GE Vernova agrees to buy grid-equipment maker Trench Group for $9.0B

GE Vernova has agreed to buy Trench Group, a Berlin-based maker of high-voltage bushings, instrument transformers and coils, from investment firm Triton Partners for $9.0 billion, the company said on October 28, 2026. The price is a US dollar equivalent at a EUR/USD rate of 1.12, and GE Vernova expects to fund it about half in cash and half in debt. Closing is expected in late 2027, subject to customary regulatory approvals and to consultation with employee representatives where legally required.

Trench makes the unglamorous parts that high-voltage substations depend on. Bushings carry high-voltage power into and out of transformers, switchgear and substations; instrument transformers measure the grid's performance; coils and reactors help keep it reliable. GE Vernova says Trench serves more than 800 utilities and hyperscalers, with more than 3,000 employees and manufacturing at 11 sites across Europe, North America and Asia. GE Vernova was already a customer: the release describes the deal as vertically integrating an existing supplier.

What $9 billion buys

GE Vernova's investor presentation forecasts Trench's revenue at $1.4 billion in 2026, $1.6 billion in 2027 and $1.9 billion in 2028, with adjusted EBITDA margins rising from about 33% to about 36%. Bushings are the largest line, at $0.6 billion of the 2026 forecast, ahead of instrument transformers at $0.5 billion and coils at $0.3 billion. The purchase price is 13 times the 2028 adjusted EBITDA forecast before synergies. These are GE Vernova's figures, built from data Trench supplied and under Trench's own accounting policies.

The forward book is the selling point. GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik cited "approximately $5 billion in backlog and framework agreements, some of which reach into the next decade." The presentation splits that figure: $2.6 billion of it is backlog in the accounting sense (remaining performance obligations), and the rest is framework agreements. GE Vernova expects cost synergies of about $50–100 million by 2030 and puts the deal's annual interest cost at about $0.2 billion.

Triton has owned Trench for about two and a half years. When it completed its purchase of the business from Siemens Energy on April 2, 2024, Trench had 2,400 employees and nine factory locations, and Triton's announcement carried no price. GE Vernova's release, which carries one, says Trench has doubled its annual revenue since that April 2024 independence to more than €1 billion, and now runs 11 factories in eight countries.

Transformers, bushings and 765 kV

Trench would join Prolec GE, the transformer maker GE Vernova took full ownership of when it completed the acquisition of the remaining 50% on February 2, 2026 for $5.275 billion, a deal first announced in October 2025. Prolec GE has about 10,000 employees across seven plants in the Americas, five of them in the US. By our arithmetic the two purchases come to about $14.3 billion.

Transformers need bushings, and Trench sells them to transformer makers outside GE Vernova. In a May 4, 2026 release, Trench said it had signed several larger orders for 765 kV transformer bushings and listed long-term supply agreements and first orders with OEMs including HICO, Pennsylvania Transformer and Hyundai Power Transformers USA. Once the deal closes, those customers would be buying a component from the owner of another transformer maker. GE Vernova's release, for its part, says Trench components "are part of larger grid systems with many suppliers."

The US piece of Trench is new. GE Vernova calls Trench's Charlotte, North Carolina, facility newly opened; Trench said in May that the $60 million bushing factory would have a planned capacity of up to 3,500 bushings a year from 25 kV to 765 kV and is Buy America compliant. It put first 230 kV deliveries at the end of 2026 and first 765 kV deliveries in early 2028. GE Vernova's release says manufacturing of 765 kV equipment there is expected to begin in late 2027, the same window in which it expects to close.

That voltage class is where the US build-out is heading. Trench says the US plans more than 4,000 miles of new 765 kV lines and 50 to 70 new substations by 2032, and it has won an instrument transformer order supporting the first 765 kV lines to be built in Texas. The builders are being picked now: MISO chose the developers of its last two competitive 765 kV projects in Iowa on October 21, 2026, as The Duck Curve reported. Hitachi Energy, announcing a transformer insulation plant in Ontario on October 16, 2026, said transformer makers still face global supply constraints (our report). GE Vernova's pitch for Trench includes improved "supply-chain certainty and delivery lead times for critical high-voltage equipment."

Outlook

A late-2027 close leaves more than a year for the customary regulatory approvals GE Vernova names. If Charlotte's 765 kV manufacturing starts on GE Vernova's late-2027 schedule and the deal closes on time, the plant's first 765 kV output would ship under GE Vernova ownership.