All right. This is the last one. Hopefully, you guys have enjoyed yourselves and learned a little bit about the industrials sector and had some food and drinks. That's kind of the point of all this. We're gonna finish off here with David Gitlin, CEO of Carrier. Dave, thanks for being here, and sorry, Michael Rednor as well.
Afterthought, yeah.
Dave, thanks for being here, and I'm gonna kick it over to you for some intro, and then we'll go to the Q&A.
Well, thanks, Steve. Thanks for having us. Thanks to JP Morgan as well. As we close out Q1 and look at our positioning for the rest of 2026, our team is energized and executing against a clear strategy. Over the past several years, we have intentionally reshaped Carrier into a focused, high quality portfolio exposed to durable secular tailwinds, electrification, energy efficiency, digitalization, and the growth of data centers and cold chain infrastructure. With leading positions across attractive verticals and geographies and 50,000 tremendously talented and dedicated teammates, we are advancing our vision to be the global leader in intelligent climate and energy solutions, guided by a disciplined playbook to win in products, aftermarket, and systems. The strategy is showing up in results.
Roughly 40% of our portfolio, commercial HVAC, and aftermarket, have grown double digits for the past five years, and we remain on track to deliver our sixth consecutive year. In commercial HVAC, we continue to see strong demand and record backlog, with data centers a standout driver. In CSA, data center orders were up about 400% in Q4, and we expect another strong quarter in Q1. Importantly, our wins are not just cyclical, they are share-based, enabled by differentiated new products, expanded capacity, and deeper technical resources, all helping us capture a larger portion of the data center value chain. In aftermarket, the playbook works, and we continue to drive annual double-digit growth by increasing service attachment and leveraging digital tools to deepen customer relationships and improve uptime. This creates a more resilient, higher margin earning stream.
On our shorter cycle residential and light commercial businesses, we are translating our innovation roadmap into differentiated launches that support margin expansion and share gains globally. In CSA residential, we've introduced our first integrated heat pump, heat pump domestic hot water offering and new digitally enabled thermostats to increase customer intimacy. In light commercial, we introduced the dual fuel rooftop unit which automatically selects the most efficient fuel based on the outdoor temperature. In CSE, we are launching a new Viessmann branded lower cost but highly differentiated heat pump, which will expand our TAM. In CSAME, we released a Toshiba branded side discharge VRF system that is best in class efficiency with higher reliability and great aesthetics.
In our truck and trailer business, we expanded our all electric refrigeration units into Asia, leveraging advanced technology to deliver faster cooling with lower energy consumption and Lynx enabled cold chain visibility. Taken together, these actions reinforce the core of our strategy, leading with innovation, scaling our aftermarket and digital capabilities, and allocating capital to the highest return opportunities, positioning us to expand margins and gain share across cycles. From an outlook perspective, we remain on track to deliver our guidance on sales, profit, and adjusted EPS. We are excited about 2026 and focused on delivering best in class results for our customers and shareholders as one Carrier. With that, Steve, happy to get into the Q&A.
Great. Thanks, Dave. We're just having everybody kinda open up with a bit of a, you know, state of the world around all the events going on in the Middle East.
Yeah.
How that may impact you guys temporarily or, you know, your exposure is pretty low, I understand?
It is. You know, it's actually a very strategic area that we wanna grow, but today it's about 1% of our sales in the Middle East. Not material exposure. Our number one priority, of course, is supporting our 800 people in the region, the safety of them and their families, and we've gone to great lengths to do that while supporting our customers. You know, we have equipment that are in critically important areas to our customers, and we're balancing, obviously, the safety of our people and making sure that we support our customers. No material exposure. We'll watch some of the logistics of containers making their way through the Persian Gulf.
For us, we've been shipping all of our units from Asia to America, around Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, so we don't have anything that goes through the Suez Canal, and we've taken all of those routes away from product going into Europe. Not a material exposure for us as a company.
