Honeywell International Inc (HON) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Honeywell International Inc (NASDAQ: HON) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated Jan. 29, 2026

Corporate Participants:

Sean Meakim — Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance

Vimal Kapur — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Mike Stepniak — Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Julian Mitchell — Analyst

Nigel Coe — Analyst

Scott Davis — Analyst

C. Stephen Tusa — Analyst

Deane Dray — Analyst

Sheila Kahyaoglu — Analyst

Amit Mehrotra — Analyst

Nicole DeBlase — Analyst

Christopher Snyder — Analyst

Andrew Obin — Analyst

Presentation:

operator

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Honeywell fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker’s presentation there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today’s call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Sean Meakim, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Sean Meakim — Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Honeywell’s fourth quarter 2025 earnings and 2026 outlook conference call. On the call with me today are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Vimal Kapoor and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Mike Stepniak as as well as Mark Macaluso who will be leading Investor relations for Honeywell going forward. This webcast and the presentation materials, including non GAAP reconciliations, are available on our Investor Relations website. From time to time we post new information that may be of interest or material to our investors on this website. Our discussion today includes forward looking statements that are based on our best view of the world and of our businesses as we see them today and are subject to risks and uncertainties and including the ones described in our recent SEC filings.

This morning we will review our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025 and discuss our guidance for the first quarter and full year 2026. As a reminder, we began reporting advanced materials as discontinued operations beginning in the fourth quarter of 2025 following the successful spin of Solstice Advanced Materials on October 30, 2025. The fourth quarter results we present today exclude Solstice. As always, we’ll leave time for your questions at the end. With that, it’s my pleasure to turn the call over to Vimal who will begin on slide three.

Vimal Kapur — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you Sean and good morning everyone. Honeywell delivered a strong fourth quarter to close 2025, exceeding our expectations for both adjusted sales and adjusted EPS with orders up 23%, driving our backlog to over $37 billion. This performance reinforces the strength of our end market positions and execution. We exited the year with a sales growth of 6%, excluding the impact of 2024 Bombardier Agreement which demonstrates the outcome of our portfolio actions and our emerging focus on innovation stemming from continued investment in R and D. This gives us conviction in another year of meaningful top and bottom line growth of 2026.

Looking ahead, we expect to once again drive strong organic growth fueled by conversion of our record backlog, disciplined price execution and momentum in new product introductions. The strong organic growth coupled with productivity and an aggressive reduction in stranded costs related to the spins will enable US to deliver 6 to 9% earnings growth in 2026 along with accelerating cash generation. It was about a year ago that we announced our intention to spin off Aerospace which will result in creation of three leading pure play independent public companies. We have made tremendous progress throughout the year with the advanced materials spin complete and we now expect to complete the Aerospace spin in the third quarter of 2026.

Both Aerospace and Automation will host Investor Day in June and I hope many of you can join us then. Our teams are working around the clock to ensure this gets done as quickly and judiciously as possible and I want to thank all our employees for their commitment and dedication to this process. We also remain very excited about the progress at Quantinuum on key technological and commercial milestone that position the business to lead the way in quantum computing. I will talk more about Continuum and its progress in few minutes. 2026 will be exciting year as we move forward the final stages of our portfolio simplification.

This positions each business with the right strategic focus, organizational agility and tailored capital allocation strategies needed to grow faster and drive incremental value for all stakeholders. Let’s now turn to Slide 3 to discuss the latest update on our portfolio transformation. As I mentioned, we are progressing faster than originally anticipated on our separation milestones. On October 30, Solstice began trading as independent public company and we now expect the aerospace to occur in quarter three. To that end, we announced the Aerospace Leadership Team last week comprised of tenured aerospace veterans and made key board appointments to bring extensive operating experience to our teams.

Tim Corier, who will serve as President CEO of Honeywell Aerospace at the time of separation, will be joined by Josh Jepsen who will serve as Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, we announced that Craig Arnold, the former Chairman and CEO of Eaton Corporation, will serve as non Executive Chair of Honeywell Aerospace Board of Directors. Craig brings more than two decades of experience in leadership roles at industrial and tech businesses where he delivered transformational results through operational excellence and disciplined capital allocation. Together, Craig, Jim and Josh bring the right mix of industry, company and capital market experience to maximize the value for our customers, partners, employees and our share owners.

We’re also excited to welcome Indra Nooy, Foreman Chair and CEO of PepsiCo, to Honeywell’s board of Director, further strengthening our team with a proven track record of leading diverse global businesses and accelerating long term growth. Beginning in 2026, we reorganized Honeywell segment into more simplified structure focused on cohesive synergetic business model. Moving forward, we’ll be reporting four segments Aerospace Technologies, Building Automation, Process Automation and Technology and Industrial Automation. The three automation reporting segments will be organized into six strategic business units enabling us to better solve customer challenges and deliver in house outcomes with Honeywell Forge platform.

Finally, we concluded the strategic review of Productivity Solution and Services and Warehouse and Workflow Solutions and have announced that we intend to pursue a sale of of both businesses in first half of 2026. All of these actions position both aerospace and automation for a strong beginning as new industry leading public companies in 2026. Let’s turn to Slide 4 to discuss the recent advancements of Continuum. Following the recent fundraising in which Continuum raised approximately $840 million at a 10 billion pre money valuation, the pace of both technological and commercial progress at Continuum is rapidly increasing. Close collaboration with shareowners as Quanta such as Quanta, Nvidia, JP Morgan, Amgen and Mitsui have led to new commercial partnership that are supporting the development of critical applications for improving drug discovery, cybersecurity, ad encryption for large financial institutions.

In November, Quantinum announced the launch of Helios, the world’s most accurate commercial quantum computer, which nearly doubles the qubit count of its predecessor H2 and we believe sets a new standard for quantum computing performance. With the highest fidelity for quantum computing qubits ever released in the market. Helios ground picking design and advanced software stack brings quantum programming closer to the ease and flexibility of classical computing, which we believe positions the company to accelerate Quantum’s commercial adoption. Quantinium also announced a partnership to integrate Helios with Nvidia’s AI supercomputing technology to create powerful new architecture that can solve the world’s most pressing challenges.

