day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the General Electric 4th Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. My name is Brandon, and I'll be your conference facilitator today. If at any time during the call you require assistance, please press star followed by 0 and a conference coordinator will be happy to assist you. If you experience issues with the slides refreshing or there appears to be delays in the slide advancement, please hit F5 on your keyboard to refresh.
As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the program over to your host for today's conference, Steve Winoker, Vice President of Investor Communications. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, Brandon, and good morning, and welcome to GE's 4th quarter earnings webcast. I'm joined by our Chairman and CEO, Larry Culp and CFO, Jamie Miller. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that the press release, presentation and supplemental have been available since earlier today on our investor website at www.gecom forward slash investor. Please note that some of the statements we're making today are forward looking and are based on our best view of the world and our businesses as we see them today. As described in our SEC filings and on our website, those elements can change as the world changes.
And now, I'll turn the call
over to Larry. Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Our comments are going to be a bit longer than usual this morning to help you understand where we are and where we're going. But rest assured, we'll leave as much time as we can for questions at the end.
First, I'd like to start by welcoming Steve to the GE team. I've known him for over a decade. Steve's already had positive impact here at GE, and I'm sure he'll do the same for you, our investors, going forward. I'm here today because I believe in GE. There is no company on earth with the scale of GE's global reach, brand, talent and long term customer relationships.
We have leading technology in key infrastructure markets with high barriers to entry and strong aftermarket streams. We're poised to capture recurring revenues on a global installed base of almost 70,000 engines, more than 77,000 gas turbines and aero derivatives, more than 40,000 onshore wind turbines and more than 4,000,000 health care systems. In short, GE matters. We've identified clear opportunities to improve our performance, and we are working to address them at root cause. We have the right portfolio strategy, and I'm confident the company is capable of gaining profitable share and creating long term value for our shareholders.
So let me cover where we stand on providing an outlook. Then I'll address some of the company changes followed by updates on our results, the balance sheet, capital and power. Jamie will take you through more details on the quarter and then I'll wrap with some metrics and comments to help you frame the outlook for 2019 before Q and A. Let's start with the outlook because investors want to know how we expect to perform financially and you should expect it to come from a place of reality. Simply put, the how much is important, but the how is far more fundamental.
We have good line of sight in most of our businesses today, including Aviation and Healthcare. For the Industrial portfolio in total, we will provide you with our outlook for organic growth and we'll do so directionally on operating margins and free cash flow. We will give you a more detailed outlook in the near term, but not today. For Power, we are resetting the baseline. We are reviewing every single project and contract and digging deeper to understand costs and benefits with respect to restructuring, market and commercial execution, improvement opportunities, legacy project issues and our service operations.
We are gaining more meaningful insight into the paths for near and long term earnings and cash potential of this business. This work takes time, especially with a new structure and leadership team. In the spirit of providing you with all the information we have as soon as we have it, I'll speak to what I have found over the last 120 days. We are executing against the key priorities we laid out in June and again in October. Simply put, deleveraging the balance sheet and strengthening our businesses, starting with Power.
Remember, beyond Power, it's important to recognize the underlying strengths in our businesses where the story about enhancing our competitive advantage and delivering for customers and shareholders. With respect to delevering, we've taken the following actions. We reduced quarterly dividend, retaining $4,000,000,000 per year accelerated the sale of a portion of our BHGE ownership stake, raising $3,700,000,000 and changed the structure of our transaction with Wabtec, enabling us to retain an incremental $2,000,000,000 stake. We're demonstrating our seriousness and the flexibility with respect to our decisions to recut the BHGE and Wabtec deals in particular. We closed Distributed Power for $2,800,000,000 of net cash in the quarter.
For the year, we signed or completed substantially all of our $20,000,000,000 industrial asset sale plan, which had targeted roughly $10,000,000,000 in proceeds. We also announced the sale of ServiceMax in the Q4. We completed $8,000,000,000 of capital asset sales and other actions in the quarter, bringing our total for the year to $15,000,000,000 which were executed at book value or better. We are more than halfway through the total $25,000,000,000 capital asset sale program, which we expect to complete this year. Today, we have announced that we've reached an agreement in principle with the United States Department of Justice to settle the FIRREA investigation of WMC.
GE will pay the United States a civil penalty of $1,500,000,000 consistent with our reserve recorded for this matter in the Q1 of last year. We've taken the following actions to strengthen our businesses. In 2018, our corporate headquarters cost was $1,200,000,000 down $400,000,000 from $1,600,000,000 in 2017. We have begun transferring a significant portion of headcount and activities that were previously managed at corporate to the segments or to third parties with over 6,500 full time employees transferred to date. We're confident that as we move more activity and headcount closer to those that are directly accountable, we will see additional savings.
Good examples include the recently announced agreement with Genpact around our global operations activities and the delayering and reorganization of our global growth organization. Our changes in Power follow a similar approach. We have $1,600,000,000 of cost at Power headquarters and expect to reduce that amount by $300,000,000 for the headquarters overhead functions. And as we distribute the remaining cost to the business units, we expect that they will find additional savings over time. We announced this week that we will be delayering the headquarter levels at Renewable Energy and yesterday announced that we are bringing GE's grid, solar and storage assets into that business, creating an end to end offering from renewables customers as the demand from renewable power generation and grid integration continues to grow globally.
We're strengthening our senior team. We've brought in fresh eyes that are already having an impact. We're combining new perspectives from strong external talent, proven GE leaders with domain expertise and entrepreneurial spirit, next gen thinkers as well as leaders with deep customer relationships. From a governance perspective, Paula Reynolds joined our Board of Directors, bringing extensive experience in both the energy and insurance industries. The majority of our directors now are new since 2017, and I'm finding the Board deeply engaged in all matters of our business.
Our Audit Committee also announced that they will move forward with a tender process for the appointment of GE's independent audit firm. And finally, we announced our plan to combine the digital businesses into an independently operated IIoT software business with employee equity, a separate board and the ability to raise capital and operate like a startup. We're on the precipice of something great, rooted in 100 years of domain and hardware expertise and grown out of our digital DNA over the last several decades. As my friend Jim Collins of good to great fame might say, it's a start. But we have much more work to do.
So let me now share with you how I've talked with our team about how we will do it. Number 1 is managing first and foremost for operational performance. Preparing for the earnings call, my 1st month on the job showed me that we often start with corporate and bring in the business leaders, including the CEO later. We turned that around this quarter holding operating reviews first and then preparing for this call. Those reviews were tightly focused on how we do and how do we get better, more so than how do we explain what just happened.
Let me give you an example. Previous P and L reviews focused on revenue, contribution margin and base cost, and then, of course, operating profit. The same high level framing I saw in the boardroom, no more. We now get into much more operating detail, volume, price, mix, material and labor productivity overhead and operating expenses like R and D, sales and marketing and G and A, all of which are critical to understanding and then improving the business. The second is a focus on putting our customer at the center of all we do.
Over the past few months, I've spent time with our customers in China, the Middle East, Europe and here in the U. S. I've learned that what they value is not always aligned with how we measure our own performance. Take quality. When I ask about quality internally, I often hear about our cost of quality, which measures our issues rather than how the customer experiences us.