Okay. Just sticking with, I guess, the near term, you guys talked about about $5 billion-$5.6 billion-ish of sales to 2Q. Anything on the bottom line that we have to be aware of as far as the move from 1Q to 2Q, on kind of the sequential seasonality, understanding that you just reaffirmed the annual, of course?
Yeah. You know, look, reaffirmed the quarter, reaffirmed every quarter and reaffirmed the annual because there was some sense at a couple of the conferences down in Miami that we were changing something for 2Q, and we were not. Everything is playing out exactly how we thought it was gonna play out. $5 billion first quarter, $5.6 billion in the second quarter, and I think what happened is we generically said that we're kinda balanced between first half and second half, and we believe balance is in exactly 50/50, 49%-48%, you know, one half.
Right.
Fit our definition. Having said that, look, what you're dealing with in 2Q is, we said if you think about just CSA, residential is still down about 20% year-over-year. Light commercial down in the high single digits. We have really tough comps on the commercial HVAC side because 2Q of last year was up 45%. I don't think we have any particular call-outs on the EPS side, and we feel good about the $5.6 in 2Q.
Okay. Anything on the order comps to keep in mind as we move through the year? You just talked about, I guess, touched on data center being another strong quarter. Anything to think about in this quarter from an orders perspective call-out?
No, not really. I think if you look at orders last year, the first half was down 6%, second half I think was up 3%. When you look at it at a business level, it was kind of all over the map. If you look at Commercial HVAC, we had really good quarters. I think it was 2Q and 4Q. Transport was really good 1Q and 3Q, and resi got weak as we kind of got into the middle of the year. You know that data centers can be extremely lumpy.
Right.
I guess, Steve, short way of saying, or a long way of saying, no particular call-outs on the seasonality or calendarization of orders. I will say that you know, I mentioned in the prepared remarks that Q4 was really strong with data centers, especially in CSA. We continue to grow our backlog. Our orders will be very, very strong again in 1Q, and we continue to win head-to-head, which is extremely encouraging.
Yep. It's really you guys have really cranked hard on this data center stuff for sure. In that whole business, the transformation of where you were to where you are today has been pretty impressive. Obviously, you've got a kind of empty cupboards from a technology perspective that you really cranked up over the last six or seven years.
I appreciate you saying that because we were working on something to show when we do our 1Q call that shows the product portfolio that we had on the Commercial HVAC side when we spun and what it is today. If you looked at, there's nothing that we don't bid today, and there was a lot of stuff three years ago that we just didn't have the products to compete. We are, you know, you think about what we've done, water-cooled chillers, maglev bearing, 10 MW-18 MW. Not only do we have them, but we're winning with those products. 2 MW-3 MW air-cooled chillers, maglev bearing, free cooling. We are very excited. The screw chillers that we have over in Europe and Asia. The product portfolio is night and day.
Have we spent maybe a little bit more R&D than a couple of our peers? Sure. We had to really build out that portfolio, and I can tell you, we're gonna have one of the hyperscalers present to our board next month. They will tell you that when they witness our FOK, our first of kind unit test, and they put us through a bit of the wringer on the requirements, they will tell you to a person that technically we are performing at superior levels.
Just talk about the shift in the industry from not air to liquid cooling, but you know within the chiller industry from what's going on between water and air-cooled chiller, because I think people sometimes get mixed up in from liquid cooling and air cooling. But within
Yeah.
The chiller industry, there's water-cooled and air-cooled. Maybe just look at, talk about how Carrier views that transition and how you're addressing that?
You know, we still have both. There was this, like, our first major hyperscaler customer really had a bias for water-cooled chillers, and those were 18-MW and maglev bearing. You know, it depends a little bit on your access to water in some of these locations. You know that traditionally data centers were built in very cold temperatures where water was a little bit more plentiful. Now you're seeing them built in hotter climates where water's a little bit tougher to come by. You see both are closed loop systems, whether it's a water-cooled chiller or an air-cooled, they're both closed loop systems. You know, a water-cooled chiller will just use more water that needs to be treated.
