I hope you and your family have found some time to recharge in the last month. My team and I are just returning from GE’s Customer Technical Education Center (CTEC) for the first time since we saw many of you there in March. We spent an action packed two days getting in-depth, hands-on training on engine architectures, functionality, related service processes, and much more in our Jet Engine Training School (JETS) course. We had the opportunity to step into the operator’s shoes, disassembling and reassembling the fan and compressor, much like our service technicians would in the field. My personal favorite part – using a boroscope to look deep inside the engine and leveraging these images to make assessments of the engine condition. I continue to be struck by the technology and innovation in our products that has been built over the last century, our talented teams out in the field and our focus on continuous improvement.
Last week also was a big week for our GE Vernova team, who announced two appointments to the leadership team. Ken Parks will join GE Vernova as CFO, effective October 2, 2023, and Vic Abate was named CEO of GE Vernova’s Wind segment, effective immediately.
Ken joins GE from Owens Corning, where he served as CFO, and he was formerly CFO at Mylan, Wesco International, and UTC’s Fire & Security business. GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik noted that “both Ken and Vic have proven and extensive track records, having successfully led multiple businesses through transformation during their careers.” Many of you know Ken already and he is a great addition to the team. This is another meaningful step by GE Vernova on the way toward its spin-off, and its executive leadership team is now fully filled out.
As we progress on our plans to form standalone GE Vernova and GE Aerospace, we continue to receive questions on the capital structures, and when we intend to exit our stakes in GE HealthCare (NASDAQ: GEHC) and AerCap (NYSE: AER). We intend to exit our stakes over time, but there is no rush. As we have said, timing will depend on market conditions, favorable economics and GE uses. The tax impact of going into next year should be limited and is just one of the factors that we consider in that regard. For both GEHC and AER, we started this process earlier this year and intend to continue exiting the remaining stakes over time in an orderly manner.
Lastly, later this week Ron Epstein (Managing Director and A&D analyst at Bank of America) and Andrew Obin (Managing Director and Multi Industry analyst at Bank of America) will host a discussion with Mohamed Ali (VP of Engineering, GE Aerospace), covering a current topic we hear about a lot: Airworthiness Directives and how investors should interpret them. A transcript will be available on our website following the event.
As always, we welcome your feedback.
Best,
Steve and team