This collaboration between Continuum and Nvidia is creating a future where AI becomes more expensive through quantum computing and quantum computing becomes more powerful through AI. As Continuum achieve these important technological and commercial milestone, I am confident of the company’s future and the best is yet to come. And before Mike talks about 4Q results, let’s move to slide 5 to discuss our recent growth acceleration. This chart demonstrate the recent acceleration in organic growth stemming from a combination of strong end market demand, our portfolio simplification and innovation. This drove a 3 to 400 basis point improvement in LTEM average organic growth since the beginning of 2024.

As I noted earlier, we see favorable end market dynamics across aerospace and defense process and building automation. We are enabling this further with an intentional shift to higher growth verticals. Our performance simplification efforts are positioning the company toward less cyclical and less capital intensive markets where we can build our install base and leverage this to drive software and services growth. This is being compounded by recent acquisition in excess solution, LNG process technology, compressor control and defense technology. On innovation we delivered 4% organic growth from our new product introduction in 2025 with majority coming from innovation in new markets and offering as opposed to upgrade on existing core products.

This is direct result of our meaningful step up in R and D investments in 2025 which continues at these level in 2026 as well as management’s focus on growth through new products. On the people side, we have made concerted effort to enhance our talent pool to drive growth. We added approximately 600 engineers to our workforce in 2025 which has greatly bolstered our R and D capacity and have also allocated the overwhelming majority of R and D to new product development. Additionally, our sales team incentives are now better aligned to our objective of prioritizing the commercialization of new products, further reinforcing our plan to drive growth through innovation while building stronger customer intimacy.

With that, I will now turn the. Call over to Mike to go through our fourth quarter results starting on slide 6.

Mike Stepniak — Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you Vimod and good morning. We ended the year with robust fourth quarter results. Sales grew 11% organically or 6% excluding. The impact of the 2024 Bombardier agreement l ed by double digit growth in aerospace and high single digit growth in building automation. We also continued to drive price across the portfolio as Vimal noted which contributed roughly 4 percentage points to the top line on a segment basis. Aerospace sales grew 11% organically excluding Bombardier, led by continued strength in both commercial aftermarket and defense and space. Commercial OE growth accelerated as expected from the third quarter as shipments continued to recouple with customers build rates. Robust demand across all end markets led a third consecutive quarter. Products regionally, North America and Middle east led the over performance with Europe up strong mid single digits as well.

Orders increased both year over year and sequentially, driven by ongoing momentum across both building solutions and products and highlighted by strength in the projects and fire businesses. Industrial automation grew for a second consecutive quarter with organic sales up 1%, led by warehouse and workflow solutions and sensing as well as a return to growth in productivity solutions and services. Process solutions sales were flat as strength in aftermarket services was offset by lower volumes in measurement and controls products. Finally, organic sales in energy and sustainability solutions declined 7% stemming from lower petrochemical catalyst shipments coming in slightly below our expectations due to continued project deferrals.

However, orders momentum in UMP continued with over 40% orders growth in refining and petrochemicals projects, which supports our confidence in a gradual 2026 recovery. In total, Honeywell orders grew 23% organically after 22% growth in the third quarter. Wins in long cycle aerospace energy and broad based demand in building automation led the way resulting in total book to bill above one and pushing backlog up 15% to a new record on profitability. Adjusted Segment profit increased 23% or 2% excluding Bombardier with segment margin of 22.8% led by ongoing margin expansion in building automation partially offset by the timing of high margin catalyst shipments in ESS and a headwind from a step up in R and D in aerospace.

Adjusted Segment margin expanded 40 basis points sequentially to 26.5% as we again delivered stronger volumes enabled by supply chain improvements, while in ba margins expanded 20 basis points year over year to 27% driven by commercial excellence and volume leverage. This was partially offset by declines in IA and ESS driven principally by unfavorable mix from lower catalyst volumes and and cost inflation. As A reminder, ESS fourth quarter and full year 2025 results include only the UOP business unit following the fourth quarter reclassification of advanced materials to discontinued operations and this will be the last quarter we present results for ESS.

Adjusted earnings per share of $2.59 was up 17% and down 3% excluding the. Impact of the Bombardier agreement driven primarily. By higher segment profit and a lower share count, overcoming a 24 cent year over year headwind from the timing of taxes. You can find additional information on the fourth quarter adjusted EPS bridge in the appendix of our presentation. Finally, free cash flow of $2.5 billion was up 48% or up 13% excluding. The impact of prior year Bombardier agreement. Growth in free cash flow was driven by higher operational income and collections offset by higher cash taxes and interest payments on capital deployment. We returned $900 million to shareholders in the quarter through dividends and share repurchases while funding $300 million in high return capital projects. We also repaid $2.3 billion of debt in fourth quarter for the full year. Sales increased 7% organically 6% excluding the impact of the Bombardier agreement exceeding the high end of original full year guidance by 2 points. Adjusted segment profit grew 11% or 6% excluding Bombardier with adjusted segment margin expansion of 40 basis points or contraction of 40 basis points excluding Bombardier to 22.5%.

Adjusted earnings per share was $9.78, up 12% year over year or up 7% excluding Bombardier. Finally, free cash flow was $5.1 billion, up 20% or up 7% excluding the impact of the Bombardier agreement, representing 14% margin. We deployed $10 billion to capital in 2025, including 3.8 billion to repurchase 18 million shares, 2.2 billion to acquisitions, 1 billion to capital expenditures and 3 billion to dividends. We also repaid $3.8 billion of debt to lower interest expense. All in all, a very strong performance to end the year with plenty of momentum heading into 2026. With that, let’s turn to Slide 8 to discuss our 2026 segment outlook.