We're shifting our perspectives so that we understand and measure ourselves the way customers do and work backwards from there. The 3rd area is having fewer and more impactful priorities. GE has ambition like no other company I've ever seen, and that's mostly a good thing. But we need to focus our attention to more of the things that matter most so we can move them the furthest. At a company level, we have committed to the 2 priorities I mentioned earlier, deleveraging the balance sheet and strengthening the businesses starting with Power.
I'd now like to address some of the areas of importance that are high on my priority list. First, our high level financial results. We ended the year with adjusted EPS of $0.65 GAAP EPS of negative $2.43 and industrial free cash flow of $4,500,000,000 Our backlog stands at $391,000,000,000 up 5% year on year with equipment at $89,000,000,000 up 4% and service at $302,000,000,000 up 5%. For the Q4, our industrial free cash flow was $4,900,000,000 While cash flow was negatively impacted by the weakness in power, we were encouraged by the strong cash generation in the other businesses. We delivered adjusted EPS of $0.17 and GAAP EPS of $0.08 Jamie will take you through all this in more detail in a moment.
Next to the balance sheet. As I've stated already, we are reducing our debt levels both at Industrial and GE Capital. We know full well that our shareholders own all debt obligations across GE, But these are 2 distinct sets of businesses with different financing needs and different capital structures, and therefore, we analyze their leverage separately. In Industrial, we are targeting a net debt to EBITDA ratio of less than 2 and a half times over the next few years. Our healthcare, transportation and BHGE separations can provide sources of roughly $50,000,000,000 toward that goal.
Our healthcare team continues to prepare for public company separation and that is progressing very well. We expect to monetize up to just under 50% of our healthcare business. I talked earlier to the GE Transportation merger with Wabtec and the amended terms to increase our cash proceeds, and we will sell down our remaining 50 percent ownership in BHGE in an orderly manner over time, building on the actions we took in November. Overall, our liquidity position remains strong with $16,800,000,000 of industrial cash and funding lines of $40,000,000,000 Now on capital, we are targeting a debt to equity ratio of less than 4 times by 2020. In 2018, we paid down Capital's external debt balance by $21,000,000,000 and we executed $15,000,000,000 in asset sales at book, more than half of our $25,000,000,000 asset disposition program.
Capital ended the year with $124,000,000,000 of assets, including $15,000,000,000 of liquidity, in line with our goal to materially shrink this business. To be clear, we have no plans to sell GECAS. We expect to contribute approximately $4,000,000,000 of parent support in 2019. We've listened to you on the insurance front and we're preparing increased disclosures in line with peers, which will be available with our 10 ks release. Jamie will cover some of that detail shortly.
And then finally on Power, let me share with you the root causes of our underperformance as I see them today and the actions we're taking to address each one. First, as I said last quarter, we were late to embrace the realities of the secular and cyclical pressures in the business. Recent data suggests that the market for new generating capacity is settling in to the 25 to 30 gigawatt range for the foreseeable future. We continue to believe gas will play an important role in global electrification, but we have to resize
our cost structure,
our capital expenses and our supply chains to this new reality now. As a result, last year, we reduced headcount by 10,000 or 15% in the business, consolidated our footprint by 30% and took out $900,000,000 of base cost, exiting at a $1,000,000,000 lower run rate. Embracing market reality means a more appropriate revenue outlook, one that further grounded in the reality of our $92,000,000,000 backlog rather than in the hope of new orders not yet won. 2nd, Power faces a number of non operational headwinds we expect a high watermark in this regard this year. These include legal settlements and legacy project erosion, principally driven by the Alstom acquisition.
There's also the runoff of the effects of past long term receivables factoring and other programs. Over the next few years, these effects should come down substantially. 3rd, we need to execute better. Running power better means improved daily management and how we sell, make and service our products. Let me give you a few examples.
We had separate teams of managers commissioning new plants, owning the warranty period and overseeing the services contracts after the warranty. Now we present one face to the customer who is accountable for the best long term economic answer both for the customer and GE. We put the sales organization under one leader with deep domain expertise and are coordinating better on contract negotiations. We now have more experienced people owning negotiations and responsible for project cost. We performed risk assessments of our existing 400 equipment contracts to identify cost and execution risks.
We also performed a similar assessment on the 750 CSA contracts to identify price and utilization risk. We have overhauled our commercial underwriting processes to set more realistic commitments and returns from the start. This is hard work, but I'm encouraged by the powers team's dedication to proactively address these issues at their root cause. Fixing power will take time and in turn it will take time for the changes we're making to our daily operations to be reflected in our financial results. But we are improving and I'm confident that those changes will come.
As I've met with customers around the world, I've really been struck by their sentiment. They're rooting for us. They want us to succeed and they want to know how they can help. So in summary, we're taking action on the priorities we laid out to you, deleveraging our balance sheet and strengthening our businesses, starting with Power. Jamie will now take you through the detailed financial results.
Thanks, Larry. I'll start with the Q4 summary. Orders were $34,100,000,000 down 1% reported and up 4% organically, with particular strength in equipment orders up 7% organically, driven by Aviation Commercial Engines and Renewables. Services orders were up 1% organically. Revenues were up 5%.
Industrial segment revenues were up 2% recorded and 8% organically, driven by renewables, aviation, oil and gas, healthcare, and transportation. Equipment revenues grew 10% and services were up 6% organically. Industrial profit margins were 7.5% in the quarter, down 150 basis points year over year on a reported and organic basis, driven by significant declines in power and renewables. For the year, margins were down 80 basis points organically. Industrial profit was down 16% in the quarter with Aviation, Healthcare and Baker Hughes GE all delivering strong profit growth, offset mostly by Power.
Specifically, Aviation had another outstanding quarter year, expanding total year margins while shipping over 1100 LEAP engines. Net earnings per share was 0 point 0 $7 which includes losses from discontinued operations related to GE Capital. GAAP continuing EPS was 0 point 0 $8 and adjusted EPS was 0 point 17 dollars I'll walk the GAAP continuing EPS to adjusted EPS on the right side of the page. Starting from GAAP, continuing EPS was 0 point $8 and we had $0.06 of gains principally from the sale of distributed power. As you will recall, in the Q3, we booked a $22,000,000,000 impairment charge related to power goodwill based on our best estimate at that time.
And during the Q4, we finalized our analysis and booked an incremental $69,000,000 charge for power following the Q3 charge. We also recorded a goodwill impairment charge of $94,000,000 in renewables at our hydro business. Combined, these charges were a $0.02 impact. On restructuring and other items, we incurred $0.07 of charges, principally in corporate and power, as we continue to resize those segments in line with our stated plans, including $0.02 of charges related to business development transaction expenses and $0.01 for our share of Baker Hughes GE's restructuring. Lastly, we realized a $0.01 negative impact from U.
S. Tax reform as we updated our estimate of the transition tax and other aspects of the enactment of the new law. Our current accrual reflects the effects of tax reform enactment based on guidance issued through year end. Excluding these items, adjusted EPS was $0.17 in the quarter. Moving to cash.
