H. Lawrence Culp
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at General Electric
Blaire, thank you, and good morning, everyone. Head of Investor Relations that has a nice ring to it, Blaire. I hope everybody saw our announcement last week relative to Blaire's promotion. She's excited, we're excited.
2024 was a year for the history books at GE Aerospace. In April, we became a standalone public company, the culmination of GE's multiyear transformation. Nothing has been more front and center than our purpose, inventing the future of flight, lifting people up and bringing them home safely. Those last four words remain our top priority with nearly 1 million passengers in-flight at this very moment with our technology underwing. We launched Flight Deck, our proprietary lean operating model to better serve our customers through our relentless focus on safety, quality, delivery and cost in that order. Seeing our teams in action through the year with flight deck from Malaysia to Wales to Asheville and elsewhere truly was energizing.
Commercial momentum continued as we signed several key services agreements and received orders for more than 4,600 commercial and defense engines. In narrowbodies, this included American Airlines commitment for 85 new Boeing 737 MAX jets powered by our LEAP 1B. In widebodies, we were honored to add a new GE NX customer, British Airways. And in defense, we received an order from the Polish Armed Forces for 210 T700 engines to power the 96 Boeing AH6 4E Apache Guardian helicopters.
To close the year, we received certification of the LEAP 1A HBT Durability kit. Combined with the three prior durability enhancements that are performing well in the field, it's designed to increase leap time on wing by more than twofold current levels and achieve parity with the CFM56's performance today. Just this week, in fact, we shipped our first retrofit engines to customers with the new hardware. It's also easier to produce supporting our output trajectory going forward. At the same time, we've advanced significant technology milestones that will propel GE Aerospace into the future.
Our RISE program with CFM completed more than 250 tests on our way to developing a full-scale open fan engine. We recently announced that in collaboration with Boeing, NASA and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, we will model the integration of an open fan engine design on an aircraft wing. And our defense team successfully demonstrated a hybrid electric propulsion system rated at 1 megawatt with the US Army. This represents a meaningful increase in power generation, enabling us to advance hybrid electric propulsion applications. But perhaps more important than what we accomplished in 2024 is how we did it. And my thanks this morning go out to our entire team for their unwavering commitment to delivering for our customers.
GE Aerospace delivered a standout year financially with revenue up double-digits, profit up $1.7 billion and free cash flow of $1.3 billion. And we finished strong surpassing our most recent guide. In the fourth quarter, robust demand continued. Orders were up 46% and revenue grew 16% with double-digit growth in services and equipment for both orders and revenue. Profit was up nearly 50% and EPS more than doubled. Free-cash flow was up over 20% with conversion above 100%. At Commercial Engines and Services, our fourth quarter orders were up 50%, revenue was up 19% and profit increased 44% while deliveries progressed. And for the full-year, demand remained robust with services orders up 30%, total revenue up double-digits and profit up 25% to $7.1 billion. In Defense and Propulsion Technologies, fourth quarter orders were up 22% and defense units nearly doubled sequentially. For the full-year, revenue was up 6% and profit increased 17% to $1.1 billion.
Looking ahead to 2025, we're maintaining this momentum as we aim to deliver another year of substantial revenue, EPS and cash growth. We expect departures growth of mid-single digits and increased military spending. This supports solid low double-digit revenue growth, including growth in CES and DPT. We expect profit in the range of $7.8 billion to $8.2 billion. This combined with a lower share count will translate to EPS in the range of $5.10 to $5.45, up 15% at the midpoint. For free-cash flow, we expect to generate $6.3 billion to $6.8 billion with conversion remaining robust above 100%. And given the strength of our balance sheet, we're increasing our share repurchases to $7 billion and planning to raise our dividend by 30%, subject, of course, to Board approval. Overall, GE Aerospace is, I believe, an exceptional franchise with a tremendous financial profile.
