U.S. companies, welcome to day one of Global Industrials Conference , our flagship event in London. It's a pleasure to have you here. To kick things off, we have Chairman and CEO of Honeywell International, Vimal Kapur. Vimal, welcome to London. We've had Vimal here for many years, and I'm very excited that I get to keep cover the part of Honeywell that Vimal is gonna be a part of, so, you know, because it's always a pleasure. Thanks so much.
Thanks for having me. Good to be back here after, I think, three years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. You know, maybe we can start with some macro questions.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think your guide has been fairly conservative.
Mm-hmm.
Probably by design. You know, just maybe give us the latest read on macro. Are you seeing signs of macro improvements on the short cycle? What I was referring to is that your organic growth is guided to go from 6% in the fourth quarter to 3%-5% in Q1, even as, you know, PMI is getting better, maybe some of your competitors are sounding better. Maybe we can talk about that.
Typically, Andrew, when we go from Q4 to Q1, typically seasonally, we do cycle down a little bit.
Yeah.
It's not abnormal. This year we have more backlog in the second half of the year, specifically for process technology, so it ramps up more in Q3, Q4. Just the year guide just plays out slightly differently this year. We're very confident on the guide we have given, which, you know, 3%-6% for the year, on the top line. Quarter one, I would say is trending well. To your point on short cycle, I think the demand trends remain consistent from 2026 versus 2025, with only one variable being for the last two weeks, the war situation, what it will cause. Clearly that's gonna have immediate impact on the short cycle in a 15-day period. Directly speaking, the demand in aerospace remains strong.
All the short cycle in building automation, industrial automation business in the U.S. remains strong. We don't see any signs of variability. I think only change over the last couple of weeks is how do we ship product in Middle East.
Sure.
It's a high double-digit of our revenue. It's again, a tactical issue. It's not that we are losing volume, but it just, if I can't physically send things, it can have a transitory impact. Otherwise the quarter is trending as we have guided and, we think the year is also shaping up quite well.
Just maybe on the Middle East, the question we've been getting from folks, just from a technical perspective, should we expect any push out on orders from the Middle East? Talking to the company, it seems that the staff is there.
Yeah.
People keep working, but just purely technical, should we expect any order delays or push outs? How is that just gonna work out from a technical standpoint?
Reality is, I mean, if you look at Honeywell as one data point, we have a large operation there. I would say one of the measure of presence is we have large amount of people on site because of our-
Yeah.
-service contract. 95% of the people are still on customer sites.
Right.
5% sites are impacted, closed, partially closed.
Yeah.
I would say we don't see any impact in our operation as far as serving our customer from-
Yeah.
-from a services perspective. Two things are being impacted, which are purely tactical. First, as I mentioned, our ability to ship product into the region.
Mm-hmm.
There's definitely a disruption there. That can cause, you know, some revenue moving from one month. Mainly a matter of fact. Large orders have been, you know, held up for closure in some places. Again, these are long cycles.
Right.
The customers have been actually pulling forward long cycle decision-making for the last one year, which is a new phenomenon. That doesn't bother me. I mean-
Right.
If something was due in March, shows up in April or May.
Sure.
It's still gonna change our guide for the year or even for that matter, next year. Fundamentally, I see this situation more like not impacting 2026, but can impact Q1 as things happen on a transitory basis, little bit from a revenue top line.
Okay. Some minor impact in terms of revenue.
A high single-digit of our revenue. If I can't ship some, it can have, you know, obvious impact. It'll be not prudent on my part to say, "Yeah, there won't be.
Broad framework is still intact.
I think broad framework.
Even with the Middle East and everything.
Absolutely. Broad framework is still in place. There'll be always things in and out, but we remain confident for our guide for the year, and things are shaping up quite well.
What's the impact of Iran? Because you do have a sizable defense and space business. What's the impact on defense and space? Specifically, how should we think about how long would it take the revenue and earnings impact on the positive side?
