General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Our next question comes from Josh Pokrzywinski with Morgan Stanley.

Josh Pokrzywinski: Larry just wanted to follow-up here on renewables. It looks like there is some profit improvement, not maybe all the way back to what folks were perhaps expecting. Just wondering if you could parse what’s getting better like selectivity or grid or price cost versus what’s still kind of a more material headwind this year?

Larry Culp: Josh, good morning. No, I think if you look at renewables, we think profitability will be significantly better. If I break it down, at grid, we’re really encouraged by the improvements the team has put in place. I think that’s what yielded the profitable quarter here in the fourth, but more importantly, sets them up to be profitable in 2023, right? This is a business that people had given up on a few years ago. And particularly in Europe, we’ve seen tremendous interest really across the grid portfolio in line with this accelerated electrification that’s underway. So I think that’s all good and they begin to contribute in the new year. I think from an onshore perspective, a little to Joe’s question a moment ago on cash, the same thing applies to profitability.

I think the first half is going to continue to be challenged much in the way that 2022 has. But as we work our way through the year, we would expect to see volume. We will see higher quality volume as a function of that selectivity, and we can really see better pricing in our order book compared to our revenues and our test selects compared to our orders and in our pipeline. We’ve talked about that before. I think that really is a sign that the industry is transitioning in anticipation of the IRA to one where volumes may be €“ capacity may be challenged by demand, and that will be good overall. But there is a whole host of things that we need to do operationally. I think we talked in the last call about improving our producibility and the robustness of what we do in manufacturing.

At the same time, we have taken some structural cost actions really the only place in GE where that’s the case with nearly 2,000 of our associates in transition here as we look to get the renewables business onshore in particular, in better shape for what lies ahead. And then for offshore, because we aren’t going to double revenue, we’re going to need to recognize the losses that go with the Haliade-X early on here. So grid much better, onshore wind and transition, a bit of a timing dynamic with offshore, and you put that together, and that’s really what gives you the renewables guide for €˜23.

Operator: Our next question comes from Julian Mitchell with Barclays.

Julian Mitchell: Hi, good morning. Just wanted to ask about cash flow sort of through the year and also the uses of your cash, that’s something maybe refreshing to talk about for the first time in a few years, but on the cash flow through the year, when we think about the seasonality, I think you had sort of free cash was minus $900 million first quarter a year ago. How do you see the sort of the cash flow moving this year? It sounds like renewables may be a very big headwind in the first half and then swings in the second. So any color on the GE firm-wide free cash as we go through the year? And then maybe more for Larry, sort of thoughts on capital deployment there is starting to be some optionality now for GE partly because of the improving cash flow. It’s mostly been debt reduction understandably for a few years, but maybe just help us understand your priorities on cash use?