text size
GE Aerospace is scheduled to be spun off from GE's power business as early as 2024.
Courtesy of General Electric Aviation
general Electric
Getting a new finance chief. It makes sense considering what's coming at the company.
on Thursday,
ge
(Ticker: GE) announced That Chief financial Officer Carolina Dybek Happ will step down from her role, to be assumed by GE Aerospace CFO Rahul Ghai. That transition comes in September. Dybbek Hape will remain as an advisor until he is expected to leave GE in February 2024.
By the time Dybeck Happe is gone, there will be no more GE as investors know it today. GE's power business is scheduled to be spun off in early 2024 under the name GE Vernova. That would just leave GE Aerospace.
No permanent CFO has yet been named for GE Vernova. GE says the decision will come later.
“Simply put, a standalone GE aerospace company should have an aerospace CFO,” RBC Capital Markets analysts Dean Drye and Ken Herbert wrote in a Thursday report. DRY covers industrial stocks. Herbert covers the aerospace industry.
“This announcement is another sign that the final separation is on track, as GE moves toward the separation of GE Vernova in early 2024, leaving GE Aero as the remaining co-co,” added the pair.
RBC has a Buy rating on GE stock and a price target of $113 per share.
Wall Street isn't surprised. Neither are investors. GE shares have gained about $1 since the announcement and were up 0.4% at $104.42 in Friday afternoon trading. S&P 500 And Dow Jones Industrial Average Both are very high in the last few trading days.
Dybeck Happe arrived at GE in late 2019 to help CEO Larry Culp transition the company, a process that would create three firms:
GE Healthcare Technologies
(GEHC), GE Vernova and GE Aerospace.
Kalp will continue to run GE Aerospace. “Carolina has played an important role over the years, helping significantly reduce GE's debt [and] improve our financial and operational performance,” he said in a news release. “Under Carolina's leadership, GE's finance teams have become strong operating partners for our businesses, generating insights to drive performance while driving our focus on free cash flow.”
GE has paid down more than $100 billion in debt over the years, some of it before Dybeck Happe came on board. Still, the overall restructuring of the balance sheet and finance function at GE has been a mammoth task. Consider that GE Capital, the company's long-term finance business, is no longer reported as a separate business segment. It once had assets worth hundreds of billions.
“She helped lead GE during the pandemic,” Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyoghu wrote in a Thursday report. She Buys shares of GE and sets a $120 price target for the stock.
“As the current CFO of GE Aerospace and previously served as Executive Vice
As President and CFO of Otis Worldwide and previously Senior Vice President and CFO of Harris Corporation, we see incoming CFO Rahul Ghai as bringing a strong track record of performance to the new role,” Citigroup analyst Andrew Kaplowitz wrote in a Thursday report. He calls shares of GE a buy and has a $114 price target for the stock.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]