I mean, Jim Currier, who's President and CEO of Aerospace business, had a you know opportunity to meet President Trump about I think last week or week before that. There is a you know ramp up of the defense production.
Right.
Clearly we are one of the big serving defense production through our navigation systems in a big way, the CAES acquisition we made about 18 months back. All that will play out as there is a more backfill of ammunition being used. If the demand is even greater than we had guided, that certainly will bring more upside. It's hard to predict that at this point. I think when we'll go for the Q1 earnings-
Right.
If the run rate production is even greater than when the year was started here. Net-net, I would say defense side, likely more tailwinds.
Right.
On the flight hours, typically the lag impact of higher oil price and commercial aerospace flight hours is a overarching, you know, business of aerospace is a smaller portion because business jet is equally big portion of our business.
Right.
We don't believe that flight hours impact will be a meaningful impact on our business, you know, on a 2026 basis, because we're also carrying $2.5 billion of past dues .
Yeah.
There are multiple variables at this point relative to the lagging effect of the flight hours, past dues we carry, defense production increasing likely. My take is that net-net, the guide we have given will hold, should not have any net impact of the Iran situation on the aerospace business.
Just maybe a little bit more on defense and space. Your exposure in defense and space is mostly Europe, Japan and Korea?
Outside U.S.? Yeah. I mean, outside U.S. Our defense business is about 40% of the aerospace business, and 25% of that 40%, it means about total 10% aerospace business is international defense.
Right.
Which is highly weighted towards Europe, Japan and Australia.
Yep.
Korea.
Yep.
That portion is growing at an extremely high rate. We think that trend will persist for a long time, and that will continue to help the Aerospace business.
There, the dominant theme should be sort of European reinvestment in defense.
Mm-hmm.
Rather than sort of supply munitions depletion in the Middle East, right? Or would you benefit from that as well?
Definitely, because ammunition depletion in Middle East causes us to supply more to Department of Defense to backfill that.
Yeah.
The demand in Europe or other parts of the world is independent of that.
Right.
They are two different drivers.
Okay.
They're both positive.
Maybe, just sort of before we go, sort of your guide in terms of incrementals.
Mm-hmm.
You're guiding incrementals low 20s in the first half of 2026. You know, at the same time, it seems that we are past a lot of price cost issues and aerospace headwind. You know, just maybe expand a little bit why so conservative in the first half?
I mean, look, we've guided for the full year in terms of our, you know, margin expansion. We're not gonna be, you know, nitpicking what will happen in H1 or Q1 versus Q2.
Yeah.
We're confident on the full year. I think specifically for aero, a lot of margin depends upon what gets shipped in a quarter.
Mm-hmm.
Those dynamics depends upon what we produce, some of the customer demand. The full year is highly deterministic. I think within a quarter some variables will always exist. As we close the quarter, you will see what earnings, you know, expansion will occur. It depends on the overall mix and mix within the mix, which customers, you know, we are shipping the products.
Well, we'll talk about more, but sort of part of it, is it fair to say that part of your incremental guidance or margin guidance for first half is just you being prudent?
Yeah. We have to guide what we are confident of delivering as a minimum, and we always work to deliver on the upside. You know, we'll talk about it when we come for earnings guide in about six weeks time from now.
Yeah. Maybe, you know, you've resegmented, so we'll just go down your new segments. In process automation and technologies, can we just talk a little bit more about UOP?
Mm-hmm.
Clearly one of the crown jewels of the business. Totally get the comps issue, but you know, there has been less visibility there over the past year or two. I know that orders are definitely getting better, but what would it take for UOP to gain momentum, to gain this footing and really start improving? Because as I said, it's been a bit wobbly over the past year or two.