You are seeing, especially with a couple of the colos, especially in Europe, which has a bias for air-cooled chillers and some of the colos and even some of the hyperscalers, a bit more migration to air-cooled. If you look at Carrier, when we spun a couple of our, the key players, I'd call them, like, 30% share, we were probably in the 10 range. On water-cooled, when we introduced this new product line, we went from 10x to 3x that, 4x that in just the last five years. If you look at what's about to happen on air-cooled, I don't know if we're gonna go up 3x or 4x, but we're gonna go up exponentially because what we're winning and bidding now a lot are these 2 MW and 3 MW. Now they want 5 MW air-cooled chillers.
Our share will de facto increase on the air-cooled side as well.
Is the market going in that direction, or is that, you know, Carrier now pivoting to focusing on share in that, in that direction? Just talk about how the market's evolving. It, I guess it's still pretty split.
It's still split.
Yeah.
I mean, it's both. We have a hyperscaler that we're close on a win with. It'll be a mix. They're gonna order some water-cooled, some air-cooled, and it kind of depends on the specific needs of the location. I would say probably a little bit more of a move generally towards air-cooled, but you still see demand for both.
As far as your capacity is concerned, with all this growth and all these orders, just talk about where you've been on chiller capacity to date and then where you're ultimately going by, you know, let's say 2030, where you expect to be from here?
Well, I think it's our capacity expansion, especially here in the Americas, has helped us tremendously because we are, you know, we're probably up 3x-4x for both our capacity for air-cooled and water-cooled here in our two major facilities in North America. We have the ability to take orders I think that some of our peers cannot. I think we're winning technically. I think we're winning in part because of the relationship we built with a lot of our key customers and how we support them, not just by shipping a product, but also seeing it through to commissioning, the type of aftermarket agreements we're working with them. I think, look, we came into the year with about $1 billion of backlog for 2026, not, that excludes backlog we have for 2027 and 2028.
We committed to do a billion and a half. I don't think it would surprise you that internally we're pushing for a bigger number if we're externally gonna commit to a billion and a half. That means we needed $500 million of book and ship business just within the year, and we're pushing for more than that. I could tell you we're working with one guy who's kind of vacillating between an order for 2Q and 3Q, and we're telling him, "You tell us what you need, and we could support either one." I don't think there's a lot of guys that can do that.
Is that out of one, like, main facility, or are you kind of, like, leveraging your whole footprint to be able to do this?
We actually try to leverage our entire footprint. You know, we try to deliver for the region within the region. In North America, we have our Charlotte facility, which we've expanded by 50%. We've converted one of our Monterrey, Mexico facility that used to do boards entirely to chillers now. We try to do most of what we need for North America in North America. There will be times we import from Asia before we had some of the capacity expansion. We typically do a lot of in-region manufacturing.
As far as the revenue numbers here, the $1.5 billion you're doing, is there, and you call it data center revenue, is it the vast majority chillers, or are there other things in there like a BMS or something else that, you know, some other type of product that may work its way in there? Is the majority of that chillers?
The majority of its chillers.
Okay.
BMS is meaningful. I tell you, it's one of the unsung heroes within the Carrier portfolio is our ALC, our automated logic controls business. Very high margin. It's grown double digits every year since we've spun. Really well-positioned, I mean, kind of the go-to for one of the hyperscalers in particular. It's like we have, I think, 80% share. But they... It's a real, a bit of a gem that's now, I think, gonna become the big differentiator. When you think about how do you differentiate with this whole liquid cooling, traditional cooling, I think a lot of it will come down to the controls. We've gained a lot of share. There was a point at which we were number five. I think when we spun, we toggle between two and three now in the Americas.
I think the big differentiation will be the control mechanism between traditional cooling and liquid cooling, because I think most of us in the space will have the capabilities to do most of everything. It's gonna be how you have the algorithms and the sophistication around the controls, and we have this gem of a business that will enable that.
How much liquid cooling revenue do you think you're gonna have in 2026?
You know, I would say it's probably less than $100 million.
That's part of the $1.5 billion?
It's part of the $1.5 billion.
Yeah. Okay.