Adjusted industrial free cash flow was $4,900,000,000 for the quarter, $1,900,000,000 lower than the prior year, driven primarily by lower progress collections. Income, depreciation and amortization totaled $2,300,000,000 Working capital was positive $2,300,000,000 for the quarter as we reduced over $1,000,000,000 of inventory on higher 4th quarter volume and grew progress collections by $500,000,000 primarily in renewables from strong PTC driven orders. Contract assets were a source of cash of $900,000,000 as we saw higher services billings in Aviation driven by higher fleet utilization and spare parts consumption from strong air traffic, and we spent about $1,000,000,000 in gross CapEx or $600,000,000 ex Baker Hughes GE. For the year, we generated $4,500,000,000 of adjusted industrial free cash flow and we ended the year with higher volume in the 4th quarter as is typical for our businesses. And to provide you with more detail, Power used $2,700,000,000 in free cash flow for the year due to a combination of restructuring costs, non operational headwinds as well as execution and market issues.
Next, I'll cover liquidity. On the left side of the page, you can see the walk of the GE cash balance. We ended the 4th quarter with $16,800,000,000 of industrial cash in the bank, excluding Baker Hughes GE. And for the total year, we had industrial free cash flow of $4,500,000,000 We paid dividends of $4,200,000,000 And as of the Q1 of 2019, you'll recall that the dividend is decreasing to $0.01 per share per quarter, which will preserve about $4,000,000,000 of cash in 2019. We generated cash proceeds of $5,900,000,000 net of taxes related to our industrial dispositions, principally industrial solutions, value based care and power.
And together with Wabtec, that gets to the more than $10,000,000,000 we had talked about previously. Earlier in the year, we assumed $6,000,000,000 of debt from GE Capital to fund the principal pension plan, which was completed in the Q3. Alstom and GE exercised their JV to redemption rights and call options, which we settled for $3,100,000,000 in the 4th quarter. These entities operate at a loss, so the consolidation of 100 percent of the financials negatively impacted 4th quarter and will be an income headwind for us of about $300,000,000 in 2019. We also completed a secondary offering for approximately 100,000,000 Baker Hughes GE shares as well as a direct stock buyback with Baker Hughes GE for 65,000,000 shares, bringing our ownership stake to 50.4% in the 4th quarter.
These actions combined with other Baker Hughes GE buybacks during the year totaled $4,400,000,000 in cash proceeds. The $2,500,000,000 of other cash includes a number of items, including about $900,000,000 of investments in our Aviation business, primarily from the first half of the year, dollars 900,000,000 of short data derivative hedge settlements that we use to mitigate risk across the portfolio and $400,000,000 of FX translation on our non U. S. Dollar denominated cash. Running with a higher cash balance will help us address intra quarter funding needs.
In line with our goal to reduce reliance on short term funding, peak short term funding needs declined from $19,700,000,000 in the Q4 of 'seventeen to $14,800,000,000 in the Q4 of 'eighteen. These were funded with commercial paper and some utilization of our credit facilities. As we execute dispositions in 2019, we expect our intra quarter funding needs to continue to decline and would expect to use a mix of commercial paper, credit facilities and excess cash at GE Capital to efficiently fund these needs. At the end of the year, commercial paper outstanding was $3,000,000,000 and we had access to $40,000,000,000 of committed revolving credit facilities with 0 drawn. These lines are available to draw at any time and they don't have financial covenants, ratings triggers or material adverse change clauses.
As you know, our credit rating was downgraded from A to BBB plus with a stable outlook in early Q4. This impact has been manageable with less than $15,000,000 of collateral posting and a smooth transition to a Tier 2 commercial paper program. We continue to target a sustainable rating in the A range. Now I'll take you through financial policy and leverage. We remain committed to our financial policy of a target A rating, a leverage level of less than 2.5 times net debt to EBITDA and ultimately a dividend level in line with our peers.
Deleveraging both GE and GE Capital is a priority, and we have significant sources to achieve our goals. As Larry mentioned, we view these businesses differently with different balance sheets and capital structure needs, and therefore, we analyze their leverage separately. Our goal is leverage for the GE Industrial businesses of less than 2.5 times net debt to EBITDA. We plan to make significant progress towards this goal by the end of 2020. And as a reminder, when we speak about net debt, we're talking about debt adjusted for pensions, operating leases and a portion of preferred stock and cash.
Measured on this basis, GE Industrial net debt at the end of 2018 was $55,000,000,000 As we look out over the next couple of years, we expect to have roughly $50,000,000,000 of industrial sources that can be used to delever and de risk the company. These sources include $18,000,000,000 of debt and pension transfer to healthcare and more than $30,000,000,000 of cash proceeds from the monetization of up to just under 50% of healthcare, 100% of our remaining stake in Baker Hughes GE and our stake in transportation. These sources will be used in part to reduce GE net debt by more than $30,000,000,000 including repaying a significant part of the $14,000,000,000 of debt transferred from GE Capital and reducing commercial paper. The parent also plans to contribute $4,000,000,000 to GE Capital in 2019 to maintain adequate capital levels there. At GE Capital, we have a plan to reduce our debt to equity ratio to less than 4 times by the end of 2020.
GE Capital began the quarter with $70,000,000,000 of debt and ended with 66,000,000,000 dollars while our total assets measure $124,000,000,000 For the year, we made significant progress at GE Capital, paying down $21,000,000,000 of external debt, taking down leverage by 1.4 turns, including reducing commercial paper from $5,000,000,000 to 0. GE Capital ended 2018 with $15,000,000,000 of liquidity. Over the next 2 years, we expect to generate additional sources of cash from asset sales, including $10,000,000,000 in 2019 from completing our GE Capital $25,000,000,000 asset reduction plan. We'll have cash from the pay down of most of the debt transfer to GE and capital support from GE. We have reached an agreement in principle on WMC that we expect to conclude expeditiously.
And in 2019 2020, GE Capital will pay down $25,000,000,000 of scheduled debt maturities and continue to contribute about $2,000,000,000 per year of capital to our insurance businesses as previously disclosed. We now don't expect to issue new debt until 2021. We are planning approximately $4,000,000,000 of capital contributions to GE Capital in 2019. This includes $1,500,000,000 for the WMC agreement in principle announced today and ensuring we have adequate risk based capital levels for our current portfolio. Going forward, we anticipate funding any insurance capital requirements or strategic options through a combination of GE Capital earnings, asset sales, liquidity and GE parent support.
While we have more work to do, we continue to make progress in strengthening the balance sheet. Next on Power. Orders were down 19% in the quarter. Gas Power Systems orders were down 26%. For the year, Gas Power Systems orders were down 40%.
We ended the year with a $9,000,000,000 backlog, which was down 8% year over year. This is consistent with our outlook for a 25 to 30 gigawatt market for the foreseeable future. Power services orders were down 20%, steam orders were up 61% and grid orders were down 13% for the year. Power revenue was down 25%. Gas Power Systems revenues were down 21%.
Power Services revenue was also down 21%. During the quarter, we took $400,000,000 of charges related to our CSA contracts, which impacts revenue. Excluding these charges, power services revenue was down 11%. Steam revenue was down 30% on lower Americas and Europe volume and grid was flat. Moving to profit, the segment lost $872,000,000 in the 4th quarter.