Yeah. The process technology business has seen strong order momentum from Q3. We had strong orders in Q3, strong orders in Q4. The trend actually persists in Q1 also. We're likely to see what we have seen observed in the first 2 months. These orders typically turn 18 months-ish on an average cycle time, 12-18 in that zone. Therefore, second half of the year, our conviction that the process technology business will have a higher revenue growth is highly certain because we have a firm backlog.
Right.
These are not estimated. These are not, you know, likely PO.
Right.
These are firm commitment. It's just the timing on how the backlog is converting. I think the only variable remains is how the catalyst demand will shape up for petrochemicals-
Right.
-which has no capacity for a while. That demand has been more, you know, flattish, which is part of our guide. That's why we guided process segment to be more flattish for the year.
Right.
Now, how the war and oil prices will change the demand of petrochemicals, that dynamics is yet to be played out.
Right.
When we guided this situation, oil price was $60. Now it's closer to $100. It's downward impact on the spreads.
Yep.
All that has to be observed. We'll see if that changes our opinion about how business will perform for rest of the year.
Couple of questions. Generally, the spread widening is a positive.
Positive thing because our customers make more money. The more the spread, the more money they make. It means they spend more money. The markets have been tight on some of the downstream polypropylene market, for example. Customers have been paraxylene, and they have not been spending money due to overcapacity because their margin rates are less.
Right.
They are not under pressure to run their plants more intensely, therefore, they don't need to push out the catalyst demand.
Right
To a certain degree. To me, it's more of a push out, not a demand destruction.
Right.
As the higher oil price will go favorable.
Okay.
Generally speaking, it's too early to say how the downside impact of that is on different petrochemicals.
Right.
commodities, and will we see diversion of the volume back to us?
The second thing, I know that UOP, you actually do have a conservative forecast for UOP as part of your plan. Your comment on strength in orders in Q1, so even though the forecast is conservative, it sounds like that there's actually more visibility post what you've seen in the first two months.
Yeah.
You're changing the guide.
Yeah.
Better visibility now.
Better visibility now on the second half revenue ramp up, which is part of our guide, becomes even more strengthened.
Yeah.
Because we're further building our backlog now. I think we had to watch the short cycle performance in that business, which is a catalyst demand. If that becomes stronger, certainly there could be an upside, but that's not part of our guide. Our guide assumes things remain unchanged.
Right.
2026 over 2025. If we see different facts, we'll share that.
Can we talk about separately what, you know, I guess used to be Elster and HPS?
Mm-hmm.
Now it's really-
Mm-hmm.
-more of HPS, so core process business.
Mm-hmm.
That would really compete with what Emerson does or-
Yeah.
-Yokogawa does. What kind of trends are you seeing?
I think the process trends are gonna remain very similar to what we observe in process technology business. Continue to have wins in areas like LNG, et cetera. Life sciences is a business we have been focused on for the last couple of years. It's a small base, so we are growing that. Very strong demand for cybersecurity. That's an area, the aftermarket services portion of the business is doing quite well. I would say the process automation segment is performing on par with the rest of our peers, no substantial difference. Areas of strength are primarily LNG in particular, and life sciences.
Okay, and your peers sort of missing single-digit growth, right? Is that?
I mean, overall process segment, we guide now together, process automation-
Yeah.
-and technology. I would say the combined guide is what you have seen.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
There are obviously puts and takes within the two businesses.
Within, you sort of see that your business performs in line with what the public, for your public peer.
That's right. It performs in line with rest of the peers.
Can we sort of expand a little bit on biopharma reshoring, because I know it has been a huge focus for you, big focus for the company. Can you describe? You know, because I think generally people think of you as being more focused on downstream.
Yeah.
Can you talk about your biopharma capabilities, and what are you seeing on biopharma reshoring in the U.S., and what kind of traction are you getting?
I mean, you know, if you see our pharma business, our life sciences business is built on a very simple value proposition of managing the customer quality. Quality is so central to, in life sciences business. Poor quality means you have to throw away your product batch, reputation risk. We started this business by acquiring Sparta about four years back, which is a quality management system.