Stepping back, between 2023 and 2025, taking the midpoint of our guide, we expect to grow profit $2.5 billion and free-cash flow nearly $2 billion over this two-year period. Today, we're focused on keeping our customers' fleets flying and delivering on our new engine backlog. Our team is using flight deck to tackle supply-chain constraints head-ons. From the first-half to the second-half of 2024, we delivered meaningful improvement as material inputs increased 26% across our priority supplier sites. This in-turn supported CES services revenue growth of 17% and engine unit growth of 18% with defense and commercial both up double-digits, including LEAP up 12%. We're encouraged by our progress more recently in the fourth quarter where CES services revenue increased 12% year-over-year, supported by expanded shop visit work scope and spare parts growth. But this was lighter than we expected due to internal -- lower internal shop visit volume given material constraints.
Total engine units improved up 3% with defense up 20%. But commercial was roughly flat with LEAP down 5%. We'll need to drive further sustainable improvements to meet '25's demand, and this is exactly where flight deck is so important. Earlier last year, our priority suppliers shipped only half of their committed targets to us. Today, they're shipping over 90% of the committed volume. At a recent joint Kaizen with a priority supplier, we focused on eliminating waste, achieving a 50% increase in output, 50%. And throughout 2024, we deployed over 550 of our supply-chain and engineering resources into that same supply base, demonstrating that we're at our best when we're operating as one team. Building off this momentum, we're bringing together our engineering and supply-chain teams into one new organization, technology and operations, which will be led by Mohamed Ali. With shared accountability across the full value chain, this cross-functional team will enable faster problem solving to help improve deliveries. These actions, combined with our close alignment on-demand schedules will enable higher material inputs in 2025 and importantly, beyond.
Finally, we've expanded LEAP aftermarket capacity by approximately 40% in 2024. This will support the growing fleet of 3,300 LEAP powered aircraft and with now 10,000 engines in backlog. Here's how. First, we're eliminating waste and reducing turnaround time using flight deck. For example, our on-wing support team redesigned the LEAP engine flow, increasing output by 50% for the year. This contributed to LEAP internal shop visit growth of more than 20% in the fourth-quarter alone.
Second, we're investing more than $1 billion in our internal MRO facilities over the next five years. First, we're growing our repair technologies, which will help lower the cost of ownership and provide faster turnaround times. Our recently opened services technology acceleration center here in Ohio will be a key enabler in deploying repairs across our global MRO network. And third, we're strengthening our LEAP third-party network. Last year, five premier MROs completed around 10% of total LEAP shop visits. This is critical experience for them as their volume increases further in 2025. Overall, we're entering 2025 with a stronger foundation to service and deliver our engines faster with the highest possible levels of safety and quality.
Turning to Slide 7. Demand for our services and products remains robust, highlighted by orders up 46% in the fourth-quarter. At CES and narrowbodies, LL Israel Airlines confirmed its commitment for 20 737 MAX's with LEAP engines underwing. We've also extended service contracts, including a 10-year engine maintenance agreement with FlyDubai for their CFM56 powered aircraft. And notably, the Airbus 21 XLR powered by our LEAP 1A engines completed its inaugural commercial long-haul flight. Our engines are providing airlines with greater route flexibility and overall operational efficiency. In widebodies, Royal Jordanian announced an order for 18 GE NX1bs plus spares to power their expanded Boeing 787-9 fleet. And China Airlines also announced an agreement for 10 Boeing 779s with the GE 9x underwing. In DPT, we're building on our leading defense programs. We received orders under a contract with the US Army valued up to $1.1 billion for the continued production of T700 engines through 2029. The new T700s will power the Sikorsky H60, the Bell H1 and the Boeing AH64 platforms.
In addition to expanding our extensive installed-base, we're enhancing our customer solutions. We signed an agreement to acquire North Star Aerospace, a leading manufacturer of mission-critical gears and shafts. North Star will be highly complementary to our Aero business, providing a US-based presence in this market and adding new programs and capabilities to deliver complex flight critical parts.
Stepping back, I couldn't be prouder about what we're building as GE Aerospace as we advance flight for today, tomorrow and the future. Rahul, over to you.