You know, we've taken the approach, Steve, of being kind of very judicious and structured on how we attack this opportunity. There's no question that we believe we have a right to win in the space. We looked at acquisitions on the CDU side, but as you know, it's effectively a mini chiller, so we could develop it ourselves, or we could go outside. You know, pace matters because speed to market, but technology matters, and we have brilliant engineers. We have over 5,000 engineers, a lot of whom design chillers for a living, which a CDU effectively is. It's a packaging exercise. So we have our own 1 MW. We have a three and a five coming out here in the next few months. You know, manifolds anyone can do.
Yeah.
Or buy. Cold plate, they're still, like, trying to figure out the best way to handle that. I don't see us doing a multi-billion dollar liquid cooling. I think that the key for us is organic development, and if we're looking at M&A, it's probably in the $1 million-$200 million range. It's probably not in the $5 billion-$10 billion range.
You're saying that cold plate is not an area that you don't really wanna go that far into the room or the-
No, I'm not saying that. I think cold plate is a part of the system. What we're debating is what we wanna do in the area of cold plates. You know.
Okay.
I don't think we necessarily need to manufacture cold plates, for example.
Right. Right.
Do we need people that know, like, today we work very closely with NVIDIA and Dell and the chip manufacturers. Do we need to build up those skills? Do we need to build up systems engineering? Do we need people that can design cold plates and know how that can interface with the CDUs in the most effective way? Yes, that's a capability that we believe we need, but we're not looking to necessarily get into cold plate manufacturing. The jury's out on something like that.
Right. The thing about the CDU landscape is it's changing so fast that, like, you don't wanna. It's kind of like the train is moving, and everybody's kinda running, trying to stay close to the train, ready to hop on at any given time.
Yeah.
To pigeonhole yourself into one of the early versions and then have to kinda, like, constantly redesign. I think it's the right play to attack it when it becomes a system level component.
Yeah.
Which plays right into your guys' strengths.
Yeah, you need the elements. You know, the technology, as you said, Steve, will change. You know, we have this relationship with ZutaCore. It was one of our early VC investments. We continue to be very, very close.
Is that a two-phase or immersion?
Two-phase.
Two-phase. Yeah.
We believe we're gonna go from single-phase to two-phase. ZutaCore is two-phase. We like that investment 'cause we think that's not whether, it's when we'll move in that direction. We're not spending a lot on immersion today, but we are spending on obviously single-phase and now ultimately through ZutaCore two-phase, and we may look at other things in that space as well.
The $1.5 billion of data center may be a little bit upside of the upside there. On the rest of the applied markets, what are you guys seeing there? Pretty much in line as far as the orders and the revenues coming there?
Yeah. I mean, the math would get you to LSD on the non-data center piece. And that's really a function of focus. You know, I mean, we have so much energy going into some of the data center activity. You know, look, I know we have one peer that often talks about 14 verticals, but we participate in all those as well. Education, higher ed's kinda made a bit of a comeback versus last year. Same with K through 12, which cuts across light commercial and applied. Hospitality, you know, we'll see what happens obviously with the war and how long that lasts, but hospitality's been doing quite well for us as well. Even commercial real estate, surprisingly for us, has been year-over-year positive. I saw the ABI numbers earlier today, which were in spitting distance of 50.
Even project proposals was above 50. You know, we'll see. I think we're well-positioned in the non-data center piece, but that's about what we thought.
As far as this, you know, trajectory. You got a kind of a tough comp, so it's growing low singles, then it's kicking up pretty nicely in the second half. Is that really when the data center shipments really start to hit?
Yeah.
In the second half?
Yep. 100%.
Okay. That.
The backlog's there. It's gonna be an execution thing. I wish it were more linear by quarter. It is what it is. It's kinda how the customers wanted it. We are really well-positioned to deliver that in the second half. We're not worried about that.
Even though it's really cold outside here, we are kind of tiptoeing closer to the spring selling season, so maybe you can pivot to resi. What are you guys seeing out there? I know Watsco was here yesterday and making some encouraging comments about their sales trend. There's a lot in their portfolio, but a little more constructive. I know it's early. What are you guys seeing in the latest turn of the cards there as an indication for the season?