In aerospace we expect top line growth in the high single digit range organically. We anticipate continued end market strength supported by resilient supply chain that continues to grow its output. Commercial OE growth should accelerate in 2026 as we move past customer destocking and ramp our shipments alongside increasing production rates, particularly in commercial air transport, defense and space should maintain its momentum as higher global spending drives substantial orders growth and record backlog. Steady increases in flight hours in air transport and business jet underpin ongoing commercial aftermarket strength. Though we expect modest normalization in growth rates from the prior year.

Segment margin should expand modestly as volume leverage, better pricing alignment with tariff costs and tapering acquisition integration costs more than offset mix pressure from stronger growth in defense and space and commercial oe. For building automation, we expect full year sales growth above mid single digits highlighted by strength in growing data center. In the healthcare end markets, we expect growth to be led by North America and acceleration in Europe on increased investments in healthcare and decarbonization infrastructure buildup. For the year, both products and solutions will grow at similar rates. We anticipate BA margin to expand over 50 basis points driven by volume leverage, pricing and productivity actions.

Process automation technology sales are expected to be roughly flat organically year over year. Slower first half growth in petrochemicals and refining should be offset by robust demand. In global projects, particularly in life sciences and cybersecurity solutions, we expect margin to be roughly flat with pricing and productivity offsetting material cost inflation. And finally in industrial automation we expect sales to be down low single digits to roughly flat with stable growth industrial solutions offset by headwinds from a challenging prior year comparison in products. Within this framework, we’re not assuming any rebound on underlying end market demand. We expect IEA to lead margin expansion across all segments in 2026 through meaningful productivity actions and fixed cost reduction.

Let’s now turn to Slide 9 to double click on Process automation and technology dynamics in 2020. During the second half of 2025 we saw 17% organic orders growth in the new P and T segment which led a corresponding 16% rise in the opening backlog. This continues to be a significant part of our long cycle order strength, particularly in LNG and refining both in the US and internationally. The backlog growth gives us confidence in an expected second half ramp, especially when measured against our historical backlog conversion rates. Wins in LNG and a number of large module equipment deals are expected to convert to sales in the back half of the year.

In addition, we’re encouraged by our pipeline in P and T which grew high single digits year over year, signaling that the strength long cycle orders is expected to persist contingent on the pace of final investment decisions from our customers. We’re diligently tracking the slower than expected aftermarket order rates for catalyst, particularly within petrochemicals, which has been influenced by overcapacity in the market. Catalyst shipments can be temporarily delayed in the short term but are ultimately necessary for our customers to maintain yields and those can only be deferred for a period of time. So while we acknowledge the challenges this business face in 2025, we’re encouraged by orders growth and backlog as well as pent up callous demand that should eventually fuel strong growth as we progress through 2026 and into 2027.

Let’s move to slide 10 to talk further about our expected segment margin expansion for 2026. In 2026 we anticipate the demand for our differentiated high value solutions and continued pricing that is Outpacing inflation will drive further margin expansion on a segment basis. We expect improved volume leverage principally in our building automation aerospace technology businesses which will drive solid incremental margins. While P and T margins will be roughly flat in 2026 due to the impact of stronger projects growth in the second half. Our focus on productivity action and rigorous fixed cost management will continue in 2026.

We’re working diligently to right size our cost structure ahead of the planned aerospace spin and expect to eliminate the stranded costs in 12 to 18 months after the spin. We have already neutralized the impact of solstice trended costs in 2025 through productivity and fixed cost reduction in the rest of the business. Finally, quantanium investments in R and D and technology will be a modest headwind to margin in 2026. As Vimal noted, Quantinium is making significant commercial and R and D investment to maintain its leadership position in quantum computing. With that as the backdrop, let’s move to slide 11 to go through the details of our full year 2026 guidance.

Before we get into the specifics, I want to point out that our 2026 guidance includes full year outlooks for aerospace productivity solutions and services and warehouse and workflow solutions, and does not incorporate the pending acquisition on Johnson Matti’s Catalyst Technologies business. We intend to update our outlook when these transactions are complete. For the full year 2026, we anticipate sales of 38.8 to to $39.8 billion, up 3% to 6% organically. We expect growth to be led by aerospace on higher commercial demand and increased defense budgets and building automation driven by new product innovations. This will be partially offset by slower start to the year in process automation technology which turns to growth in the second half driven by order visibility and significantly easier comps and mixed regional and end market dynamics.

Industrial automation segment margins are expected to be up 20 to 60 basis points to 22.7 to 23.1% as the benefits from price execution and productivity actions more than offset cost inflation and a roughly 30 basis points headwind from increased investments in Quantinum. Industrial automation will lead for the year driven by targeted fixed cost takeout followed by building automation as higher volumes continue to drive margin expansion. Aerospace margin should expand modestly as volume leverage is partially dampened by mix pressures. Finally, we expect P and T segment margins to be roughly flat year over year with pricing and productivity offsetting material cost inflation.

We expect a combination of strong top line growth coupled with productivity and fixed cost reduction will drive adjusted earnings per share of $10.35 to $10.65, up 6% to 9%. Our guidance assumes a 1% reduction in share count stemming from share repurchases. As we have signaled we intend to focus our cash deployment in 2026 on reducing debt ahead of the separation. Moving to cash we expect free cash flow of 5.3 to $5.6 billion up 4% to 10% which represents an approximately 14% free cash flow margin and 83% conversion at the high end or 90% excluding non cash pension income capital expenditures anticipated to increase by roughly $250 million to support growth investment attached to orders we already have in belt backlog.

This increase in spending will be funded by improvements in working capital efficiency with a continued focus aerospace Inventory let’s move to slide 12 to briefly review a full year 2026 EPS bridge. The main takeaway on this slide is that the overwhelming majority of our earnings growth in 2026 is expected to come from segment profit growth adding approximately 64 cents at the midpoint, we expect to benefit from higher volumes, enhanced productivity and favorable price costs offset by higher investment in Quantinium. As I noted, as you can hopefully see, we have fairly clean, high quality and straightforward path to our 2026 outlook.

