Adding fuel to Wall Street's bullish narrative: GE Vernova (GEV.US) order reserves may exceed $200 billion early next year, CEO says demand is “strong and enduring”

The Zhitong Finance App learned that on Wednesday, the stock price of power equipment giant GE Vernova (GEV.US) rebounded sharply due to the company's CEO Scott Strazick's statement at the Morgan Stanley Laguna conference: the company's order reserves are expected to exceed 200 billion US dollars in early 2027, earlier than Wall Street's previous expectations.

For investors who have recently been upset by AI trading pullbacks, this statement comes at the right time. Strazik said that GE Vernova's order reserves had reached 176 billion US dollars at the end of the second quarter. Based on strong orders expected in the third quarter, the company is expected to hit $200 billion “very early in 2027.”

“If we talk about the end market, I'll tell you that we continue to see very strong and enduring demand,” Strazik said.

He also called this target a “very humble milestone,” and cited the broader trend of growing electricity consumption. “The world needs much more energy, and more of that energy will come from electricity, and GE Vernova is well positioned to serve this area,” he added.

What makes the bulls even more excited is that Strazik doesn't just want to talk about AI data centers. He looked to 2030 to 2040, saying it could be a “better decade” than 2020 to 2030. Part of the driving force behind the growth in order reserves comes from a continued increase in revenue from high-margin services; the company is also increasing production capacity through factory automation and robotics technology.

The pace of financial disclosure has also given the market schedule: Strazik said that during the earnings call in January next year, GE Vernova will provide the 2027 financial outlook while disclosing 2026 equipment profit margins and order reserve data; the next capital market day will set a financial outlook for 2030, and it will take a long time to explain why the company is confident about 2030 to 2040.

This set of statements almost echoes the narratives of optimistic analysts such as Bernstein. Bernstein's Suneena Okaran on Tuesday reiterated GE Vernova's “buy” rating, targeting a price of $1,298, and said the company is still “wired to win” — with winning genes. Her key reminder: GE Vernova's story “isn't all about data centers.” In the first half of 2026, data center orders were $5 billion, or about 38% of electrification orders; the remaining 62% were driven by utilities.

Okalan believes utility spending should continue to grow and be supported by investments in grid reliability and resilience. She pointed out that slowing data center demand may ease power generation bottlenecks, but it will do little to address existing grid constraints. In other words, if AI construction cools down, it does not mean that the renewal and strengthening of aging power grids will stop.

But the bears' views are also very sharp. The direct trigger for GE Vernova's sell-off on Monday was that GLJ Research downgraded the stock to “sell” and gave a target price of 470 US dollars, the lowest on Wall Street. GLJ analyst Gordon Johnson stated bluntly in the report that GE Vernova is “a cyclical gas turbine manufacturer that is priced according to long-term compound interest growth stocks.” He believes that there is a fundamental mismatch in the market's pricing method for this company. Johnson mentioned that the stock's forward EV/EBITDA ratio is 38.9 times, almost four times the valuation of Micron Technology (MU.US), and that Micron's profit also depends on its uncontrollable industry supply and demand pattern.