Inside Larry Culp’s playbook for fixing GE

Good morning. Larry Culp’s overhaul of General Electric is emerging as a modern benchmark in balance-sheet repair, operating discipline, and value creation, turning a near-distressed industrial icon into three focused, high-performing public companies.

“How GE CEO Larry Culp pulled off the turnaround of the century,” a new Fortune feature by my colleague Shawn Tully, offers an in-depth account of how Culp joined GE to steer the transformation of the conglomerate into three public companies now worth nearly $700 billion in aggregate—roughly double the S&P 500’s annualized return over his tenure.

When Culp arrived in 2018, GE’s market cap had collapsed to about $96 billion—down more than 80% from its 2000 peak—and the company was weighed down by roughly $150 billion of debt and chronic cash flow underperformance, Tully writes. His first moves prioritized deleveraging and simplification such as cutting central overhead and dismantling GE’s bloated headquarters infrastructure.

That groundwork enabled GE’s breakup into GE HealthCare, GE Vernova, and GE Aerospace across 2023–2024, a structural shift that has helped drive a combined equity value approaching $700 billion, far outpacing the S&P 500 over Culp’s tenure. The operating engine behind that outcome is lean management, heavily influenced by the Toyota Production System and Culp’s Danaher experience, according to Tully. To explore Culp’s playbook in more detail, you can read the full article here.

For investors, the most compelling cash-flow story now sits at jet-engine giant GE Aerospace, which Culp has led since it became a separate company in 2022. In its Q2 2026 earnings reported July 16, GE Aerospace generated $3 billion in free cash flow, up 43% year-over-year, driven by higher earnings and a reduction in working capital. Adjusted earnings per share of $2.02 beat the consensus estimate of $1.86, while adjusted revenue rose 24% year-over-year to $12.63 billion, surpassing forecasts of........

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