A few other points to note below the line expenses should be roughly flat year over year as higher pension income of approximately $660 million is offset by increased repositioning expenses as we prepare for separation. While net interest expense remains in line with 2025 levels, we expect the tax rate to remain roughly 19% and average shares outstanding to decline approximately 1%, adding $0.08 to earnings per share. Additional below the line details are available in the appendix of the presentation. Now let’s turn to Slide 14 to talk briefly about 1Q guidance. We anticipate first quarter organic sales growth of 3% to 5% organically by segment.

We anticipate organic sales growth in aerospace, building automation and industrial automation to look very similar to our full year outlook for these businesses, while process automation technology will be more in line with four Q25 levels given the slow start as mentioned earlier. In addition, we expect to see normal seasonal step down in revenue from 4Q to 1Q. Similar to past years, we expect segment margin to be in the range of 22.4 to 22.6% flat to up 20 basis points. LED by productivity actions in our automation businesses, we anticipate aerospace margins to be down slightly from the prior quarter on seasonally lower volumes.

This will drive adjusted earnings per share growth in the first quarter of 2% to 6%. We expect a roughly $70 million increase in below the line driven by higher interest expense from recent acquisition and increased repositioning expense ahead of the separation. Additionally, as we announced last week, following a settlement of all flexjet related litigation matters, we made a one time cash payment of $377 million in the first quarter which is excluded from our full year free cash flow guidance. I’ll now hand the call back over to Vimal to wrap up before Q and A.

Vimal Kapur — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you Mike. We are pleased with our strong finish to 2025 with adjusted sales and adjusted earnings per share exceeding the high end of our guidance range. This performance underscores the resilience of our business model approach and highlights the growing. Demand for our innovative solution. Looking ahead, our guidance for 2026 is underpinned by continued strength in our orders, growth, price, execution and record beginning backlog. As always, our guidance serves as a prudent baseline for performance that we have a strong conviction which can achieve. Moreover, we continue to progress our separation milestone which we are tracking ahead of plan, paving a clear path for both aerospace and automation to emerge as industry leading companies in 2026. We look forward to sharing more about our strategy and long term growth at the upcoming Honeywell Aerospace Investor Day on June 2nd and 3rd in Phoenix, followed by Honeywell Automation Investor Day on June 11th in New York City.

These events will provide an excellent opportunity for us to engage with our investors and showcase the strength of our portfolio. And before turning to Q and A, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our head of Investor Relations, Sean Macim for all his contribution over the past four years. As you know, Sean will be moving to Aerospace with a spin off to establish another world class investor relation function as he did in Honeywell. He will be an incredible asset to Craig, Jim and Josh as they begin their journey as a standalone entity. Sean effectively communicated the vision and value of Honeywell’s strategy with credibility and conviction linked the framework with investors for our emergence post separation.

On behalf of the leadership team and shareholders, I want to thank Sean for your dedication and commitment to and say that I could not be happier to have you lead the IR function at Honeywell Aerospace. Congratulations. And with that Sean, let’s take the questions.

Sean Meakim — Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance

Thanks for the kind word, Vimal. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to lead IR and be part of this team. It’s been a great learning experience and I’m really excited about what’s ahead for both Aerospace and Honeywell. Vimal and Mike are now available to answer your questions. We ask that you please be mindful of others in the queue by only asking one question and one related follow up. Operator, please open the line for Q and A.

Questions and Answers:

operator

Thank you. If you’d like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you’d like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. Our first question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Julian Mitchell

Hi, good morning. And yes, I want to say thank you Sean for all the help. If we think about the margin progression just to try and understand that a little bit more for the total company. So it’s sort of flattish year on year in the first quarter picks up steam over the balance of the year. Maybe help us understand how second half weighted that margin Acceleration is. And are there any specific items on a segment level driving that, please, or.

Mike Stepniak

Julian, thank you for the question. So we, on the, on the headline Numbers, we’re expanding 20 to 60 operationally. We really are expanding margins about 50 to 90 basis points. And we have a little bit of a headwind, about 30 basis points this year from Continuum. That headwind is a little bit higher in the first quarter. In the first quarter. We also, our taxes are the highest and we’re paying our interest expense for the year is the highest. So that’s easing. So I think what you’ll see from us 2020 bips in the first quarter and then sequentially improving second half looks much better than the first half.

Vimal Kapur

Yeah, Julian, what I’ll add is that the fundamental playbook which Honeywell always executed on margin expansion, which is price, volume, productivity, that will be in full play this year. We do expect, as Mike mentioned, our operational margins to expand, you know, 50 to 90 basis point and invest some money back in Continuum. But we are very well programmed to deliver margin expansion as we did in the past. Like 2023, we were 100 basis point margin expansion. So we are very confident in delivering our margin expansion rubric for 2026.

Mike Stepniak

And I would just also maybe add that last year we talked about it, we stepped up on engineering from R and D standpoint. That’s now normalized going into 2026. It’s not a headwind for us. And last year was about, I think 50bps of headwind i f you take 2025 as a whole.

Julian Mitchell

That’s helpful. Thank you. And then just a quick follow up on the aerospace margins specifically. I think they’re starting out the year maybe down a touch year on year and then up a few tens of basis points for the year in aggregate. Maybe clarify kind of how you see those mix impacts playing out through the year. And there’s been some discussion on commercial OE contract renewal timings and so forth. Is that a factor this year affecting the aero margins at all?

Mike Stepniak

So maybe I’ll just start with the 2025 progression. But I think it’s important as you think about 2026. So we entered 2025 and we said we’ll finish about 26% for the year. That’s exactly what we did. And the team executed well despite the Liberation Day, having to contend with the tariffs largely. Tariffs are behind us going to 2026. Price will be better for aerospace acquisition integration costs are abating. That’s also a tailwind. And supply chain is continuing to improve. So for 2026, really to me it’s a margin expansion question is really just a question of how much and that’s a factor of mix and how is mix going to play out in the business as well as how we continue to unlock and scale the supply chain and how the trajectory progresses. But 2026 I fully expect margin expansion in aerospace.

