Then Wind shows up and reminds everyone why the breakup was necessary in the first place.
The former GE power business reported a strong second quarter, raised full-year revenue and free-cash-flow guidance, and ended the quarter with a $176 billion backlog. Orders surged. Power and Electrification are benefiting from electricity demand, grid investment, gas-turbine demand and data-center construction.
But the stock still fell after the report because Wind remains the problem child. Wind orders dropped, segment losses widened, and investors who expected a cleaner beat-and-raise quarter did not get one. President Trump’s persistent attacks on wind power have given this business quite a headwind.
That is not a contradiction. It is the GE breakup working as intended.
GE Vernova’s second-quarter release is here. Reuters has a useful summary of the market reaction and Wind weakness here.
A Strong Quarter With One Loud Flaw
GE Vernova reported $11.1 billion of second-quarter revenue, up 22% from the prior year. Orders were $24.2 billion, up 88% organically, led by Power and Electrification. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.2 billion, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 11.3%.
The cash flow number was even better. GE Vernova generated $5.1 billion of free cash flow in the quarter, more than it generated in all of 2025. The company ended the quarter with $13.1 billion of cash and said it has returned $3.9 billion to shareholders so far this year.
Management raised 2026 revenue guidance to $45.5 billion to $46.5 billion, up from the prior range of $44.5 billion to $45.5 billion. Free-cash-flow guidance jumped to $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion, up from $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margin guidance remained at 12% to 14%.
For many companies, that would be enough.
For GE Vernova, the market looked straight at Wind.
Power And Electrification Are Carrying The Story
Power orders jumped as customers continued to reserve gas-turbine capacity and related services. The company said gas-power equipment backlog and slot-reservation agreements rose from 100 gigawatts to 116 gigawatts, and it now expects at least 125 gigawatts under contract by year-end.
GE Vernova is also increasing gas-turbine output. Management said it remains on track for 20 gigawatts of annual gas-turbine output in the third quarter of 2026, plans for 24 gigawatts in 2028, and is working toward 30 gigawatts in 2030.
Electrification is getting the same demand pull from a different angle. Utilities and large customers need transformers, switchgear, grid equipment, software and power-conversion systems. Data-center orders have already exceeded $5 billion year to date, more than double the company’s full-year 2025 total.
This is the part of GE Vernova that investors want to own: power demand, grid bottlenecks, electrification, AI data centers, utility capital spending and a service-heavy installed base.
Wind Is Still Not Fixed
Reuters reported that Wind orders fell about 40% from a year earlier, while the segment’s EBITDA loss widened to $275 million from $165 million. Weak onshore demand and higher offshore project costs continue to weigh on the business.
That is why the earnings reaction was so mixed. GE Vernova raised guidance and showed enormous demand in Power and Electrification. At the same time, Wind made it hard to treat the quarter as a clean victory.
Inside old GE, that mix would have been buried under aviation, healthcare, finance history, corporate costs and whatever else investors were arguing about that year. As a standalone company, it is visible. Investors can reward Power and Electrification and still punish Wind.
That is healthy price discovery, even when the stock goes down.
The Spinoff GE Should Have Had Years Earlier
GE completed the GE Vernova spinoff on April 2, 2024. GE shareholders received one GE Vernova share for every four GE shares held as of the March 19 record date, and GE Vernova began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under GEV. GE Vernova’s completion announcement is here.
We never gave the spin its own full article at the time. We should have. Last year, we only noted GE Vernova’s fivefold rise in an Odds & Ends post.
The stock has since become one of the cleaner examples of why GE finally had to be broken apart.
GE Aerospace is now an aerospace company. GE HealthCare is a healthcare-equipment company. GE Vernova is the energy and electrification company, with Power, Wind and Electrification sitting in the same public vehicle because they belong in the same energy-investment debate.
The old GE asked investors to value everything at once. The new structure lets them choose.
What The Quarter Says About The Breakup
This quarter does not say that every part of GE Vernova is working. It says the separation gave investors a clearer instrument.
An investor who wants gas turbines, grid equipment, electrification and data-center power exposure can own GE Vernova. An investor who does not want Wind losses has to decide whether the rest of the company more than pays for that drag. An investor who wanted jet engines without Wind, Power or Grid can own GE Aerospace instead.
That is the point of the breakup.
GE Vernova’s second quarter had almost everything the bulls wanted: higher revenue guidance, far higher free-cash-flow guidance, huge orders, a larger backlog and visible demand from data centers and utilities.
It also had the one thing skeptics keep watching: Wind losses that are still too large.
That makes GE Vernova a better stock-market story than it ever was as a line buried inside General Electric. It also makes it easier to judge. Power and Electrification are no longer hidden by the conglomerate. Wind is no longer hidden either.
For spinoff investors, that is the lesson. A good breakup does not make every business better overnight. It makes the strengths and weaknesses harder to ignore.
Disclosure: The author owns no shares of any stock mentioned