Yeah, everything consistent with what we thought, quarter to date. You know, if you step back, we said down, you know, volume down, kind of in that low double-digit range, and we said sales down in the high single-digit. When you look at it, you would be down about 20% in the first half and up about 10% in the second half, and that 10% is driven by the absence of destocking.
Yep.
In the second half. For the full year, that gives you 5%. I think down around 20% in the first quarter is how we planned it, and things are going to plan. Movement's been January and February in line with what we thought. Same with March to date. I feel certainly encouraged by the fact that there's nothing that is in any way worse than what we thought, and we'll have to see how the rest of the quarter and how the season plays out. I'll say this, that one of the most important metrics, KPIs that we have within Carrier is field inventory.
You know, we got burned last year by having more field inventory in the channel than we should have as we kind of went into the season and came out of it in the summer, and we are determined to not let that happen again. We wanted to end the year, end January, down 30% year-over-year, which we did. We ended February, down 30%, you know, year-over-year, and we still are in, you know, in that range of down 30% as we sit here today. If you look at where we are, our field inventory absolute levels, if you compare it to a six-year average, you know, for us at Carrier, it's down about 15%-20%.
Okay.
We're back to, like, 2018 levels. We will 100% support the ramp, and if the ramp is better than we think because of demand or the heating season or cooling season, we will 100% support our customers, but we also don't wanna get out over our skis on field inventory. In 1Q, we're absolutely tracking to what we thought, and we will also be careful to prioritize field inventory over sales, and I think we'll be able to manage both of those equations.
Got it. You, you're saying inventories are low.
Yes.
Are they, I guess, the first quarter steps up nicely from a shipment perspective. They're gonna remain pretty low through the first quarter, is what you're saying?
Yes.
Into the selling season.
Yes.
Okay. Got it. Okay. You also made a few waves with your industry projection on the quarter, on the quarterly call down 15% or so, 10%-15% I think it was. Right? Are you still feeling like that's the right number? Is that just a, you know, hedge for bad things to happen, as you know, the former CEO of UTC used to say? But, or, you know, what's the underlying model for that one?
Yeah. I mean, look, the way we came up with the number was that we said all of these, this perfect storm we had in the second half of last year, like these four macros that all went south at the same time, were existing home sales at a 20-year low, soft new home construction, weak consumer confidence, a 30-year that started with a six. We just assumed that all of that continues into this year. If you took the second half number and you assume that continues into this year, the second half of 2026 versus the second half of 2024 would put you down 30%. We assume the first half would be down 30% versus the first half of 2024. That's how we came up with the math.
Do we wanna be confident that we're gonna not miss after what happened last year?
Yeah.
Of course.
Yeah.
It's a short cycle business. There's a lot of variables that we don't quite know how they're gonna play out. One Q is tracking as we expected, and then we'll have to see. I will say, if I may, Steve, that in terms of controlling the controllables, there's a lot of really good stuff we're doing behind the scenes that go beyond just tracking what the weather in Chicago's gonna be. You know, I mean, we see Hydronics as an enormous opportunity for us. Early days there. We see Carrier Energy, this integrated battery heat pump, as a significant opportunity. You know, Steve, we used to not be a thermostat player. Now we've introduced it at the high end. We're introducing it across the entire portfolio.
With digital as one of the real priority areas that we have here in North America. I could double-click on any of those topics, but I do think there's a lot going on underneath the covers with CSA Resi that positions us quite well.
I guess just if you throw all those in, and I know there was an announcement with you guys are partnering with Google and Tesla, I think, on the-
Yeah.
On the energy storage combination, which is an interesting one. If you kind of sum all those up, you know, you should outperform the industry if you're doing pretty well on those. Is that, like, still a 3%-ish, low single-digit percentage uplift for you guys relative to the industry, you think, over time?