Vimal Kapur

And Julian, to your question on the OE contracts, we are indeed negotiating our contracts with multiple OEs as we speak, both on the commercial side and business jet side. Those are under progress right now. And what I can share you is that longer term it will play bow down quite well for aerospace margin expansion. Nature of these are long term. So we remain very confident that this is going to have a positive impact on our margin expansion story for the business in the Times ahead.

Sean Meakim

And Julian, one last piece I would just add on. Just think about the first quarter reminder that Liberation Day was in April. So there’s a little bit of a lapping where we have that little bit of lag on the pricing impact relative to the tariffs in aerospace in the first quarter for the OE business.

Julian Mitchell

Great. Thank you.

Mike Stepniak

Thank you.

operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Nigel Coe

Thanks. Good morning. So a lot going on here, guys. Quantinium, you announced you filed a confidential S1 earlier this month. Are you fully committed to an IPO at this point or is there an option to bring in a strategic investor? And I just want to make sure we get the right numbers on the investment spending. It looks like it’s picking up by about $100 million year over year. So that would be what, $250 million. Of total spend within corporate. Just want to make sure that’s the number. And does the free cash flow or rather the cash burn kind of equate t o that number as well?

Mike Stepniak

So I’ll start a comment on the just on the commercial progress, etc. But you’re exactly right, it’s about $100 million year over year increase. We fully consolidate Quantinium right now. As you know, our raise was quite successful. So Quantum has plenty of cash, but it flows through for Honeywell’s financials. But it’s about $100 million year over year increase in terms of maturation and commercial efforts that the team is progressing.

Vimal Kapur

And Nigel, you put it well, a lot going on in Honeywell. So we are absolutely working on the continuum lag. What I can share with you is we’re obviously in the legal restrictions on what we can share but as a practical matter the progression on platform continues to be very promising which is the reason we are investing, investing more R and D dollars to continue to progress to launch the next version of our Quantum machine which is committed in 2027 timeframe. So that’s a driver and I actually spend a lot of time with the customers now to talk about leveraging quantum for commercial applications.

So think about banks, think about pharmaceutical companies and think about large governments. They’re all very interested given we are coming closer to time to value. And we are also building leadership team of Continuum business, you know, expanding its capability so that it could stand alone as an independent company at the right time. So that’s what I can share. I think a lot of wheels in motion and we continue to work very hard to make it a successful business.

Nigel Coe

That’s very helpful, thanks. And then my follow on is really. Just wanted to dig into the extraordinary strength in the process orders. Last time we checked in with you guys you were talking about softness in large product activity. That seems to have changed 180. So just wondering what’s changed and perhaps. A bit more detail on where you’ve seen the strength by geography or end market. .

Vimal Kapur

Nigel, there are two dynamics going on in the market. On the positive side, people are spending capital to build more capacity in LNG and refining that defined that showing our orders up it’s so substantially and backlog up by 15%. So that’s positive. Those are long cycle and we therefore will show more revenue accretion from them in second half of 2026 because the cycle time is 12 to 18 months. So we started lapping up our bookings from quarter three of last year and built the backlog which will convert now Q3 and Q4 of 2026.

Also on the positive side, the LNG business continues to do quite well. Sundine business we acquired is going to become baseline an organic growth. So that’s going to help in the second half of the year. On the other side of the ledger we continue to see pressure on the catalyst demand. On petrochemical side, petrochemical has excess capacity in the world so our customers are shying to buy more catalysts and also I would say in automation side some of our migration offerings. So there’s a certainly a slowness there. Our guide doesn’t factor any change that in 2026.

Now I’m not suggesting it won’t change but we are cautious on how we are guiding at this point and that remains the low point in the business. So Strength in long cycle in LNG and refining and weakness in short cycles, specifically in the petrochemical side.

Nigel Coe

Okay, that’s great. Thanks Vimal.

operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Davis with Melius Research. Please proceed with your question.

Scott Davis

Hey, good morning guys. Glad to see the final spinoff moving up here. Well, look, I wanted to talk a little bit about price because forever Honeywell was kind of a 1 to 2% price company. And now the last couple years you’ve been able to Capture meaningfully more 4% now, which is still meaningfully more than the peer group average. But what, what can you guys walk through? You know, there’s kind of two angles here. I mean, one is kind of passing through tariff impacts, you know, and that’s not a structural price increase, that’s more of a pass through.

But can you talk about really how much of this price is kind of a change in pricing strategy, how you guys approach projects, contracts? Obviously new products help, I would imagine. And how much of that 4% is kind of just the run of the mill passing on tariffs? Thanks.

Vimal Kapur

Yeah, that’s a great question and I think a lot about it. You know, on the dynamic, I think fundamentally the inflation drivers have become more persistent in the markets we serve. And I drive the insistent the inflation drivers into three buckets. Labor cost is increasing, typically 3 to 4% in a typical year. There are labor shortages. There’s enough talk messaging around that. We also see cost increase in electronics prices. Memory is a new driver. Now of course it’s a small portion of what we buy, but it all starts compounding. And then commodity prices keep going up.

I mean there’s a lot of news on gold, but then there’s also other commodities which keep ramping up. So when you put it all together, fundamentally the inflationary trend in industrial segment and segments specifically Honeywell serve, they remain quite persistent. And our pricing strategy therefore has become more mature really to look at as a long term trend, work with our customers and align with them that what’s coming ahead and minimize the impact on their businesses to the extent we can and deploy pricing which is also different by regions. It could be one in us, different in Europe, different in other parts of the world, also different for new products because we need to see where we have some leverage there based upon feature function which are differentiated.

So a lot going on in the pricing front. And I would say 2026 is going to look very similar to 2025 in the same zip code. And we spend a lot of time to make sure that the price cost doesn’t become a headwind for us and we do maximum to preserve our volume while we are preserving our margins.

Scott Davis

That’s very helpful.

Mike Stepniak

I would just maybe add that too. If you look at our portfolio, we’ve been migrating to high growth verticals where we can afford better pricing and we have a bigger step up in terms of revenue that is generated by NPI. And these products tend to be accretive and give us better pricing as well.