We performed our normal CSA reviews and while total utilization on the book is flat, we have seen lower utilization on some of our units in some geographies and some pricing pressure in contracts relative to ongoing market dynamics. And we updated our assumptions to reflect a revised outlook in these areas. In addition, we had our normal cost standard updates, which included updates to our cost standards, including the impact of the Stage 1 blade issue expected. This resulted in the $400,000,000 of charges that I previously mentioned. In addition, we also incurred about $350,000,000 of costs related to Gas Power Systems projects.
Similar to the Q3, we continue to experience project execution issues resulting in liquidated damages as well as partner execution issues. Grid profit was down year over year, impacted negatively by the buyout of the Alstom's share of the JV. These items had a significant impact on Power's results. And overall, we see the heavy duty gas turbine market as flat over the next few years and see significant opportunity to improve our own execution. Next on Aviation, which had another great quarter, orders of $8,800,000,000 were up 12%.
Equipment orders grew 20%, driven by continued strong momentum of the LEAP engine program, up 56% versus prior year. Military engine orders were up 69% driven by the F414 and service orders grew 7%. Revenues of $8,500,000,000 grew 21%. Equipment revenues were up 13% on higher commercial engines, partially offset by lower military volume. Specifically, we shipped 3 79 LEAP engines this quarter, up 177 units year over year.
And in total, we shipped 11 18 LEAF engines for the year. We are still behind on deliveries by about 4 weeks, but the business expects to be back on schedule by mid-twenty 19. Services revenue grew 26% with spares rate up 10%, driven by higher fleet utilization and spare parts consumption from strong air traffic. Segment profit of $1,700,000,000 was up 24% on higher volume, improved price and operating productivity. And compared to the Q4 of last year, we shipped almost 90% more LEAP engines.
Despite the negative mix from higher LEAP shipments, operating profit margins of 20.4 percent expanded 60 basis points in the quarter and 130 basis points for the year. The LEAP engine continues to perform very well with a 58% win rate on the A320neo family and 81% win rate in the narrow body segment when you add in Boeing 737 MAX and COMAC C919. Utilization rates are over 95%. We continue to improve the cost position of the LEAP, and over the last 2 years, we've taken out more than 40% of the cost of the engine and are ahead on the learning curve initially laid out for the program. The overall program will breakeven around 2021.
Now I'll provide some additional transparency on the engine transition in the narrow body market. The mixing from CFM56 to LEAP resulted in a margin drag of approximately 160 basis points in 2018 and 130 basis points in the quarter. The business is successfully offsetting this margin pressure through continued growth in aftermarket services, military and changing the mix of company funded R and D spend. In summary, another strong year for David and the aviation team. In renewables, renewables orders were up 19% versus prior year, driven by onshore equipment up 9% and services up 32% on strong repower units.
We shipped 44% more megawatts in onshore wind and saw strong orders booking 3 gigawatts in the 4th quarter and 8.6 gigawatts for the year and we gained share. Revenues of $3,400,000,000 were up 28%, mainly driven by onshore wind, up 34% on both higher new unit shipments and repowering volume. Segment margin of 2% was down 3.30 basis points for the quarter and profit of $67,000,000 was down 51%, mainly driven by negative price, liquidated damages for execution delays on a handful of complicated projects, including some legacy Alstom projects and higher losses in hydro and offshore as we began fully consolidating these entities in the Q4. The consolidation presented a headwind of about 2 20 basis points. Recall that we had to book loss reserves at the time of the Alstom deal and we continue to burn through the negative cash flow impact of those projects.
The business has seen favorable cash tailwinds from the PTC cycle, pricing is improving and we continue to see strong product cost reductions. And while we're seeing some adverse impacts from tariffs, we're working to mitigate them with pricing and supply chain actions. For healthcare, orders of $5,800,000,000 were up 2% organically. On a product line basis, life sciences orders were up 13% organically with bioprocess up 20%. Healthcare systems orders were down 1% organically, which was about what we expected as we were comping a very strong Q4 in 2017.
Revenue of $5,400,000,000 was up 6% organically, Healthcare Systems revenue grew 4% organically and Life Sciences was up 10%. Segment margin was 21.8%, expanding 10 basis points reported and 110 basis points organically, which excluded costs incurred in preparation for a separation in 2019. Profit was $1,200,000,000 up 2% on a reported basis and 12% organically. Organic profit growth was driven by volume and cost productivity, partially offset by inflation, price and higher program investments. As the healthcare team continues to prepare for separation, they closed out a solid year.
Moving to oil and gas, Baker Hughes GE released its financial results this morning and Lorenzo and Brian will hold their earnings call with investors today following ours. Next for Transportation and Lighting, since we last spoke in October, we signed an agreement to sell Current to American Industrial Partners, and the Justice Department has closed its review of the pending merger between GE GE Transportation and Wabtec. Last week, we also announced amended transaction terms to further support our deleveraging plan. GE will increase its stake in Wabtec from approximately 10% to approximately 25%, resulting in increased cash proceeds of approximately $2,200,000,000 as we sell down our stake. We will still receive $2,900,000,000 in cash from Wabtec at closing and both transactions are expected to close in early 2019 subject to customary closing conditions.
Finally, I'll cover GE Capital. Net loss from continuing operations was $86,000,000 in the quarter, including a tax reform adjustment of negative 128,000,000 dollars Adjusted continuing net income was $43,000,000 We completed our annual GAAP loss recognition testing in our runoff insurance portfolio, which resulted in an after tax charge of about $65,000,000 to increase reserves.
As part
of the test, we unlocked our future policy benefit reserve and updated key assumptions related to the book. The 2 largest drivers being the changes to our assumptions in morbidity improvement of a negative $1,200,000,000 offset by discount rate impact of $1,900,000,000 Recall that statutory testing, not GAAP, drives funding. We expect to conclude the statutory testing in mid to late February. And consistent with our existing insurance funding plan, we continue to expect required statutory funding of approximately $2,000,000,000 in the Q1 of 2019. We are managing this runoff portfolio with new management and increased board expertise and focus.
To provide additional information to further clarify our insurance obligations, we plan to include enhanced disclosures related to our insurance book in our 10 ks, which will be released in mid to late February. We'll include a wide range of items from the profile of our book to morbidity and mortality assumptions to lapse rates, premium increases and related sensitivities. With that, I'll turn it back over to Larry.
Jamie, thank you. So hopefully by now you have a better sense of what I'm seeing at GE after nearly 4 months, our strengths, our challenges and our strategy for moving forward. I'd like to give you all the information and views on 2019 that we have today with more to come soon. We expect industrial organic revenue growth to be up low to mid single digits on the back of a significant ramp in renewables and continued strength in aviation and healthcare. Power will be down in a flat to slightly down market in 2019.
We also expect our industrial operating margins to expand. On free cash flow, we expect to face operating headwinds such as the PTC progress cycle reversing in renewables and we will spend more cash on restructuring at both corporate and power. In addition, we have a number of non recurring investments and commitments that create a drag on our free cash flow in 2019, but which will meaningfully lessen in 2020 2021. These include transitioning the GE Capital supply chain financing program to MUFG and reducing factoring with GE Capital, Alstom pension contributions and legal settlements and the costs related to the preparation for our healthcare business for our public separation. We anticipate cash flow to grow substantially in 2020 2021 as we make significant headway in addressing legacy and structural issues while simultaneously realizing the benefits from restructuring and stronger daily management of our businesses, particularly in power.
