General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Joshua Pokrzywinski: I just want to follow up on that last question on pricing in particular. I guess if you look at order dollars that you printed versus gigawatt orders or unit orders, seems like a healthy gap in there. I would imagine most of that is price, although maybe some mix as well. At the same time, I guess, we’re not fully clarified from the IRS on some of this rule-making language. Is price today sort of at the run rate you would expect? Or are there other dynamics that maybe emerge here with more clarity about sources of production and domicile and some of those elements?

Larry Culp: Well, I think that we will continue to see this market evolve. Again, the White House, the administration has not issued the final guidance. They are well along. We’ve had a number of opportunities, as others have, to share our views both on the substance and the timing of the key provisions. I think we’ll see that play out here this quarter. And in turn, customers will react to that, right? They have acted in anticipation. But when the rules are set and the guidelines are clear being around the domestic content rules, the manufacturing credits and the like, I think you’ll see things pick up. What I was talking about a moment ago with Deane with respect to how we think about selectivity and price, we’ll continue to evolve as well.

So I don’t — in the spirit of Kaizen, it continues to improve. And I wouldn’t say that we’re somehow at a peak. We’ll continue to make sure we push our cost structure as best we can and are fairly compensated for the value that we create. That pretty much is the setup here and in turn, why we think we have the path not only to profitability, but far better margins than you’ve seen in this business the last couple of years.

Carolina Happe: Yes. And if you think about it, we’re talking about sort of tech selected orders. It will take, well, about 1 year before you see it in the P&L. So of course, that delta between price and cost in the P&L will take a little longer to come through because of the cycle.

Operator: Our next question comes from Chris Snyder with UBS.

Christopher Snyder: I wanted to follow up on some of the prior comments on aviation top line. So the segment grew another like mid-20% organic in Q1. The guide implies about low teens by my math for the rest of the year. And I certainly appreciate the comps get tougher, but I was hoping you could provide some color on how we should expect the cadence of that organic growth deceleration over the rest of the year. And then longer term, I would appreciate any views or color on how far the segment is from seeing organic growth compress back to the mid- to high single-digit rate called out at the Investor Day for the long term.

Larry Culp: Well, again, I think as we look at the full year here, we would expect services to continue to grow. We think services will still be up high teens to 20% all in for the year, but we’ll see equipment grow more rapidly, primarily on the back of the LEAP ramp and Defense shipments improving, right? We were down 2% in the first quarter. We still expect, once we clear a number of these delivery issues, that we should be up high single digits in Defense. And that’s really what I think you’ll see through the course of the year. Keep in mind, we’ve got the tougher comps in services coming in, in the back half, particularly given the nature of the sequential ramp here. But all in, we’ve got a lot to do to deliver on those numbers, and those numbers don’t assume that we fully clear our backlog or past due backlogs, either.

So I wouldn’t want to commit to that upside. But certainly, we’re working as hard as we can within our own facilities and with our suppliers to deliver as much as we possibly can. In terms of when demand normalizes, that’s probably a question for another day. Again, given the OE ramp, given the services ramp back — on the back of what we’re seeing broadly with respect to departures, we’re optimistic about not only this year, but the near term. I think we’re on the verge of no longer talking about where we are, vis-a-vis, 2019. That will be exciting, right? We can get to a point where we’re just talking about year-over-year growth.

Scott Strazik: Yes. And I would just add, Chris, just to your specific cadence numbers, just look at the comps, third quarter, fourth quarter steps down pretty considerably, particularly in the fourth quarter just based on that comp math, and we can talk about it later.

Operator: Our next question comes from Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs.

Joseph Ritchie: So just going back to renewables for a second. The orders, the wind turbine orders were up 75%. I know up until now, I know Scott’s been pretty reluctant to book any Offshore projects. I’m curious whether this includes any new offshore units. And then secondly, on Onshore Wind. Just given the bookings so far this year, I’m curious like what’s the expectation for Onshore Wind profitability exiting the year? Can you turn a profit in Onshore Wind exiting 2023?

Carolina Happe: So if we start with your question on orders. So Offshore Wind, we didn’t have orders in the quarter as expected, and that was exactly what Scott was talking to. When it comes to Onshore Wind, we saw really strong bookings, and we mentioned that in the beginning of the call. So it was great to see tripling of Onshore Wind orders compared to last year. And that’s mainly North America equipment apps, so basically IRA driven and we saw good progress coming through from that. So the area is the game changer we said it would be, and we’re starting to see it come through. So if you combine then the growth on the top line as well as the self-help actions that Larry mentioned, where we expect to be done with about half of those when we exit the year.

And put on top of that, the pricing work that we’re doing as well as continuing cost out, we do expect to see the year for Onshore Wind when it comes to profitability or in this case, a reduction of losses to be a positive step through the quarters. I would say, especially in the second half because in the first half, we still have rather low U.S. orders that we are delivering on. So the mix is a bit heavy in the first half. So good improvement in the second half. And that is also the trajectory that will take us to significantly better results and low single-digit plus in 2024 when it comes to profit.

Steven Winoker: Joe, thanks. Liz, we have time for — let’s make time for 1 last question. Thanks.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Gautam Khanna with Cowen.