GE Vernova is paying €8bn for Trench Group
GE Vernova has agreed to buy Trench from Triton for $9bn. The deal, the price, and why a transformer maker wants to own its bushing supplier.
On 28 October GE Vernova announced that it will buy Trench Group from Triton Partners for $9.0bn. The dollar figure is an equivalent at a rate of 1.12. GE Vernova's quarterly filing says the agreement was signed on 25 October "for approximately 8.0 billion Euros". The price is 13 times Trench's adjusted EBITDA for 2028, before synergies. GE Vernova will fund it half from cash and half from new debt. Closing is expected in late 2027 after regulatory approvals and consultations with employee representatives. Goldman Sachs and UBS advised GE Vernova. Bank of America and Morgan Stanley advised Triton.
Trench is based in Berlin. It makes transformer bushings, high-voltage instrument transformers and air-core reactors in 11 factories across eight countries and employs more than 3,000 people. Triton bought it from Siemens Energy in April 2024 at a preliminary price of €401m. Revenue has since doubled to more than €1bn.
Congratulations to Trench and to Triton. This is an incredible deal and an incredible investment. Triton took a business its owner no longer wanted and backed its capacity when the market was short. Thirty months later it has sold it for twenty times what it paid.
I published a study of the exit on 6 October. It said Triton would sell privately to an industrial buyer and put the business at €2.8bn to €5.9bn. The route was right. My top figure was €2.1bn short. The reason is in the next section.
- October 2023Siemens Energy agrees to sell Trench to Triton.
- April 2024Triton takes over. Price €401m, preliminary.Thirty months, and twenty times the price
- February 2025€380m loan. €450m goes to the owners across two rounds in 2025.
- June 2026€1.4bn loan. Dividend of up to €1bn.
- October 2026GE Vernova agrees to pay $9.0bn.
- Late 2027Expected closing, after regulatory approvals.
Source: Siemens Energy accounts, Trench Group, Börsen-Zeitung citing Moody's, PitchBook, GE Vernova
The price
GE Vernova's investor slides give Trench's path. Revenue of $1.4bn this year, $1.6bn in 2027 and $1.9bn in 2028. The adjusted EBITDA margin goes from about 33% to 35% to 36%. In euros that is EBITDA of about €410m, €500m and €610m. The same €8.0bn is 19 times the first, 16 times the second and 13 times the third.
Source: GE Vernova investor presentation, 28 October 2026, revenue and margin by year converted at 1.12. The multiples are my arithmetic
The multiple is normal for the sector. US strategic buyers have paid 11.5 to 15.5 times EBITDA for electrical equipment makers this year. Hubbell paid 15.5 times anticipated 2026 EBITDA for NSI in May. nVent paid 11.5 times anticipated 2026 adjusted EBITDA for Maverick Power in August. Vertiv paid 13 times expected 2027 EBITDA for UtilityInnovation Group in September.
The year is not normal. Those multiples are on the current year or the next. GE Vernova's is on a year that ends 26 months after the announcement. Scott Strazik, its chief executive, gave the reason on the earnings call. 2028 is "the first full year we expect Trench to be included in our financial results". That describes GE Vernova's accounts. It does not change what the seller receives. Triton is paid next year for earnings Trench has to make in 2028. My October case was on this year's earnings. GE Vernova paid for two more years of growth and three more points of margin.
Why GE Vernova wants Trench
The first reason is supply. Strazik said on the call that "today, we source most of our bushings externally". After closing GE Vernova "will source a much larger percentage of bushings for our transformers from the Trench factories". A bushing is 5% to 8% of the bill of materials of a transformer. The transformer does not ship without it. Hitachi Energy's Swedish plant quotes 140 weeks for its long-lead bushings on the list dated 6 October. Strazik's words were that "lead times across the industry are increasingly important, and this transaction will enhance supply chain certainty".
The second reason is the transformer business GE Vernova has just built. In February it paid $5.3bn for the half of Prolec GE it did not already own. Its electrification equipment backlog was $42.2bn at the end of September, up 60% in a year. Data-centre orders in the segment passed $6bn this year. GE Vernova puts the high-voltage equipment market at $130bn by the end of the decade. A transformer maker at that scale needs bushings in volume and on time. Trench makes them.
The third reason is Hitachi. Hitachi Energy owns bushing plants in Sweden, Switzerland, China, Brazil and the US and still describes itself as a critical supplier to other transformer manufacturers. GE Vernova has one bushing plant of its own at Sesto San Giovanni in Italy. It expanded it for $30m in March. Trench brings 11 factories. Its bushing plants are in Troisdorf, Saint-Louis, Shenyang and Charlotte. After closing two of the three large grid equipment makers will own their bushing supply. Siemens Energy sold its bushing business with Trench in 2024 and is now the one without.
The fourth reason is the US at 765kV. Trench opened its Charlotte plant in July. GE Vernova says 765kV manufacturing there begins in late 2027. Trench says first deliveries follow in early 2028. Strazik called it the first US manufacturer of high-voltage bushings up to 765kV. Trench cites plans for more than 4,000 miles of new 765kV lines in the US by 2032. About half of its order intake already comes from North America.
The fifth reason is the customer book. Ken Parks, GE Vernova's chief financial officer, said Trench has about 80 framework agreements and that some run into the 2030s. The release counts about $5bn of backlog and framework agreements. $2.6bn of that is backlog in the accounting sense. Trench has capacity agreements with hyperscalers. Meta is one of them. GE Vernova says Trench components are in the majority of HVDC lines built worldwide. Strazik expects the loyalty of Trench's customers to pull transformer volume towards GE Vernova. He also named India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East as regions where GE Vernova can take Trench's products.
There is one thing GE Vernova has to manage. It is "a very small part" of Trench's $1.4bn of revenue this year. Most of the rest goes to Siemens Energy, Hitachi Energy and the other transformer makers under framework agreements that run into the middle of the next decade. Trench's chief executive said that under Siemens Energy it had served GE and Hitachi "with the handbrake on". GE Vernova's own list of risks to the deal includes "the loss of, or reduced orders from, key customers". Trench says it will keep serving all existing customers. Its rivals will decide that for themselves once supply loosens.
What this tells you
GE Vernova has paid for certainty on a part that is 5% of a transformer's cost and all of its ability to ship. In a market this short, the component maker is worth more to the customer that depends on it than to any investor. That is the whole logic of the price.
Siemens Energy sold Trench for €401m in 2024 to raise cash in a crisis. GE Vernova is buying it for €8bn to secure supply in a boom. Both decisions made sense to the board that took them. Triton sat in between and did the work.
Three dates matter now. The merger filing in Brussels and whether it goes to a second phase. Trench's fiscal 2026 results in December. GE Vernova's table puts 2026 EBITDA at about $0.5bn. That is the first test of the plan it has paid for. And closing in late 2027.