This fall, GE Capital released its U.S. Mid-Market CFO Survey, which polled chief financial officers across seven different industries, including trucking companies.

The data are encouraging, despite concerns about costs and regulations. Transportation CFOs are less optimistic about the U.S. economy and the global economy, but they’re relatively upbeat when it comes to the state of their own industry. They expect both revenues and profit margins to rise. At the same time, they expect their costs to increase as well, with energy expenditures their number one concern.

See our graphic below for more from the survey.

Many of GE’s cleantech investments stemmed from the ecomagination challenge, a $200 million open innovation drive to pick and fund the best new ideas for improving the use, production and management of energy. Since the challenge launched in July 2010, GE and its venture capital partners have committed to investing $134 million in cleantech start-ups that submitted ideas for improving our energy future.

In addition, GE has created a separate, $20 million fund for non-equity financing of commercial pilots executed by GE businesses and start-ups. These pilots will lead to a greatly accelerated integration of technologies from external innovators into GE’s offerings.

What has really set GE’s efforts apart has been going beyond investing to entering into full-fledged commercial partnerships with challenge winners – 22 so far. In June, GE announced a commitment to invest $63 million in 10 companies focusing on the efficient use of energy at home, ranging from thermoelectric nano-powders and wireless power transmission to developers of electricity, water and gas use management software.

Just last month, separately from the ecomagination challenge, GE Energy Financial Services led a $22 million investment in the efficient building maker Project Frog.

In one case so far, GE has acquired a company it first found through the ecomagination challenge: FMC-Tech, which develops smart power grid monitoring technology. FMC is now part of GE Energy Services’s Digital Energy Substation business.

The survey results were announced at Leading From the Middle: The 2011 National Middle Market Summit at Ohio State, sponsored by GE Capital and Fisher, who are embarking on a new, multi-year partnership to research, analyze and map the middle market, including the establishment of the National Middle Market Center at Fisher.

Also check out GE’s Middle Market Data Visualization

Patrick Chaperon, Vice-President for Finance and Administration at Norampac, said, “We are very proud to build a mill with numerous technological advances and systems in place that will have a positive effect on the mill’s environmental performance. For example, the building and the equipment will be designed for optimal energy efficiency, process water will be treated and reused in order to reduce consumption, and a state of the art management system for recycled fibers will be put into operation, just to name a few.”

While GE Capital makes loans everyday to small and medium-sized businesses, project financings usually take longer to develop — anywhere from six months to a year — because of the complexity of constructing and starting up a new facility. Additionally, the Greenpac Mill loan was a cross-border transaction. GE Capital’s US/Canada team with extensive experience in the forest products and other capital intensive, cyclical industries, worked closely with Norampac and Cascades to understand their needs and complete the deal.

From L-R: Ross Nelson, Containerboard Partners; Paul Dyster, Niagara Falls Mayor; Marc-André Dépin, President and CEO, Norampac; Sam Hoyt, Regional President, Empire State Development; Joseph Palmeri, Jamestown Container; Alain Tremblay, CDPQ.

From L-R: John Ryan, Robert Guy, Jeff Lupoff and Mike Sullivan, all of GE Capital.

Project Frog takes prefab modular construction and makes it energy-efficient, delivering building kits that take one to six months to construct and use at least 25% less energy than the strictest building codes in the United States (in some places, as much as 80% less). The company’s LEED-certified building designs are optimized for the fabrication process; structural steel is cut by computer-controlled lasers, and both fabrication and construction are engineered to produce minimal waste.

Rendering of a Project Frog building on the grounds of GE’s Crotonville Learning Center.

The Project Frog financing follows another big investment in July, when GE EFS joined existing investors to complete a $10 million investment round for Nuventix, which has developed a novel method for moving air to cool LED lights. Instead of a fan, the start-up’s design uses an oscillating membrane, called a SynJet®, which creates turbulence that draws air past the light and across a heat sink. The innovative cooling system allows energy-efficient LED systems to shine brighter, last longer, and cost less.

Earlier in the summer, Energy Technology Ventures – a GE, NRG Energy and ConocoPhillips joint venture – provided capital to Emefcy Ltd, a company that employs microbial fuel cells (MFC) to yield electricity or hydrogen from wastewater treatment. That’s right, poop power.

With its scale and resources, GE provides more than just funding to nascent cleantech companies. It offers technical know-how and cutting edge R&D, business expertise, and worldwide reach, in addition to top-tier due diligence and ongoing financial support. And, at least in Project Frog’s case, GE is also a customer: one of its modular buildings will be constructed on the grounds of GE’s Crotonville Learning Center.

Project Frog’s Jacoby Creek School in Bayside, CA. Courtesy Project Frog.

• GE plans to vigorously contest these claims.
• The two transactions in question amounted to $549 million. These securities have since paid down to around $66 million in remaining principal.
• These securities held by Freddie Mac have received all interest and principal payments to date.
• GE sold the WMC business in 2007, and WMC did not originate any new loans after early 2007.

The three big companies came together to identify, fund and scale the best start-ups that use tech to either harness new energy sources or make existing sources more efficient and economical. That commitment is backed by $300 million in venture funds: the goal is to finance 30 emerging energy tech firms. A key criterion for investing? The solution must be scalable and so capable of having a material impact on the status quo, like new tech developed by an Israeli company that uses naturally occurring bacteria in wastewater to treat it, which not only saves energy but produces it. That’s right, a poop-powered grid.