In aviation, we see 70 5% to 80% of the 2019 commercial engine revenues secured in the backlog with a largely recurring service revenue stream of approximately $15,000,000 We are maintaining margin levels consistent with pre lead periods despite mix changes with a healthy new order book. With these in mind, we see high single digit revenue growth and low single digit profit growth. In Healthcare, we expect organic growth in margins in a similar range to last year. We see double digit revenue growth in Renewables. The business is coming through the PTC cycle in onshore wind, which contributed to strong cash performance in 2018 as a result of progress built.
That progress cycle will begin reversing this year as we transition to factory production and book revenue against those contracts. However, we see price declines moderating and within the level of our product cost reduction efforts going forward. This is our baseline today for 2019 as our plan continues to evolve. As we develop more conviction around the cash flow situation of Power, we will update you in the near term with respect to the outlook for the full year. So my message for 2019 is that the more stable businesses of Aviation and Healthcare are healthy and growing.
Renewables is moving through the PTC cycle. We are working on power and capital is shrinking. 2019 is still very much a work in progress, but the company is becoming stronger. As I said earlier, the how much is important here, but the how is far more fundamental. How is about understanding and fixing problems at root cause.
How is about process, not for process's sake, but to ensure the sustainability of our results to create enduring shareholder value. I'm proud of the momentum I see across this company and the changes we're making to strengthen GE for the long run. With that, we'll open it up to your questions.
Thank you. And from Wolfe Research, we have Nigel Coe. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning.
Good morning, Nigel. Good morning, Nigel.
Good morning. Lots of questions. I mean, I'm sure a lot of my questions will be picked up by the other analysts. But I just want to start on, it sounds like your plans around health care now are pretty defined, Larry. It looks like you're looking to monetize 50%, putting in $18,000,000,000 of pension debt by an IPO type process.
Is that now defined or are there still some moving pieces on that process?
Well, I think we've talked about that separation as the plan of record and that continues to be the case today. The team is very well along, Nigel, with respect to the preparation for a flotation. We don't have a timeframe per se to share with you today, but we are spending a significant amount of money in 2019 as we did last year in preparation. We're obviously proud of what Karen and the team are doing here, very strong top line earnings and cash performance. And we think this is a business that is going to be a strong resilient performer through cycles.
So that is the plan.
Okay. And then my follow on
would be you gave a
lot of detail on what you've been doing for the last few months and lots of opportunities for improvement. One thing you didn't really touch on was pricing and pricing excellence. And your one criticism of GE in the past is being maybe trading price for market share. So I'm just curious what your thoughts are in terms of improving the price mineralization going forward?
Nigel, forgive us if we didn't get into that in detail. We didn't want to overstay our And particularly in Power, I think we are, And particularly in power, I think we are acutely aware that we have opportunities both on new equipment and on the service book to basically value sell what we're doing more frequently. I got a word last night for example within power of a project that is looking very good where we're frankly we're not the low bid, right? I think that just speaks to the way we're able to communicate the value of our technology. We know in these businesses from healthcare to renewables, price is a reality.
We want to be smarter on pricing. At the same time, frankly, when you hear us talk about labor and material productivity, we really want to push that hard and do that in line with market realities so that we can maintain margins in light of some of those pressures.
And Nigel, just to add a little bit more color there on the numbers. Orders pricing in total for the year was relatively flat. It was actually up just slightly, and it was up more than that in the second half. And as Larry mentioned, we are seeing in the numbers the pressure moderating at power and at renewables. Power really with respect to the enhanced discipline on new projects and bids, as Larry talked about.
In renewables, we're seeing that pressure moderate as we move throughout the year as well. Primarily, as we're moving through the PTC cycle, the supply chains are more stretched and that price dynamic becomes a little bit more imbalanced. Aviation and healthcare are running as you would expect, which is strongly, as Larry mentioned.
And from JPMorgan, we have Steve Tusa. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning guys.
Hey, Steve. Good morning.
So you mentioned on the free cash flow dynamics, you mentioned the PTC headwind, a bit more restructuring, cash, some other, I guess, non recurring investments. Can you maybe give us some color on that? In addition, just provide some color on how much of a I think Jamie has said before about $1,000,000,000 of headwind or so from divestitures. So maybe just help us with a bit of a rough bridge from the $4,500,000 you did in 2018? Because obviously, that sounds like it's going to be down.
Yes. So why don't I talk through the components of 2018 first in terms of really walking you through the rounding out of the Q4 performance and then we can address some of those questions. So for 2018, if you really walk the changes, we obviously had earnings. We also had working capital, which for the year was basically zero impact to free cash flow. 4th quarter was $2,300,000,000 positive as we expected with large volumes coming through this quarter.
Contract assets was basically flat.
Sorry, I can see the slide. I just wanted to know like $4,500,000,000 is that there's a lot of headwinds that Larry had talked about. I'm just curious as to if you can maybe give us some color on the size of some of those headwinds. And obviously, it sounds like it will be down. Will you as an organization generate cash including GE Capital next year?
I guess that's a simple way to ask the question.
Yes, Steve. And I think the simple answer to the question is what we're trying to communicate today is that we are going to see pressures, both operational and non recurring. We are going to be back shortly when we can take you through a detailed walk in that regard. I think from an operating perspective, as we're acknowledging, a lot of good performance in a number of the businesses. Clearly, Renewables was stronger from a cash perspective in 2018 than it's likely to be in 2019 given the PTC dynamic.
And we are going to go deep here on additional restructuring where we see opportunities to put that money to work and generate real returns. We also have some of these non recurring events or issues. Some of them are policy decisions like the move on the supply chain financing program. I think we've got better line of sight today on some of these legacy issues that come out of Alstom that we're on the hook for. Those are real cash commitments in 2019 that abate thereafter and we do have the cost relative to the healthcare IPO.
So again, I think the headline is we finished strongly. We know we've got some operating and non operating pressures and think we work through that in 2019 with an eye toward stronger cash flow performance in 2020 2021 with more details to come soon.
Great. And what do you expect GE Cash to earn in 2019? And how much from an ongoing cash generation perspective, how much will they be generating? Steve,
as I said both in my prepared remarks and a moment ago, when we have everything locked down to get into those specifics, and we'll do that soon, we'll be back to you.
From Vertical Research, we have Jeffrey Sprague. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Jim.
2 from me. Just thinking about the healthcare exit in particular, kind of for lack of a better term losing that cash flow near term seems like it would create some stress on the organization. Can you give us a sense of what you foresee as kind of the timing of the exit? And then, Larry, particularly interested also on how you view exiting the remaining 50% stake. Do you see the potential for some kind of equity friendly exit with that piece, a split off, for example, which might shrink the share count of the remaining company?
Well, Steve, I'd like to think that everything that we do is shareholder friendly, right? I think we take a strong view here. And you know from seeing me in other roles that we want to create long term shareholder value with the cumulative effect of everything that we do. I think with respect to health care, what we can confirm today is that we're on the path toward an IPO here in 2019. Timing is still TPD.