It's hard to say a precise answer to that. What I'll tell you is today we're a little under. Like, we're close to 1/3 of the market. We have very high margins in that business. I think the Carrier Energy piece, we've sized at a run rate number of, like, $500 million of incremental a year. We're working, you know, that one, partnership that we kind of established with, Google and, Tesla and others to influence local policy is we think that's exciting. We're working closely with 10 utilities and two of the hyperscalers. That's really exciting. We're gonna come out with our Gen 1 product. That's already out there today. We are in Carrier homes. We're testing it.
We need to validate that not only will the heat pump move over to the battery during peak hours, but you can return the electrons, the excess electrons.
Mm-hmm.
During peak, too, back to the grid. That's getting certified by EPRI. That's going really well. Our cost-optimized unit, our Gen 2 unit, comes out next year. That's going well. Our hydronics, we came out with a unit that is really for an air-to-water, which is a very small part of the North American market. Now for air-to-air, we have technology that others have with an integrated heat pump with a boiler, but we're also working something else in kind of the more to come category that I think could be quite disruptive that'll come out next year that can get us more leveraging our heat pump to get us more into that hydronics space for air-to-air market.
Where are you on ductless now, in your portfolio? You guys, you know, Toshiba obviously, good technology move.
Yeah.
Where are you on ductless now?
Ductless is great. I mean, it's a high margin business for us. You know, when I would say in 2010 that we were probably like 5%, and today it's in the high teens%.
Yeah.
In terms of market share. We've come a really long way. We're in spitting distance of 20% share. I remember actually at our investor day-
Is this globally or U.S.?
I'm talking U.S. right now.
U.S. Okay. Got it.
We're using the global technology.
Yep. Yep. Just making sure.
Specifically for the ductless market in North America, we've gained share. If you look at the crossover unit that we introduced here in North America, we did that three years ago. Since we've done that, our CAGR for that unit has been 36% over these last three years. Some people don't even realize that we have. That's really what you even asked us about on February 10th of 2020 at the New York Stock Exchange. You were focused on ductless, rightfully so. You thought it was a growing market. See, I remember what you.
That's when you said you had the guy in the basement.
Yeah.
Who's calculating the market.
Yeah.
They're in the replacement age.
Yeah. We're gonna go back.
Yeah. Is he still?
Yes.
Is the guy in the basement still around?
15 years. Yeah, yeah.
Is he still around?
Yeah. No. We let him see the sun once, you know. Just every five years he's allowed out. Actually, last year he was not allowed out.
Yeah, yeah.
If you look at this unit that we introduced last year, it's basically the external unit, as you know, is ductless, and it can pair with either a ducted or a ductless indoor unit. We've gained tremendous amount of share, and that's part of the beauty is we can leverage Toshiba technology. We can leverage Viessmann technology to gain share in that really important space. It's very high margin. If you look at our ductless business in the U.S., that new product that we introduced just three years ago is 40% of our sales today, and we're working on more innovation. Ductless in the U.S. or North America is about 15% of the market. It's growing quite well, and we're really well positioned there.
Can we just talk very quickly about price? You referenced the 1%. For resi, what do you expect for price? Any updates there as we kinda move into the selling season that's pretty much set, that's pretty much baked?
Yeah.
Okay.
We feel good about that.
Okay. Just gonna touch quickly on Europe.
Yep.
Any update on the dynamics there? Dover was here yesterday. They, you know, do the heat exchangers.
Yeah.
At SWEP, they were pretty bullish saying it's bouncing off but off of a very low level. They don't quite have the boiler, you know, offset that you guys may have. Any updates there of note since the fourth quarter?
Well, look, I think the short answer is no major updates. Things are tracking to what we thought. I would say heat pumps are very strong. You know, we said heat pumps would be up double digits. Our model assumed boilers down low single digits, but we also have the market down, you know, mid to high single digits, and that'll be driven by boilers. I think that when we look at 1Q, everything's tracking to what we thought.
Okay.