Check out the video below to find out more about ETV and its initial portfolio of companies, featured recently at Mother Nature Network.

New Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and GE Capital, Americas President and CEO Dan Henson at today’s announcement.

The jobs will be a mix of skilled commercial, technical and regulatory positions that will primarily support GE Capital, Americas’ business. The jobs will make Chicago GE Capital’s second largest location with an employee base of over 2,000 people.

“Chicago has been a great market for GE Capital in a number of ways. The City and surrounding areas are home to many thriving, main street companies we serve as customers. Currently, we have $5.4 billion outstanding for over 11,000 customers in Illinois,” Dan Henson, president and CEO of GE Capital, Americas, said.

“Chicago also offers a deep pool of financial services talent we can draw upon to help serve our customers in the area and across the country,” he added.

The jobs will support the continued growth of GE Capital.

* Read about a new GE Capital survey of CFOs at mid-sized American companies – they’re optimistic about hiring and revenue for the first time in over a year.

U.S. consumer confidence rebounded in April and hit a three-month high in May, while rising gas prices, unemployment rates and a slowdown in the retail economy threaten to kill any of that confidence.

But according to the latest GE Capital Survey, released Tuesday, there’s plenty of reason to be more optimistic than less.

Chief financial officers of mid-sized companies are becoming more positive on the state of the industries in which they operate, their collective level of optimism up markedly since they were first surveyed in January 2010.

And it’s not because they’ve been drinking Consumer Kool-Aid.

According to the survey, conducted during the first quarter with 530 CFOs from mid-sized U.S. companies (revenues between $50 million and $1 billion), revenues will increase in 2011 compared to 2010, with 72 percent saying they expect higher revenues year-over-year. This is up from 64 percent of CFOs who expected a year-over-year bump in 2010.

An even better sign for Americans struggling with unemployment, 80 percent of the CFOs surveyed by GE said they expect to hire additional employees in the next 12 months — 65 percent having already begun hiring. Those planning to hire expect to increase their workforces by six percent this year, and 80 percent of those positions are expected to be permanent.

“Eighty percent planning on hiring was a pretty bold statement,” Dan Henson, CEO of GE Capital Americas, told Bloomberg on Tuesday. “This was the most definitive we’ve seen in the three times we’ve done this survey.”

More than half (56 percent) of CFOs surveyed expect to grow their cost structures in 2011 — about the same amount as 2010 and another positive sign for an economy that continues to dig out.

The one area CFOs continue to be worried about is the cost of raw materials – and their effect on profit margins. Rising raw materials costs were listed as a significant concern by 75 percent of the CFOs — up from 60 percent a year ago.

Nonetheless, a large majority (82 percent) of those surveyed expect their profit margins to increase or stay the same in 2011, which is down slightly from January 2010 survey, when 86 percent anticipated stable or wider profit margins.

* Read about the last installment of the GE Capital CFO Survey from November 2010 (here and here).

Those growth signals are among the key takeaways in a new report released today in which approximately half of the restaurant operators surveyed say they are planning capital expenditures in the first half of 2011. That could mean investing in new equipment, remodeling existing units or building new units. The information is in the 21st edition of the Chain Restaurant Industry Review, which was first shown at last week’s Restaurant Leadership Conference by GE Capital Franchise Finance. The Review includes a survey of the largest 150 restaurant operators and the top 100 chains (of the nearly 580,000 restaurants in the U.S. in 2010, 46.2% were chains).

The National Restaurant Association echoes that positive outlook, predicting that 2011 will be the first time in four years that the total foodservice industry will see real growth, resulting in sales up to $604 billion.

Thinking big: In 2008, GE Capital Financial loaned $14 million to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Underscoring the company’s huge success in the restaurant industry, the new $100 million financing is nearly seven times that original amount and will be used to finance expected growth. Five Guys opened its first restaurant in 1986 in Arlington, Virginia. Over the last three years, it’s opened more than 375 restaurants and today has more than 640 franchised locations and more than 100 corporate-owned locations across the U.S. and Canada. Photo courtesy of Five Guys.

The Five Guys expansion, like the signs of optimism found in the survey, come after four tough years in the sector. According to Industry Review, consumers have understandably become more price-sensitive. One of the ways restaurants are keeping them coming back is by making capital expenditures for remodeling units and installing new equipment.

Another way has been to keep prices low, with the industry overall having had the slowest annual rate of menu price increases in 55 years. However, the report finds that this is likely to change due to significant increases in commodity prices. Sixty percent of operators as well as several chains have announced plans to raise menu prices in 2011 since food costs comprise about 33 percent of every dollar of restaurant sales. In fact, the survey found that 88.9 percent of operators see commodities as the number one factor that will impact their business in 2011, followed by financial markets and gas prices (tied at 33.3 percent).

Regarding the half of the operators surveyed who say they are considering capital expenditures in the first half of 2011, their plans breakdown into: focusing on operational improvements (46.7%), expanding within their current markets (44.4%), re-imaging units (31.1%) and updating their menus (26.7%).

* Read today’s survey announcement
* Read the Five Guys announcement
* A copy of the Industry Review can be obtained by subscribing to www.gefranchisefinance.com and clicking on “Access Industry Expertise.”