So we don't have a date. A little like me and my senior prom, I just don't have a date for you today, but I think in time we'll have more clarity. With respect to Baker Hughes, I mean we talk about that as part of that $50,000,000,000 pool of auctions to go to. I think that the high probability there is for us to sell our shares. We certainly are approached by various folks who have an interest in a stake in that company.
And again, we don't have a timetable per se to share with you today, but we want to reiterate our view to dispose of that stake in an orderly manner, which again we think is conducive to value creation for our shareholders.
Thanks. And just as a follow-up, I didn't have a prom date and I've been called worse than Steve. But as an unrelated follow-up, if we think about what you're going through in insurance right now, the comment about the statutory review, Is that to indicate Larry or Jamie that even if there is some adverse outcome as it relates to that statutory review, it would not affect your near term funding needs and instead those would be tacked onto the tail, so to speak, of what you're planning from reserve build?
Well, Jeff, what I was referring to there was that it's really the statutory calculation, not the GAAP that drives the statutory funding needs. We are right in the middle of that process. We continue to expect to contribute about $2,000,000,000 to the insurance entities in 2019. We'll conclude that process over the next 3 to 4 weeks. But at this point, that is what we expect.
Sorry about that, Jeff.
Thanks.
Thank you.
From Barclays, we have Julian Mitchell. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Good morning, Julian. Maybe just the first question on power. I understand you're reticent to give too much forward looking color.
But perhaps give us a sense of if you look at the reported 2018 numbers, EBIT loss of €800,000,000 free cash of minus €2,700,000,000 How would you look at the or characterize to us the underlying figures for both of those 2 items if you strip out charges and project execution overruns and so on? And maybe also on that point, if you could give any color as to the separation of gas and non gas within power, what sort of financial conditions that separation has uncovered in each of the two pieces?
Sure, sure. Let me do that. And again, this is very much a work in progress with a new team establishing new operating rhythms. But I would say that if we start on the service side of things, right, we've got a $62,000,000,000 backlog. We did take the charge in the Q4, dollars 400,000,000 on about a $3,700,000,000 contract asset book.
And we think that's appropriate just given what we see in the marketplace. I think we're encouraged though relative to the execution around pricing here. We have changed the way the folks in the field are compensated, transitioning them, if you will, from volume to margin. But again, there's a good bit of productivity post Alstom that we still need to get from the combined organizations here. And that work is incomplete.
But that's part of that operating loss that you see here at year's end. We are clearly dealing with lower demand in equipment, encouraged by some of the share points in the U. S. Market here in the back half. But again, we want to make sure we're focused on profitable share.
There we took $350,000,000 of charges around the project book. And we know that we have a lot of execution here to improve just in the way these projects are brought online. I think when you look at the vintages, we're encouraged by the progress that we see post the 2016 underwriting class in terms of our margins on those projects. But very much a work in progress. I think with respect to the change in the structure of Power, again, part of it is a cost reduction.
We shared some of that in the prepared remarks. But we also are getting better visibility on the underlying businesses P and L by P and L. So we talk about gas. We're combining services and equipment. Then we have the rest of our power portfolio.
As Jamey mentioned, we now take on all the costs for grid now that we own all of it. That doesn't help us at all. But now we've got better line of sight on the discrete P and Ls at grid, steam, power conversion and nuclear. All four of those businesses have meaningful profit improvement potential, and we're going to manage them from the bottoms up accordingly. So clearly, we're at a breakeven from a P and L perspective, absent some of the charges, a lot of work to do here.
And as we have better visibility and more conviction around those improvements, we'll be back and we'll be back here soon with respect to how that plays out in 2019 2020.
The other color I would just add there on negative free cash flow is as volume comes down in the factories and as our projects continue to work their way through, you see volume leveling, but we've been in the declining frame here. So what's really flowing through on cash, in addition to some of the other items Larry mentioned, is a burn down of our progress billings and a burn down of our project payables. Situations where we've received project in advance of constructing the equipment or where we've received progress on projects. And now we're in the phase of the project where the payables and the costs are starting to come through. So that's also pressuring the power free cash flow.
And as that levels, that also starts to level.
And then my second question, maybe about a business where there's better medium term visibility, aviation. You talked about the LEAP operating margin headwind last year. How do you see that moving in 2019 relative to that 160 bps? And then looking out beyond just this year, anything on the horizon in terms of, let's say, 777X transition or NMA that you think could cause a major risk to the Aviation free cash flow and margin profile?
With respect to Aviation's margin and mix, you saw a strong 4th quarter. And when we look at the remixing that's happening between CFM and LEAP, Significant increase in LEAP shipments in the quarter, up 88% over the prior year, year over year 2.4x up, and you're seeing CFM come down meaningfully over those same periods. Next year, CFM will come down again, about, I'd say, more than 50% of CFM deliveries will be reduced next year, but the LEAP also ramps from the 11, 18 we had this year up to 1800 plus. So that remixing continues to occur. We mentioned on the call that, it was a drag in 2018 of 160 basis points.
We do expect continued some small drag next year. But again, Aviation is doing a really nice job offsetting that
with services growth. They're shifting in military and the company funded R and D. And we're clearly in conversations with our major airframe customers about new platforms. I think at this point, it would be premature to suggest that we're going to have a cash flow headwind, a material cash flow headwind around any of those programs here in 2019.
From Melius Research, we have Scott Davis. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Good morning, Scott.
And Larry, I don't buy it that you didn't have a prom date. That's nonsense.
Even I
had a prom date. I was bald at birth. All kidding aside, the one number you gave that was new, which is kind of eye popping to me, was this $1,600,000,000 Power Headquarter number. Can you put some context around that? I mean, it just seems like such an insane number, but I don't know really what you're including in that, I guess, as far as what you're talking about headquarter?
Well, there's it's a large number. And again, I think we've got line of sight here in the near term, Scott, to bring that down by about $300,000,000 And effectively, as you know, we've done a lot horizontally, both at corporate and at the segment levels over time for the businesses. So it's not as if it's unhelpful or wasteful, but there clearly is an adjustment we can take here as we move those activities into the businesses. And I think over time as the businesses have true ownership for them that they are in their operating budgets as opposed to an allocation from corporate, they're likely to find opportunities for further savings. But we don't do it primarily for the cost reduction.
I think we really do it to help drive visibility and accountability P and L by P and L. I think I've shared with some folks that are early on in my tenure, we would talk about power as if it was one business. It's obviously a number of businesses, some better than others, different issues here and there. I think we've got better visibility on those issues. It's not perfect today.
But as we get that visibility, we're, I think, better positioned to take meaningful action to drive better results across that portfolio.
That makes sense. And then the
other thing is just not totally clear is, if the new world is 25 to 30 gigawatts, which arguably a lot of people could say the new world is 25 or even a little lower, but how do you get your capacity down anywhere close to that? I mean, you've got big factories, lots of capital equipment, a lot of pressure from governments and unions and everybody else. Is it realistic to be able to get that down in the next 2 years or something that's closer to 30?
Well, I think it is realistic, right? There are going to be a number of competing priorities and pressures, but we took $1,000,000,000 of cost out last year. I think we are putting up the parameters of a program to build on what we did last year. So Scott, we have to do this. We absolutely have to do this.
