Keith S. Sherin: We feel great about it. We have an incredible discipline from the board of directors to the leadership team of this company to the actions we take in GE Capital and the capital board to run the company as a Triple A. We have an incredible risk management process. We have a great liquidity profile and we are in contact with the rating agencies every week on all sorts of things around the world and both the rating agencies understand where we are and they are both supportive of us keeping the Triple A today and in the future. We believe in funding ourselves for safety and security first. That is why we did our debt plan to get ahead of the year. We had a year plan of doing about $80 billion of long-term debt. We did 35 in the first quarter. Even though the markets were difficult, we went out and did the debt to get it in place in advance of some of the transactions we think we are going to do. We have been disciplined about our commercial paper, keeping it right around $100 billion balance. We ended the quarter at $102 billion. We could have a much higher balance of commercial paper but we have chosen to keep that at a certain level so that it is completely aligned with all of our liquidity back-up plans. We have a cash balance and a liquidity plan that we keep in place for any type of temporary disruption and we feel great about the business, the underlying business model that we have and the rating agencies agree with us.
Ann Duignan (Bear Stearns): Your outlook for tax rate now is 16% versus your initial guidance of 18%. Is that correct?
Keith S. Sherin: That is correct.
Ann Duignan (Bear Stearns): Did you call that out in your revised 2008 framework that would have had a positive impact?
Keith S. Sherin: We revised it from 18 to 16 but if you look at the revised EPS guidance, the reduction in the financial services earnings includes the impact of the lower tax rate. We have taken into account in the financial services EPS range.
Ann Duignan (Bear Stearns): You are not seeing a significant slowdown in your long cycle businesses in Western Europe and places outside of the U.S. but what are things like GE Money seeing in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe?
Keith S. Sherin: In GE Money the one place we have seen an increase in delinquencies is in the secured book in the U.K., which is our iGroup mortgage book. It is up around 14% delinquency. We have seen those rates over the last three years go as high as 17%, 18%. That is the one place globally we have seen an increase in delinquency. We do not have any losses rolling through in that book. We have low loan-to-value exposure. We have mortgage insurance that we use any time it gets above 80%. We underwrite all those loans to the highest possible rate that could impact the consumer based on how they have borrowed and we have got a good business team there. After all of the lessons we learned in WMC, we went over and made sure we applied all those in our global mortgage business.
Ann Duignan (Bear Stearns): Commercial after market in aerospace was down 3% in the quarter. Is there any risk to that business as you look at higher fuel prices and all the complexities that are going on in the aerospace industry?
Keith S. Sherin: First of all, you have seen a couple of airlines go bankrupt in the last couple of weeks. Number one, we do not have any significant exposure to them. Everything we have is secured by relatively new aircraft. I think the total was around $100 million for the couple that went bankrupt and we have a good position in great planes. The revenue passenger miles growth is what drives our after market performance here and the revenue passenger miles were up 4.5% in the quarter so people, the airlines are flying and as long as they are flying, we are going to be doing more maintenance. The things that are getting pressured will be the older, less fuel efficient engines and that is not the bigger proportion of our mix. We have got a lot of the newer aircraft out there. Number one, we can not get enough planes today based on the global demand. You do not feel that when you are sitting here reading about some ATA or Aloha going bankrupt but it is true. Our order book is placed through 2009 and almost all of 2010 is now placed for new aircraft we are getting out of Airbus and Boeing, so the global demand is incredibly strong. The aircraft values are good and we are going to have to deal with the airlines being under financial pressure because of fuel and we have seen that cycle a lot of times in the last ten years.
Nigel Coe (Deutsche Bank): Is there any sign that the tighter credit conditions or slowing global growth is causing orders to get pushed back or cancelled, and therefore you might see orders weaken from here?
Jeffrey R. Immelt: We have not seen that. If you look at the dollars of orders in infrastructure, so up 11%, not the 30% that we have been averaging but if you look at, we did $10.5 billion in the first quarter last year of major equipment orders, $12.8 billion in the second quarter, 11.7 in the third quarter, 13.8 in the third quarter - all one 1.2 to 1.4 times the revenue we had in the quarter, building an incredible backlog. The total orders last year were $50 billion, up 29% and the absolute level of orders that we have this year at 11.7 in the first quarter against some difficult comparisons, up 11. The thing that is positive is we are just now starting to see a gas turbine ordering in the U.S. In the first quarter, we had four orders out of the 39 that were for the U.S., and if you look at the energy dynamics in this country and you look at supply demand and you look at the need for more capacity and you look at the environmental regulations and you look at how difficult it is to site a nuclear plant and you are selling every wind turbine you possibly can, gas turbines are going to be sold in this country. The price is greater than inflation in that business.
Nigel Coe (Deutsche Bank): Price inflation is much narrower than the second half of the year, yet still the prices are unfair. What are you baking in for the second half of the year for that spread?
Jeffrey R. Immelt: We are going to still have a positive value gap in the infrastructure business. We have pressure in healthcare where the price erosion does not offset inflation and we have got to recover some of that price value gap in the industrial segment. Infrastructure is the power and overall for the whole company, our price inflation gap was positive and for the whole year, we expect it to be positive, driven by infrastructure.
Nigel Coe (Deutsche Bank): You do have some unrealized losses on the securities in your insurance business and these are held to maturity securities so they are not mark to market. What would have to happen for you to realize that loss?
Keith S. Sherin: Basically in the investment securities portfolio, you have to determine that the securities are other than temporarily impaired. We have a process where every quarter you look at what is the security, we do a discounted cash flow underwriting of the company. We look at whether it is a credit issue or a market issue and we look at how long it has been underwater. We have to periodically take those impairments that are other than temporary and put them into the P&L, based on that discipline process. We have been doing that for years since we have had that portfolio forever here. |