GE CEO Larry Culp Talks 2026 Outlook

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Dani Berger** (0:08)
Now, I want to welcome to our global TV and radio audiences. I'm Dani Berger. Let's head down to the Farmboro Air Show where Bloomberg's Guy Johnson is with the GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO, Larry Culp. Guy.

**Guy Johnson** (0:22)
I certainly am. Thank you very much indeed, Dani. Yes, welcome back to the Farmboro Air Show here in the UK.
As you say, Larry Culp is with me. Larry, great to see you. Thanks for spending some time with us. Look, the first thing I've got to ask you is, why on earth are we sitting in front of a very big 747 with your name on it?

**Larry Culp** (0:41)
Well, it's the GE Aerospace name. Guy, good to be with you. This is our flying testbed.
As you say, this is a 747-400. This is basically our airborne laboratory upon which we test all of our engines. There's a lot of talk here at Farmboro, as there often is at the air shows, around the future of flight. We wanted to bring the flying testbed to Farmboro just to reinforce and help people understand everything that we do on board and inside the plane to make sure that we're bringing forward the best possible engines from a safety and reliability perspective.

**Guy Johnson** (1:15)
You get to test the next generation of engines for narrowbodies like the 737 or the A320s on this, because there's a big debate here at Farmboro about whether it's open rotor or the traditional kind of ducted jet engine for that next generation. Is this the aircraft you'd use to test that?

**Larry Culp** (1:33)
Very much so. So even though it's a widebody engine, we can test virtually any engine that we might fly across our portfolio under development on the flying testbed.

**Guy Johnson** (1:43)
Cool. Let's talk a little bit about the show and what has happened here. I'm sure you've been absolutely snowed under meeting after meeting.
What I've seen come out of the show is again, huge numbers of orders for aircraft, which means huge numbers of orders for engines. You've just landed a huge deal in India as well. The backlog is getting bigger and bigger, Larry. It's a nice problem to have, but at some point, are you going to have to invest in additional manufacturing kit in order to fulfill some of these huge orders that you're taking?

**Larry Culp** (2:11)
Well, Guy, it's been very busy. We've been here since Saturday, and I don't think we've had a better air show. From an orders perspective, we've had a number of announcements. I think the one you're referring to is one we let out yesterday afternoon. Over 1,000 engines with Indigo Airlines in India. Really excited about that multi-year commitment. There are others. I won't take our limited time here to go through the roster of them. There are many. There are many, narrow body and wide body.
Guy, we've been investing in our manufacturing footprint, in our supply chain for years. We know that a good air show is interesting, but we're on a multi-year ramp, both with our commercial customers and in defense.
We're sold out into the early 2030s. So whether it be investments in fixed capital, just as importantly investments in people and process, those are the things that enabled us, say in the first half of this year, to increase our engine deliveries by over 30% year over year. We're going to need to be driving that sort of improvement. That's where it grows for years to come.

**Guy Johnson** (3:16)
Does that pace increase? Does the cadence of that start to increase?
As you say, you're sold out for years and years to come.

**Larry Culp** (3:24)
Well, I don't think we need to necessarily compound at 30%, but we're going to have to do more in the second half of this year than we did in the first half, and 27 is going to need to be bigger than 26 So we know we're on a multi-year ramp, and what I'm so excited about, we said this last Thursday at our earnings call, we've got nine quarters in a row now where we've seen double digit sequential increases from our suppliers that are probably prone to pace us the most, which tells me they're investing, we're collaborating to break bottlenecks where they exist, and we're able to get more from them. In turn, we're able to deliver more to our airframe and airline customers.

**Guy Johnson** (4:03)
Do you think you're going to have to invest more in that? You did highlight that it was something that really stood out in terms of what you said on that earnings call, but is there something, do you think you're going to have to invest more in that supply chain?