New spanner snarls industrial breakup machines

Along with tepid trading in Honeywell Technologies and Honeywell Aerospace, all the movement has left little value created for shareholders. It’s a familiar story across the industrial sector: just look at the merry-go-round of moving parts at DuPont.

It's a different story at General Electric. Since it cleaved GE Vernova in 2024, the turbine maker's shares have rocketed nearly 600%. Chalk it up to good timing. Its products are integral to powering AI server farms. Solstice and Element also have ways to benefit from the boom, but they might have helped sink their union.

Element’s chemicals, used in manufacturing semiconductors and high-performance computing, are in hot demand. Over less than three months, the anticipated revenue from its core Assembly Solutions unit for 2026 has increased 24%, according to Visible Alpha. For shareholders, the purchase price might have looked too low, too soon.

Solstice holds its own oddball gem: uranium hexafluoride, used to enrich fuel for nuclear plants. AI’s voracious power needs have brought a bubbly burst to companies such as $3 billion reactor designer Oklo. For Solstice shareholders, buying Element probably looked like an expensive and unrelated encumbrance that diluted their ownership to 56% of the combined company.