Scott Davis

Yeah, no. And then just the natural follow up would just be is there, you know you could when you talk about NPI and you talked about product launches, but is there, do you guys use a vitality index or anything internally and any kind of way to kind of compare that acceleration of NPI versus the past?

Vimal Kapur

Yeah, you saw one of the mention of that in our growth acceleration chart in the our prepared remarks. One thing we certainly started measuring is how much of revenue in a given year is coming from new products. Net new growth coming from new products. And last year it was approximately 4%. It means our R and D dollars are creating a differentiated demand into our offerings and we are able to either keep share or gain share or able to move to new verticals. So we are measuring two key KPIs. One is Vitality. We used to measure that Scott, for many years and what I learned is some of our segments high vitality is just right to play because the turnaround of the products is so fast.

And if your vitality is not 40s and 50s, you basically may start losing share so incrementally while we continue to measure vitality and remain co. Honeywell will have vitality in high 40s. Think about 45% or so. We also know measure every quarter new product revenue coming from new products. And our internal target is like we did 4% last year. Like to maintain that rate. That requires a lot of, you know, ideation working with the customers, having the right ideas and so on. But that’s going to be the new playbook for Honeywell that we want to grow through new products and then whatever market allows us to pick up on price. So yeah, that’s how I would summarize that comment.

Scott Davis

Very helpful. Thanks. I’ll pass it on. And best of luck this year guys.

Vimal Kapur

Thank you.

Scott Davis

Appreciate it.

operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Tusa with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

C. Stephen Tusa

Hey, good morning.

Vimal Kapur

Morning Steve.

Mike Stepniak

Good morning.

C. Stephen Tusa

Just to clarify that answer. So you’re expecting roughly 3% price this year.

Mike Stepniak

Price will be above 3%. I would say most likely 3 and a half, depending on geography and the vertical we’re deploying. 3 to 4% on average should be 3 and a half quarterly. Also there’ll be a little bit of movement, but that’s kind of the framework we’re using for the year with the teams.

C. Stephen Tusa

So at the low end of the range, you have volume down 50bps?

Mike Stepniak

No, no. It really just depends on we deploy price at SKU level, essentially. So it’s depending on how fast. If the product is growing at 1% and market doesn’t allow us to deploy more price, we won’t do that.

Vimal Kapur

I think low end, I would say, Steve, is volume growth in the low end of the guide three to six is zero. High end, it is about three. So that’s kind of how you want to look at the guide three to six price being somewhere around three to three and a half. And the balance is volume.

C. Stephen Tusa

Yeah, it seems pretty conservative with your order growth rate, but I won’t belabor that point just on the stranded costs. It seems like I would have maybe expected the advanced material stranded cost to come out a little bit quicker. Can you maybe just level set us on where those stranded costs lie today, especially on the arrow side, what to expect and how those should layer out of the numbers, because that seems to be a relatively heavy burden that you’re leaving in there, but should be a tailwind at some point in the next 18 months or so.

Vimal Kapur

You’re right, Steve. So we have already neutralized the advanced material stranded cost in 2026. So that’s one of the walk. We are showing in our margin expansion that it is net neutral. So the headwind of that is gone, which shows that we are looking ahead and executing it simultaneously as we work into spin. Now, specifically coming to the aerospace question right now, I will admit that we are so heavily focused to make spin happen in Q3, we’ll share the specifics of stranded cost, et cetera, during our investor day coming up in June. But we are absolutely confident and committed that we will eliminate stranded costs in 12 to 18 months time e arlier the better. We absolutely get it, but that’s the range we expect to take it out.

C. Stephen Tusa

Okay, and then just one last one on Arrow. Can you give us any kind of magnitude of margin improvement embedded in the guidance for Arrow this year? Is it 2550 bps? Maybe just a little bit of color on directionally magnitude?

Vimal Kapur

Yeah, I would say modesty. Think like low 30s incrementals.

C. Stephen Tusa

Got it. Okay, thanks, guys.

Vimal Kapur

Thank you, Steve. Thank you.

operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Deane Dray

Thank you. Good morning everyone and congrats to the team on hitting these transformation milestones earlier. And also best to Sean. And welcome back to Mark. Just the first question. You’ve been now more specific about the portfolio cleanups for PSS and warehouse. What can you tell us about the sales process?

Vimal Kapur

So I would say at this point we have a lot of interest on both the businesses and we expect to do sign of the deeds in quarter two, none of the specific within the quarter. It’s hard to pinpoint a month here at this point, but we do expect that quarter two we’ll be able to sign it and the close will be customary, you know, regulatory approvals so that you can then, you know, estimate that the total time this business may not be part of Honeywell. You know, what it does is Dean. Interestingly, when we complete the transaction of warehouse automation business, intelligrated and productivity solution business, it simplifies us into three end markets, process buildings and industrial.

Because this allows us to make a choice not to be in a transportation, logistics and warehouse markets. Not that these are bad markets. It’s more question of where we want to participate as a company. So it’s a choice to be made. And the second thing it does is it makes industrial automation as a sensing and measurement business. We had one of the challenge of industrial automation being a complex business to understand with a lot of segments and a lot of drivers. So with this decision we are able to narrow down the business to sensing and measurement, which gives us a platform on which we will build upon through organic growth. And hopefully we look at more inorganic actions in the future. So it plays out extremely well in our overarching strategy.

Deane Dray

That’s real helpful. And the second question there was a reference about pockets of weakness in Europe and China. Maybe just give us a sense of from the geographies what you’re seeing at the margin.

Vimal Kapur

I would say that those comments are specifically for industrial automation business. Industrial automation business is seeing strength in North America and US in particular. The segments are performing extremely well. But the segments of IA business in China and in Europe, the exposures we have in end markets we serve, we see pressure there and that’s a weakness in short cycle in Europe. Now that’s not true for other parts of Honeywell. If you see building automation, they don’t see pressure in Europe and China because they serve different markets and they have different product lines. So it’s very specific to Industrial automation at this point and we’ll observe how the year progresses.

