GE CEO Larry Culp Talks 2026 Outlook | Bloomberg Talks

🎥 Jul 20, 2026 📺 Bloomberg Podcasts ⏱ 8m 👁 202 views

GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO Larry Culp discusses the company’s order backlog, supply chain investments, and how improved deliveries from key suppliers is helping to boost output. He speaks with Guy Johnson on the sidelines of the Farnborough International Air Show 2026. See omnystudio.com/listener (https://omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information. Bloomberg Talks curates top interviews from around Bloomberg News. Hear conversations with the biggest names in finance, politics and entertainment. On Bloomberg Talks, we round up interviews with Fortune 500 CEOs, government officials, w...

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About H. Culp

In the second quarter of 2026, Culp stated that GE Aerospace raised its full-year guidance, citing the strength of the first half and momentum for the remainder of the year. He described the company's challenge as primarily supply-side, noting that the company had seen nine consecutive quarters of double-digit sequential increases from key suppliers. Culp said the company is focused on collaborative problem-solving with suppliers and making organic and inorganic investments to break bottlenecks. He also noted that the company’s commercial backlog stood at $170 billion and that the installed base is expected to grow at a low- to mid-single-digit rate through the rest of the decade. Earlier in the year, Culp said that the company was reducing its full-year departures outlook due to the conflict in the Middle East, but added that aside from current events, the company would have been discussing an increase to guidance. He stated that spare parts orders were up 30% in the first quarter and later increased to 40% year-over-year. Regarding future technology, Culp said the company believes the open fan architecture will provide efficiency and cost-of-ownership benefits for the next generation of narrow-body aircraft, though he noted it is not yet a product and that investment is needed now to be ready for a market that may be ten to fifteen years away.

Source: AI-verified profile updated from H. Culp's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (16 segments)

Danny Berger0:02

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Now, I want to welcome to our global TV and radio audiences. I'm Danny Berger. Let's head down to the Farm Air Show where Bloomberg's Sky Johnson is with the GE Aerospace chairman and CEO Larry Culp. Guy,

Sky Johnson0:22

I certainly am. Thank you very much indeed, Danny. Yes, welcome back to the Farra 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 Culp0:41

Well, it's the GE Aerospace name guy. Good to be with you. This is our flying test bed. 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 Farm Bro, as there often is at the air shows around the future of flight. We wanted to bring the flying test bed to Farm Bro 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. You got to test the next generation of engines for narrow bodies like the 737 or the A320s on this because there's a big debate here at Farra about whether it's open rotor or the traditional kind of ducted jet engine for that next generation.

Sky Johnson1:30

Is this the aircraft you'd use to test that?

Larry Culp1:33

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 test bed.

Sky Johnson1:43

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 Culp2:11

Well, guys, 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 a thousand 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 narrow body and widebody 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, right? 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 sort of growth for years to come.

Sky Johnson3:16

Does that pace increase? Does the cadence of that start to increase? I you as you say, you're sold out for years and years to come.

Larry Culp3:16

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.

Sky Johnson4:03

Do you think you're going to have to invest more in that? You did highlight that 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? I we've talked about kind of investing in your capital infrastructure. Do you think you're going to have to invest in theirs? Is there M&A stories that maybe you think about in order to just get that supply chain to where you want it to be?

Larry Culp4:24

There's more to come with that without doubt. Most of that will be organic right within our operations. Some of it will come by way of collaboration. I'm sure there'll be inorganic investments as well. We've done a number of small acquisitions with suppliers that were better off frankly under our roof than at arms length. But at the end of the day, it's not about ownership. It's about problem identification and breaking those constraints. Again, I think we've made a lot of progress the last few years in partnership with a number of our key suppliers, large and small, many of them here. More to come. Okay.

Sky Johnson4:59

There's been so much news flow as we've been here at the show. One of them has been around what is happening with oil prices and the fact that we're seeing them heading back up again as a result of what's happening in the Gulf right now. If I talk to Kelly over at Boeing, if I talk to Guom at Airbus, they're like, 'This is in some ways good news for us because what it does is it encourages our customers, the airlines to invest in the most up-to-date aircraft, most fuel efficient aircraft that they can get their hands on. For you though, I just wonder whether it's a slightly different story because what we do see as well is that the airlines look at their older fleets and go maybe we should retire some of those older aircraft, but the spare parts business is a big margin driver for you. How do you see the balance working there?

Larry Culp5:40

Well, I would say what's good for Boeing or good for Airbus is good for General Electric. There's no two ways about that. But the other piece of the equation right now, guy, that you didn't touch on, frankly, is demand. Every airline CEO that has been at Farmborough, those that we talked to just a few weeks ago at IATA and Rio, all have remarked about how strong demand has been even in the face of some of the oil price disruptions since the springtime. So, we're looking at a situation where we have very strong aftermarket demand. We have very strong new make demand. And again, we can never forget about defense. So, we have our work cut out for us on a multi-year basis. We know we're going to have to ramp. We're going to make those investments, drive those process improvements, but that work is underway at GE Aerospace, and that work will continue.

Sky Johnson6:30

One of the big discussions here has been almost about the aircraft that's not here, and that's the next generation of narrow body. We talked about it a little bit earlier on. You're going to test it on this 747, the engine for that. You're pushing quite hard for the open rotor technology. You think that's the future. You think it's going to be simpler, easier to maintain, have some fairly big cost efficiencies that come with it. The airframers aren't there yet. They're not ready, judging by the conversations that I've had, to be ready to make a decision on that. How late can they leave it? When do you think that decision is going to come?

Larry Culp6:58

Well, we had an announcement just yesterday in concert with Airbus Y with CFM International. We were talking about our new flying test bed equivalent for the open fan architecture. It's a technology development program, guys. As you well know, this is a multi-year effort. We do think the open fan architecture provides both efficiency and maintenance or cost of ownership benefits. So, we think we will ultimately be able to deliver to the airlines, the ultimate customer, an opportunity to do both. It's not yet a product. So, there's work to do here. There's plenty of time for us all to work that out. But every next generation narrow body has always come forward with a step function improvement in performance. Very hard to justify the investment to develop one, let alone buy one without that. We're confident that the open fan architecture is going to be the enabler in that regard.

Sky Johnson7:52

Larry, it's also a pleasure. Thank you very much indeed for spending a little bit of time with us here at the Farm Show. We greatly appreciate it. Larry Culp, the CEO of GE Aerospace, joining us here at Farra.