I think we know it's a multiyear effort. But the challenge here around margins is not simply one of capacity, right? Back to the earlier question around pricing, productivity both in new equipment and in the field on services. It's a whole host of things that I think give us the optimism that we can drive better margin and cash performance in this business. But we have to prove that to you.
And from Citi, we have Andrew Kaplowitz. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Good morning.
Good morning, Andrew. Good morning.
Larry, one of the biggest issues I think that investors have had with GE is the concern that legacy liabilities will continue to surprise the company. The FIRREA agreement with the DOJ seems like a positive development in that regard and so does the relatively small LTC adjustment. But at this point, do you feel reasonably confident that you've identified all the skeletons in the closet and the level of negative surprise is really going to start dropping moving forward?
I don't think I would ever say, even on my last day here, that we have found all the skeletons, right? I don't tend to take absolute positions. But that said, I think you're spot on. The news today around WMC is good, both with respect to a resolution and the fact that we came in right where we were reserved. So we can begin to move that episode behind us.
I think we're encouraged by the results that Jamie walked you through relative to the LRT. But again, the cash requirements really come from the stat, not the GAAP test and that work still has a few more weeks to run. But in the absence of no new news, again, with a lot of fresh eyes and it's not my fresh eyes, we've got a new GC, we've got a new controller, new to GE in their 1st years. I think that is a positive sign that we aren't adding to the list. We're going to be as open and transparent as we possibly can when we find things and we're going to help you understand what we're doing to address them.
But I'm encouraged by what I've seen and what has not arisen here in nearly 4 months' time.
And Larry, you're pretty clear about having no plans to sell GECAS. It sounds quite definitive, but obviously there's a lot of noise out there. So maybe I could step back and ask you how you weigh the urgency to get GE Capital debt down versus keeping the strong earnings stream in tact from GECAS that you have in the business?
Well, I think that we're frankly keen not to comment on every rumor on every innuendo that's out there. GECAS is one business that we get inbounds on with some frequency, but frankly, we get inbounds on everything but my desk. It's I think it speaks to the quality of the assets. Again, I think we can delever and bring that net debt down from $55,000,000,000 to something closer to $25,000,000,000 We've got a number of options. We are mindful of the trades when we move assets out and the impact on our earnings and cash capability.
But again, you elevate to the strategic level, I think we're clear, we need to delever and we're going to work the plan that we've outlined here today. And that's really is, I think, as simple and as straightforward as it gets.
From Bank of America Merrill Lynch, we have Andrew Obin. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning, Andrew. Good morning.
Just a question, you mentioned that you took $400,000,000 of contract asset write down in Power. And my understanding is that sort of culturally is a big deal. Shall we see more of these write downs? How far along are we in the process of evaluating the book there?
We asked our new controller when he started to take a clean look at everything across the company. And they as they went through their normal standard CSA review this quarter, did pay particular attention to higher risk contracts just to make sure that we were thinking about them cleanly and the right way. And what we talked about on the call, which was really comprised of 3 different buckets, were the results of that review. So as we mentioned before, we had adjustments for utilization, some on pricing pressure and then just our standard cost updates. On the utilization side, when you look at the CSA book, utilization has been relatively flat, and it's demonstrating actually a fairly healthy profile.
And I think it just continues to support the base that gas continues to be an important source of energy generation. Now some geographies are impacted more by some of the renewables adoption. And as you look at our book, our concentration of geographies isn't largely in those areas, but we did see some true ups that we took in places like California and Turkey just to make sure we were reflecting our best view on that. On the pricing pressure, we are seeing that in some contracts. These are high margin long term contracts.
And when we do go through a renegotiation process on some of these, we are often able to offset that price with scope expansion and cost productivity. Having said that, we wanted to make sure we had a realistic view of how we saw the portfolio when we went through these reviews. We always do standard cost updating in our portfolio. That's just like you do in manufacturing. Those standard costs roll through this quarter as well.
And part of that also reflected a small impact from the stage 1 blade issue, but that's something that we had expected would happen there as well.
Got you. And just on GE Capital, how much incremental capital, you said $4,000,000,000 in 'nineteen, but how much incremental do you need to put in 2020 to achieve your leverage targets? Thank you.
Yes. So Andrew, at this point, we're talking about 2019, which is the $4,000,000,000 And as we said, as we get beyond 2019, we obviously understand we will continue to put capital or expect to continue to put capital into the insurance subsidiaries. That will be funded through a combination of GE Capital earnings, asset sales, liquidity and GE parent support. But at this point, we're not prepared to talk more fully about that.
From Deutsche Bank, we have Nicole DeBlase.
Good morning.
Good morning, Nicole.
Good morning. So I just want to start on Power, kind of a 2 part question. You reduced headcount by 15%. You reduced footprint by 30%. I know that pricing is an important part of the equation of getting back to profitability here.
But I guess maybe what inning are you in with respect to profitability here. But I guess maybe what inning are you in with respect to what you need to do to get to the right level of capacity utilization? And then same topic, different question. What exactly are you doing to improve power execution since that keeps coming up as a driver of weaker profitability? And when might we stop talking about that piece of the margin headwind?
Well, Nicole, I would say we're in the very early innings relative to the turnaround of Power. I don't know how else to frame it. Again, a new team, a new structure, new operating rhythms. When we talk about execution, we talk about daily management. What I'm really referring to is making sure that every day the folks in the field, the folks in the factories, the folks in the labs understand what the key operating metrics are that they're responsible for that feed into better margins both at the gross and the operating level in this business.
So that takes time because it's not just a reporting exercise, right? It's a management exercise and making sure they understand not only how they're being measured, but how to go about actually getting better price, how to go about actually driving better material productivity, execution in the field as well, not only around cost, but frankly more importantly around quality, making sure we get into outages quickly and we solve issues for customers the first time and when we're not going back. Those are the sorts of things. And it is a big organization. It's a global organization.
This is going to take a little while, but I'm optimistic that we'll see it in our operating metrics over time and that will in turn translate into better performance. We'll clearly get some lift sooner from the absence of the adjustments that we made at the end of the year. But what I'm really focused on and what I think investors ought to be focused on are those underlying operating improvements.
Okay. Got it. That's helpful. Thanks, Larry. And just a really quick one to tie up.
Good progress on corporate expense reduction this quarter. Would you say that the corporate expense that we saw in 4Q is indicative of the run rate for 2019? Or are there items there that we need to consider?
I'd say it's roughly indicative. I think it will be down slightly from that. It was a little bit higher in the quarter due to some one time expenses we had, but it's close, little bit down from that in 'nineteen.
From RBC Capital Markets, we have Deane Dray. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Hey, Dean. Good morning.
Hey, I'd also like to add our welcome to Steve Winoker and wish him all the best. Thanks, Dean. Hey, it looks like I have to burn one of my questions on what's more of a housekeeping question, Larry, is in the Q3 earnings you talked about plans for an analyst meeting in early 2019. It looks like there's still a lot of more specifics have to get filled in, in terms of guidance, especially on the cash flow side. Maybe you're not ready yet to host that meeting, but just where does that stand?
And what might the timing be?
Well, Deane, again, I think we're sharing today what we can in terms of not only the Q4, but the actions that are underway and how we see 2019 shaping up. We know we're not answering every question that folks might have on their minds today, but we're not going to answer any question without a grounding and a level of conviction that we expect of ourselves and I think folks like yourselves and investors expect of us as well. But we are indicating that we'll be back soon with more, particularly as we work through some of the issues we've talked about not only in our prepared remarks but also here in Q and A with respect to power.