What we are doing is we are focused on launching much more new products so that we are able to generate more demand organically to offset some of these drivers. And we’ll observe how the year progresses with our actions to counter some of these market conditions.

Deane Dray

Thank you.

Vimal Kapur

Thank you, Deane.

operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Sheila Kahyaoglu

Good morning guys and thank you. I’ll focus on aerospace if that’s okay. All three end markets grew double digits in 25. Maybe if you could tell us the rank order of how you’re thinking about 2026 end markets and any changes around the medium term growth trajectories as we prep for Investor Day in June.

Sean Meakim

Thanks, Sheila. Yeah, I would say that we were really pleased with the progress the team made on supply chain. Really great performance on volume, especially to end the year. So great momentum, particularly with the order rates going into 26. Looking at the growth rates by end market, we’d say defense and space is likely to lead. So high single digits may be creeping in a low double depending on supply chain progress. We then expect OE to be high. Single digit growth and then still strong. Performance in aftermarket, but continue on that path towards normalization. So call it mid to high single digit growth is the range and all that should blend to a high single. Digit performance for 2026.

Sheila Kahyaoglu

Got it, thank you. And then one on. I know a lot has been asked on margins already, but just specifically around incremental investments as we see from the defense contractors, how are you thinking about incremental investments surrounding your portfolio within aerospace and R and D focus areas?

Vimal Kapur

We have been investing. If you look at the broader theme of investments, we have been investing in supply chain. We have telegraphed that earlier more than a billion dollar investment. And then we have delivered volume growth over 14 quarters now. Double digit volume growth which results into our organic growth now in 2025, 2026. Overall Honeywell CapEx increases about $250 million. Aero is a large part of it and it’s a good news in my view because Aero needs more volumes, it needs to expand supply chain capacity. There are other parts of investment and other parts of automation business, but Aero has a large share of it.

So fundamentally speaking we are able to deliver to Department of War needs for more volume. And in fact we are close to PO now hardly with any past due, which shows that we have ability to meet their needs of the volume they are looking for. So we are very well positioned there. I think our volume capacity, our investments are always in order and we’ll continue to make more if it is necessary to grow the business.

Mike Stepniak

Sheila, it’s about $150 million in capex increase next year. Majority of it’s going to be funded. Through working capital improvement. So not.

Sheila Kahyaoglu

Okay, got it. Thank you.

operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Amit Mehrotra with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Amit Mehrotra

Thanks operator. Hi everybody. Vimal, the building automation growth has been good the last few quarters and I think some of that is applicable to kind of the success you’ve had in plugging the assets into Forge. And I guess the question I have. Is what is the. How can you can you replicate that in the process and industrial businesses whereby maybe that those cyclical parts of the business you can generate more recurring revenue by upselling some of the services by plugging into your platform. Can you just talk about that or are those just two different things?

Vimal Kapur

Yeah, no, excellent question Amit. We have been working very hard to change our business model to more recurring revenue and the basis of that is stronger linkage to our IoT platform. Forge Building started that first and process started that later. I would say the gap between that is about nine to 12 months and you can clearly see results in the buildings. What we have been able to do is really build, I’m going to use word ontology based models. It means that we are able to, when we connect a building we are able to identify all its assets and really build a reference data model for our customer which allows us to then build different applications on top of it.

And hopefully when we are in investor day we’ll be able to show you agents on top of Forge which are managing different operations, maintenance, energy management. So we have moved now to agentic way of working on our customer base and you’re absolutely right, that kind of innovation is driving the growth pull through of our products because it’s a one solution, it’s not separated from other. Now we’re on the same journey in the process, we’re just about nine months, 12 months behind. Connected Plant is our key offering which takes our customer installed base both on process technology and process automation and again ability to build this ontology based model and then give a much more stronger capability to optimize their operations.

So that’s coming, that’s coming soon and we do expect that to become an enabler for recurring revenue growth in the process segment in the near future. And then finally we’ll in industrial side, our business is far more becoming sensing and measurement. It’s less about controls but we have to evolve that strategy there. But I remain very confident we are going to see the same pattern in process in very near future.

Amit Mehrotra

And just sort of very much related to that. You know, you’re building automation revenue forecast is kind of mid single digit plus this year. It feels like that journey in connecting those 1112,000 assets in the field is kind of a third of the way through. And I think you guys have a goal of kind of accelerating that this year. So I’m just wondering, is it just conservatism? Because it seems like as you get to that journey of fully connected assets, you can actually drive sustainability in that kind of high single digit organic growth.

Vimal Kapur

Yeah, I mean our penetration Amit actually is much lower, which gives us sort of Runway and upside. You know, we’ll share those details during investor day. How much of install base is penetrated from connected assets perspective. But also bear in mind that recurring revenue takes time to scale. So if I, you know, as our recurring revenue bank is building, it just compounds every year at a bigger scale. So we are at a low base at this point. But we do believe that we also will continue to ramp it up at a much higher rate in the times ahead as our ARR is growing there.

And we expect to, we expect to share two things during the investor day. Our offerings on Forge, both for buildings and process and industrial, some initial ideas and then our ARR strategy, how much it is and how much we expect to compound in the times ahead.

Amit Mehrotra

Okay, yeah, that’ll be helpful. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Vimal Kapur

Thank you.

operator

Thank you. Our next question comes online of Nicole DeBlase with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Nicole DeBlase

Yeah, thanks. Good morning guys. Just wanted to start on some of the order trends that you saw during the quarter. Can we talk them all about how short cycle order trends generally trended and not just relative to 3Q but also throughout the cadence of each month of the quarter?

Mike Stepniak

Sure. So I would tell you that generally you have to look at it regionally. So US Meta India short cycle orders perform well throughout the year and in the fourth quarter as well. On the other hand, Europe and China, at least for where we participate specifically in industrial automation, were just okay, not great going into the first quarter. We see that orders generally will be high single digits on the short cycle side, probably mid single digits for BA and Aerospace and then on IA and P and T we will continue to monitor. But as Mirmo Mentioned earlier, the catalyst and conversions are a little bit slow.

