General Electric, the nation’s largest industrial company, said on Friday that it had higher net earnings for the third quarter, but price pressures in its energy business squeezed profit margins in an economic environment that the company’s chief executive described as “volatile.”

The company reported net income of $3.2 billion in the July-September period, up 57 percent compared with the same period in 2010. A large part of that leap, however, resulted from a significant one-time charge last year related to G.E.’s discontinued consumer finance unit in Japan.

The company said it had operating earnings per share of 31 cents in the third quarter, up 11 percent from 2010 and exactly in line with expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

That excluded the 8-cents-per-share impact of its payback of Berkshire Hathaway’s investment, made in October 2008 when G.E. was being battered by the financial crisis. The cash infusion was repaid this month for $3.3 billion. But the company said it expected that the payback would improve annualized earnings per share by 3 cents a share in future quarters. Revenue for the period was $35.4 billion, which the company described as flat compared with the third quarter of 2010. Analysts had forecast $34.93 billion in revenue, according to a survey compiled by Thomson Reuters.