Okay. And Larry, I appreciate how you started off the call with all the changes in terms of the management approach and the accountability and voice of the customer. I mean, that's that was all good color to hear upfront. And then my second question is on the insurance side, and we got good news, what I see as good news on the loss recognition, certainly not a new surprise. How does that change?
In the Q3, there was lots of calls for how to ring fence the long term insurance risk and where that might be. Where does that stand today in terms of priorities?
Well, Dean, again, I want to make sure everybody understands that the LRT results here are a positive data point. I think that the STAT test is going to be more important. And again, I think we don't expect any major surprises, but we'll have those results to share with you in a few weeks. This is a long term liability, right? And we have our commitments with respect to the permitted practice.
We're in a position to fulfill those. We certainly get inbounds here as well from folks who'd like to take this book off of our hands, but not necessarily in a structure and at a value that would make sense for the GE shareholder. So I suspect that as we enhance our disclosures, there'll be better understanding of what this is. Certainly, I suspect there'll still be some debate. But I'm optimistic that the transparency will lead to better understanding and we can talk about this in a fact based way and people can understand what that means.
Is it with us forever or is there a way to ring fence it is to use your word? Again, I'm not going to rule anything out, but I think right now what we're trying to do is make sure that everyone understands what it is and what our obligations are around the insurance book. So hopefully some helpful disclosures in that regard today with more to come in the K once we're on the other side of the stat test.
And from Gordon Haskett, we have John Inch. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Larry.
Hey, John. Good morning.
Steve. Good morning, John. Good morning, Steve. Just on the capital guide, I may have missed this, Jamie and Larry, but what is capital guide for 2019? What are you expecting?
And what kind of are we expecting from say gains from the $10,000,000,000 of asset sales? So it's almost like what's the guide ex the $10,000,000,000 on earnings? And also, Jamie, what was Healthcare's free cash flow in 2018?
Well, with respect to GE Capital's 2019, as Larry mentioned, we're not offering 2019 guidance today. So that's something that we will be sharing with you in the near term, but not today. And with respect to healthcare's free cash flow, I think it's well understood that that is a strong cash flow business. It's a flow business unlike some of our long cycle. And I think there's been a lot of evaluation math that's been out there.
So while we're not disclosing Healthcare's free cash flow, I think you could probably come to a pretty reasonable conclusion there about what that is.
Okay. I think we were targeting breakeven in capital this year and we ended up losing money. I'm just wondering what actually changed in the mix from, Jamie, when you originally thought would be breakeven to the loss? And also in your cash walk, on the 4th quarter cash walk, the Baker Hughes free cash flow was a positive $800,000,000 It looked like Baker actually generated positive free cash in the 4th quarter. So why would that be a positive?
Why isn't that a negative drawing it out? It's just a technical question, I guess.
Well, first on GE Capital, we had the LRT results in the 4th quarter, so that was $65,000,000 We actually had tax benefits of less than we expected as well. That impacted us by about 240,000,000 dollars And then we had some other marks in the portfolio in the second half. So that was really the large difference between what we had expected and where we ended up. And then with respect to Baker Hughes, we're backing out free cash flow. So that might be a labeling issue on the slide there.
It says less Baker Hughes free cash flow. You back it out and you add the dividend.
And from Goldman Sachs, we have Joe Ritchie. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning.
Hey, Joe. Good morning. Good morning, Joe.
Good morning, guys. And so just I know that you're a little reluctant to answer much on the 2019 guide. But if I could just maybe ask on just power free cash flow, the $2,700,000,000 burn this year. Do you expect 2019 to be better than 2018 from a power free cash flow perspective?
I think we're at a place where we're sharing with you today everything that we know, everything we can commit to. And again, we'll be back with more detail, particularly with respect to power and cash soon. But we're just we're not in a position where we're able to do that. But clearly, again, the hopefully, the color around the $2,700,000 that we burned last year is helpful with respect to framing the magnitude of the task and the challenge, one we understand and are serious about addressing.
Getting the disclosure on the $2,700,000 definitely helpful and we'll hopefully get some more color on the path in the near term. But I guess if I could maybe focus then on just the one time issues that occurred in the second half of twenty eighteen, specifically around the blade issue. Is it fair to say that those issues are at least behind you? And how should we think about what the, call it, roughly it sounds like it was like roughly $700,000,000 or so in quantifiable charges there. What does that relate to?
Does that relate to all orders that you've received for Farni H Turbine? Just any color on that would be helpful.
Yes. Well, the when we talk about the cost for the blade issue, it's really a function of going out and effectively replacing these blades sooner than we were anticipating, right, because the useful life is effectively shorter than we had anticipated, unfortunately. But we think we understand that. That work is underway with respect to the installed base. And again, I think it's regrettable.
I think our customers, when you talk to them, understand what's happened, how we're going about remediating the issue in the field. And I'd like to think that, that is not something we're going to continue to cite with respect to the margin pressure in the business here in 2019.
Yes. And just walking back from Q3 and maybe updating today. So Q3, we had $240,000,000 of warranty and other accruals related to the Stage 1 blade. We also mentioned that we expected to experience a similar amount of that over time as the work outperformed in our services book. So part of what I mentioned earlier on those charges includes that stage 1 blade issue starting to come through the services updates.
But there are a host of elements of that update, not just the bleed.
It was a very small issue in the quarter, but it's just part of that bleed off as we do the work.
Thanks, Jeff.
And our final question from Cowen and Company, we have Gautam Khanna. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. Good morning, guys.
Good morning.
Two questions. First, I was wondering if you have any changes being contemplated to the incentive comp triggers for senior management as we approach the whole proxy time frame? Any changes to the PSU triggers that you're thinking about now?
Nothing that we can reference this morning.
Okay. And I was wondering if you could talk about when you expect pricing to bottom in the transactional power aftermarket or if it has already in your opinion and how that pricing now compares to maybe
where it was a year
ago? I think that's a question that depends on geography and it depends on the scope and the kinds of work we're really looking to do with our customers. Over the last year, as we've talked about before, as Scott has come in, he's really refocused our transactional group to focus more on, in some cases, less scope but higher margin work as we do it. You know it's a competitive market, but even having said that, that as we have our orders come in, we're seeing order Centimeters or margin rate up, in some cases, 10, 12, 15 points on that order book, And it's been consistently increasing throughout the year. Now as Larry mentioned earlier on the call, we're not yet seeing all of that drop through, primarily because of field execution issues and operational issues.
But these are things that we believe are fixable. And over time, as we really seek to increase our share in that book and really capture the kind of work that we want to capture, the higher margin work, the operational execution piece of that, we think, should flow through. But with respect to the margin pressure, generally, I should say pricing pressure, these are very competitive markets that have a lot of capacity. So I think that dynamic will continue as we go through the next couple of years. And until the market levels out and until we see the capacity leveling out as well.
I know we ran out of
time before we could get to everyone in the queue. So you can reach me and my team through the day. But I want to thank everybody for joining us. The replay of today's call will be available this afternoon on our investor website. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.