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Dear Investor,
Today GE released its 2021 Annual Report, which includes our Chairman and CEO Larry Culp’s fourth Letter to Shareholders and our 2021 10-K filing. Additionally, GE is publishing its second Diversity Annual Report, which includes letters authored by Larry and our new Chief Diversity Officer, Brandi Thomas. Materials will be available on GE’s Investor Relations website.
In his letter, Larry describes how “Today, GE is a stronger, more customer-centric company. We are building a culture that puts safety at the forefront and lean at the center. This clarity of mission provides compelling opportunities for our businesses to define the trajectory of their industries—we shape the future of flight, advance precision health and lead the energy transition—and we do it by getting better every day.”
Given the continued focus and dedication of our employees, we are operating from a position of strength, focused on important growth sectors in aviation, healthcare, and energy. Larry continued - “With this confidence, we were able to announce in November our plans to transform the company by forming three independent, investment-grade industry leaders with sustainability at their core.” As independently run companies, each can benefit from greater focus, tailored capital allocation, and strategic flexibility to deliver long-term growth and create value for customers, investors, and employees.
In the spirit of Kaizen, the lean principle of continuous improvement, we were able to reduce the length of the 10-K again, this time by 20 pages versus the prior year. We continued to improve the effectiveness of our disclosures in 2021, culminating with today’s release of our 10-K with single-column reporting. Please see more details below on our 10-K, including reporting changes and key disclosures.
Our 2021 Diversity Annual Report builds upon our commitment to improve the depth and breadth of our diversity data. This year, we’ve added data sets covering voluntary self-identification data for U.S. veteran status and disability (U.S.), and a new section that covers equitable pay for gender globally and for U.S. underrepresented minority employees.
Finally, please join us later this month as Larry appears at both the Barclays and Citi Industrial Conferences on February 23, 2022. And as a reminder, GE will hold an Investor Call to provide more detail on our 2022 company outlook on March 10, 2022.
As always, I welcome your feedback. Thank you for your continued interest in GE, and please take care.
Best,
Steve
Detailed 10-K changes
GE voluntarily elected to implement the following reporting changes in our 10-K:
Changed our presentation of Statement of Earnings:
- Reclassified GE Capital revenues from services to Other income, excluding Insurance revenues which is now presented as a separate line within Revenues (p. 47); and
- Aligned “equipment” and “services” definitions. Our Statement of Earnings previously included tangible products (e.g., spare parts, equipment upgrades) in sales of goods while MD&A, and operationally, we defined these as sales of services. Now presenting these within sales and cost of services throughout the 10-K. There is no impact to total revenue or cost. (p. 6-7, 51)
Changed our presentation of Statement of Financial Position:
- Reclassified Financing receivables and Other GE Capital receivables to All other assets (p. 48)
Revised key performance indicators and non-GAAP financial metrics:
- Ceased referring to GE Industrial;
- EFS will continue to be reported on a net earnings basis given the integral nature of Production Tax Credits (PTCs) and Investment Tax Credits (ITCs) to its business model (p. 6, 10);
- To align with our industrial segments, redefined the basis on which profit is determined for the remainder of our former Capital segment to exclude Interest and other financial charges, income taxes, non-operating benefit costs and preferred stock dividends(p. 6, 10);
- Results of former Capital segment, including Energy Financial Services (EFS) and our run-off insurance operations, reported within Corporate (p. 6, 10, 16);
- Run-off insurance operations, which do not support our industrial businesses, are adjusted out of non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted revenues*, adjusted earnings*, and free cash flows*. All insurance disclosures will remain (p. 21-22, 32-34)
Effective 1Q 2021, all results of operations, financial position, and cash flows for GECAS are reported as discontinued operations and the notes to the financial statements have been adjusted on a retrospective basis (p. 56)
1-for-8 reverse stock split
In 2Q of 2021, we announced that we would proceed with a 1-for-8 reverse stock split. GE common stock began trading on a split-adjusted basis on August 2, 2021. Our shares of outstanding common stock and earnings per share calculation have been retroactively restated for all periods presented. (p. 7, 76)
Other key 2021 10-K disclosures include:
- Enhanced sustainability and human capital disclosures, drawing from our Sustainability Report and including management priorities designed to support business strategy and improve organizational effectiveness (p. 4-5)
- Portfolio Actions | BK Medical acquisition in our Healthcare business; Steam Power transaction subsequent event and impact to remaining business (p. 7, 15, 61)
- Other Significant Developments | Continued disclosure of COVID-19 to describe workforce, supply chain, operations, and governance (p. 7)
- Capital Resources and Liquidity MD&A | 2021 debt tenders of $33 billion and related costs; incorporated disclosures related to the discontinuation of the majority of factoring programs (p. 19-24)
- Insurance | Updates for loss recognition test, sensitivities and capital contributions; preparing for new accounting standard adoption in January 2023 (p. 20, 26-32, 65-66)
- Income Taxes | Updates for effective rate, cash taxes paid, audit resolutions and UK litigation (p. 71-74)
Legal Matters | Bank BPH (Poland) regarding litigation status, reserves, capital contribution (p. 57, 81-82)
GE’s Investor Relations website at www.ge.com/investor and our corporate blog at www.gereports.com, as well as GEs Facebook page and Twitter accounts, contain a significant amount of information about GE, including financial and other information for investors. GE encourages investors to visit these websites from time to time, as information is updated and new information is posted.