable in a very dynamic media space, and we had some hits and misses."

Hits: the 2004 acquisition of Universal, which brought profitable cable networks. Misses: the 2002 Telemundo purchase and Internet initiatives.

"But the big ones we got right," he said, as NBC moved well beyond a broadcast-focused business over the past decade.

Through the first nine months of this year, NBCU accounted for 12% of GE's profit ($1.7 billion).