Nicole DeBlase

Okay, got it. Thanks Mike. That’s helpful. And then maybe just a question on industrial automation margins. I think you mentioned in the prepared remarks that this is where you guys expect the greatest year on year margin expansion in 2026. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit on that with respect to the magnitude of potential margin expansion? Thank you.

Mike Stepniak

Yeah. So vis a vis our, Our guide of 20 to 60 and what are we driving operationally? We have industrial automation at close to 100bps. And the reason for it, if you look at the margin trajectory and progression, we feel like industrial automation has the most opportunity both from productivity operationally as well as pricing and leverage, volume and demand. And so that’s how we instrumented the year. And I have a high confidence the team will execute on that.

Nicole DeBlase

Thank you. I’ll pass it on.

operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Snyder with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Christopher Snyder

Thank you. I wanted to follow up on some of the commercial OE contracting discussion. You know, just given the very long nature of these contracts, imagine these negotiations are a lot more comprehensive than just pricing for some of the tariff pressure that’s come through over the last year. So I don’t, maybe you don’t want to kind of frame the magnitude of these conversations, but any color there would be helpful or if you could just maybe talk about when was the last time the company did a big, you know, comprehensive commercial OE price reset.

Vimal Kapur

So Chris, you know, these contract negotiations don’t span one particular oe. First of all, I mean this is more than one. Few are large who are small. That’s just matter of fact. And you know, some of these are due for long time. Think about five years plus in some cases. So the impact of that. You’re absolutely right. Because when you’re renegotiating a contract after five, seven, eight years, not only you’re looking at the pricing changes, but other aspects of the contract. And that’s why it takes very long time to renegotiate a long term contracts here.

And as I said before, these renegotiated contracts will be very well for aerospace margin expansion in the future. So it will be a great setup because we lap all the previous long term inflation we have been absorbing in some of these contracts. That won’t be a headwind anymore.

Christopher Snyder

Thank you. Really appreciate that. Yes, certainly a lot of cost inflation over the last five, seven, eight years. Maybe just a quick one. I think you guys mentioned that R and D was kind of at the full run rate, obviously it increased in 25. So is that right? Is R and D kind of at a full run rate level now? And I know arrow takes a long time to convert into sales, but I would imagine the industrial side of the business converts quicker. So can you just maybe talk about how you think some of the R and D spend converts to sales on industrial and could there be any tailwinds from that over the next 12 months? Thank you.

Mike Stepniak

Yes. So like I said earlier, I think the R and D right now is at the level that we wanted. It’s about 4.8% of sales that we feel is a sweet spot for us quarterly going from into the first quarter. That will continue to abate and will be more normalized and we obviously getting revenue growth which will be a talent from margin standpoint.

Vimal Kapur

And the cycle time, Chris, varies from I would say 18 months, 15 to 18 months for the short cycle and for the long cycle business like aerospace and some of our process technology could be three to five years. So these are long bets in some cases and it’s our job as leadership to put those bets so that we could not deliver even short term growth but also position the companies well for the long term growth.

Mike Stepniak

If you look at our corporate costs, I mean it’s really for us the 30bps drag on Quantinum, no impact from R and D stranded costs we addressed in the throughout last year. So we don’t have a lot of stranded costs as far as solstice. So we feel really good about the progression we’re making on our structural cost.

Christopher Snyder

Thank you guys, much appreciated.

operator

Thank you. Our final question comes from the line of Andrew Obin with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Andrew Obin

Yes, good morning. Thank you for fitting me in. The. Question on building automation. Just to follow up, can we just. Talk about how much growth is coming from axis solution cross selling and also how much exposure do you have there to data centers just because you are the market leader on building automation, I would imagine that’s a nice tailwind as well.

Vimal Kapur

Yeah. So Andrew, the access solution acquisition is playing extremely well and overall the revenue in that segment is growing high single digit in line with building automation which is growing high single digits. So our thesis has played out quite well. The second part of your question that sales synergies have been a big feature of it. That was one of the main drivers. We thought this business will create our value and that’s been a additive to the overall growth. And again it’s reflected in building automation. Numbers. Because that growth is not only coming in Excel solutions business, we’re able to pull through a lot of excess solution in our projects business in our solution side of the house there.

So that certainly is becoming an important play. And finally, data center overall position of Honeywell in building automation is becoming slowly material. We are inching towards that, becoming greater than 5% of our revenue. Think about it, that number was zero a couple of years back. So we are inching our way through across all the three solutions we provide in data center. The safety for fire, the environmental controls for building management system and security. So we continue to work our way through and as that market is performing, that will continue to help the growth of building automation.

Andrew Obin

Thank you. And another question, follow up question, after selling productivity solutions and warehouse and workflow. Solutions, do you anticipate further portfolio actions. On industrial automation side or beyond that?

Vimal Kapur

No. I mean, we are very pleased with the end state and as I mentioned, Andrew, that we have built now a business in industrial automation which is heavily focused on sensing and measurement. So we have a common block sensing in sensors for aerospace, sensor for medical devices, you know, measurement system for gas detection in industrial and semiconductor measurement of, you know, gas and others. So we have a common theme which allows us to build a business around it. So we’ll scale from here. So stay tuned and as we share our strategy for industrial automation during our investor day.

Andrew Obin

Look forward to that. Thanks so much.

Vimal Kapur

Thank you.

operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sorry. Go ahead, sir.

Vimal Kapur

No.

operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I’ll turn the floor back to Mr. Kapur for any final comments.

Vimal Kapur

Thank you. So as always, I would like to thank our shareholders, our customers and all the Honeywell future shapers across the world for a strong finish to 2025. We remain confident in our path ahead and we look forward to sharing more with everyone in the quarters to come. So thank you for all listening and please stay safe and healthy.

operator

Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.