The thing to watch, I would say two things to watch in that market that are perhaps in the category of reasons to believe that we may as we start to dig our way out of this. I mean, think about the German market, north of 1 million units down to 600,000. That's a big pill to swallow over three years. Number one is we have this new product coming out that will be transformational. You know, we, today Viessmann, a very premium brand. This one will be in the mid to upper tier. Viessmann branded, lower cost product, but lower cost to install.
If subsidies come down in certain countries, this is, like, perfect, not only for the German market as a second offering or to convert existing non-Viessmann installers, but in places like Poland and elsewhere, this is, like, perfectly positioned. This product is 100% one to watch. Then we're gonna have to see the impact of this war, because obviously there's more planned replacement on the residential side in Europe than there is in North America. What happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine was there was this kind of rush to move away from fossil fuel because Europeans get reminded that 85% of their natural gas comes from outside of Europe, and they don't wanna be reliant on Russia or the Middle East or the U.S.
We're gonna have to see when natural gas prices went from EUR 30 per watt hour to, you know, almost 2x that in the span of five days. It's a bit of a reminder that it's probably a good idea to switch to heat pumps over time. We'll see the impact of that over time.
Sounds a little more encouraging on. Nothing in the results, everything's kind of on track so far, but a little more encouraging, some signs of life.
Yes.
On the light commercial side, just really quickly, anything moving there relative to guidance and any verticals stand out?
No, I'd say the two that probably stand out, K through 12's a little bit better than we thought. Retail, especially where we go direct to the retail customers, the national accounts, those are going very well. You know, we said that, 1Q, the first half would be down around 10%, second half down mid- to high-single digits. I think that in 1Q, it's probably slightly better than we thought it was gonna be, but we'll have to see, couple weeks left.
Lastly, just the transport refrigeration business. Is this a keeper? Is this gonna remain in the portfolio or-
We like the business, you know.
Yeah.
We like the business. Edward Dryden and the team are doing a very good job. You know, the way we handicapped the year at flat year-over-year, that the container business just has really tough comps and then truck trailer would be a little bit more positive and offset some of that. I'd say to start the year, container's been stronger than we thought. I mean, you know, if you think about some of the impacts of the war, one is sub-optimization of the container fleet out there, which can drive more orders. I think container in 1Q, 2Q will be probably a little bit better than we thought, but we have really tough comps in the second half.
You know, we gotta keep our eye on truck trailer because their customers are under some pressure with rising fuel prices. We are where we thought we would be, and we feel good about the first half of container. We'll keep an eye on the rest of the business. No real new news, and it's a really good high margin business that's been dealing with some of the short cycle stuff at recent lows, and those will come out of that.
Just moving to the bottom line, the $50 million-$100 million in positive price cost spread, I think that's the number. Is that still intact and anything moving around on tariffs?
No. Look, the one thing I'll say on kind of tariffs overall, you have IEEPA, you have Section 232, you have Section 122. We deal with input costs that are all over, that change every day. You know, it could be raw material, it could be tariffs. The short answer to your question, Steve, is no new news.
Okay.
We will get a point of price, you know, give you $200 million, and you combine tariffs and raw material, that's $200 million, and we'll offset one with the other. I do believe that, I think it's a misnomer to say that all we did is pass IEEPA along to our customers, because when you have input costs that go up and you're raising price, it's hard to do a one for one connection to that.
Right.
We manage all kinds of moving parts in the cost and price formula to get where we need to get to, but we have a formula around productivity that's been proven to work, and it'll work again this year.
Is there a little bit of upside there potentially?
I don't think so. I don't wanna say that. It's premature to say that. We feel that we can overcome a lot of surprises. We have every year since we spun, whether it was COVID, supply chain issues, maybe you see some logistics issues that happened with sub-optimization of container. We don't worry about surprises because we have a formula that works.
Great. Any questions out there? We got time for one question maybe. Nope. Nobody asked a question the entire event.
Really?
Yeah.
Maybe your last event, someone would do it, you know?
No, I mean, look, I just think I ask all the great questions. Not enough out there.
Yeah.
All right. Thanks very much.
Thanks for having us, Steve. Appreciate it.
Really appreciate it.
Yeah, thanks. Good to see you again.