GE Aerospace (NYSE: GE) agreed to buy Consolidated Precision Products for $11.75 billion — its largest deal since GE broke itself up and the aerospace unit went solo in 2024. The stock's reaction? Up 0.19% to $337.77 on Tuesday. A twelve-billion-dollar cheque and the tape barely blinked.

What GE actually bought

CPP is a Cleveland-based castings house founded in 1991 — roughly 6,600 employees across 20-plus plants, owned since 2011 by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Berkshire Partners. It makes the engineered castings that become turbine blades, structural frames and airfoils. GE has been buying from it for over fifteen years.

The price is the interesting part. GE is paying about 18x CPP's projected 2027 EBITDA including expected synergies — or roughly 26x without them. Funding is $7 billion of cash plus new debt for the rest. That is a full price for a parts supplier, and GE paid it anyway.

Why pay 26x for a foundry

Because castings are the wall GE keeps hitting. Aviation Week calls castings and forgings "perhaps the greatest chokepoint for the aerospace and defense sector." Larry Culp's own framing: the capacity is needed "to support the strong simultaneous demand across commercial engines, aftermarket and defense." GE can sell every LEAP engine Boeing and Airbus will take — it just can't cast the hot-section parts fast enough. Owning the foundry converts a supplier queue into an internal one.

The bit nobody is pricing yet

CPP isn't a GE-only shop. Warburg Pincus's own portfolio page lists General Electric and Pratt & Whitney as its major customers. So once this closes, RTX's Pratt & Whitney — GE's direct rival on narrowbody engines — buys mission-critical castings from a plant its competitor owns. That is a real supply-chain problem for RTX, and it makes Howmet Aerospace (HWM), the largest listed independent in castings and forgings, the obvious fallback. GE has also just stamped a public valuation on merchant casting capacity: 18x with synergies, 26x without.

What would flip this

The deal doesn't close until the second half of 2027 and needs regulatory clearance. A vertical deal where the buyer's competitors are the target's customers is precisely the kind rivals object to — watch whether that H2 2027 date holds. And watch the synergy line: GE guided to EPS and free-cash-flow accretion in the first year after close. If those synergies don't land, 26x is what it paid.

As of 14:35 IST / 05:05 ET, 9 Sep 2026. Sources: GE Aerospace press release, Aviation Week, Benzinga, Warburg Pincus. For discussion and education only — not investment advice. Verify before acting.