Yep.
Because we measure quality, we know the root causes of problem, and the root causes come from poor operational control, poor environmental controls. Given that we are good, big in building controls in environmental controls and process control, we are building this end-to-end quality control system. You measure and you control it.
Right.
That has been a slow momentum from something which was irrelevant for Honeywell a couple of years back. It's slowly making progress as a meaningful business. I'll admit, we are coming from behind.
Right.
We have to compete with established players. In this situation, we only have one way to go, upside.
Right.
Because we have no share to lose. We only have to gain share, and we are making slow progress. The early days of, I would say, reshoring in U.S., clearly, we are seeing projects being announced and some capacity getting expanded. Certainly that's a positive news. But these are long cycle demand. These are not gonna show up into revenue in 2026 or for that matter, even 2027.
Okay.
Because the cycle of this is longer. Clearly the trajectory is in a positive direction. This is one sector in U.S., certainly we can see, observe the facts of CapEx coming in.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Thank you. Maybe we can talk about building automation.
Mm-hmm.
You know, clearly business has been doing great. Maybe we can start, Global Access Solutions acquisition.
Mm-hmm.
Can you talk about how it's being integrated and what kind of growth have you seen since you've acquired it?
If you see, the building automation business have grown high single digit for five quarters in a row, and Access Solutions business is a big part of it, so it's growing at a similar rate, not much different. I think business has performed extremely well. Our thesis was that the world will require more and more solutions around security. Enterprise security, which is software centric, is the way to go. That thesis has quite played well for us. It's fully integrated into our business. We now treat building automation business into three pillars: fire, security and building management controls. Our uniqueness of our business model is we sell product through channels. Our direct business is 15% of the overall segment. Our projects business is much smaller, and our projects business is another channel to our own product business.
Right.
Right? The whole business is a product business. Security is being part of it, fire and, you know, BMS control. I think the whole driver we have in terms of generate growth through new product and sell through channel, that strategy is really working well for us.
Excellent. Maybe just to understand a little bit, and I'll actually will ask a question about BMS. How do you think about data centers-
Mm-hmm.
Within building automation? Do data centers move the needle here? How big are data centers as part of building automation?
It's about, you know, just shy of about 5% of the revenue of the business. I mean, if I was sitting here three years back, the number was zero.
Yeah.
We slowly worked our way through. Again, we serve data center with all those three systems. Our share is improving, but our spend percentage in data center is small. We are like 2% or less.
Right.
Of the data center spend on the content which we provide. It's meaningful. We provide fire protection system, we provide security system, we provide environmental controls, and we're working with all tier one and tier two providers. We work with hyperscalers. We work with people like Equinix, Digital Realty. We work with all the tier two providers in Europe and in Asia. Slowly, the business is growing. While building automation is working on the controls portion of it, we also are actively working in our sensors business to develop new sensor for liquid cooling, which is gonna be, you know, a thing of the future. If you have to control the liquid, first you need to sense it for the right temperature, right positioning, which is our core.
Right.
We are working on that. Our sensors business is, you know, actively looking at it, and we are also actively looking at it, the impact of data center on on-site power generation.
Right.
If that indeed becomes true and people invest in on-site power generation, we'll control on-site power generation in core process industries forever.
Right.
Right? That's our business. That can become an extension of data centers. Something which was nothing for us three years back, we have a good position in building automation, and we are improving our position in sensors. We are likely to improve our position in process to just make me feel more and more bullish about Honeywell participation in data centers.
Maybe to expand on building automation, I think we were at AHR.
Mm-hmm.
You guys had a, you know, sort of great presentation of software capabilities.
Mm-hmm.
BMS and, you know, I don't know if people know, but you sort of provide the industry standard for-
Mm-hmm.
-for software and control.
Yeah.
Can you just talk about, you know, what's happening with your BMS business, how it's growing? Because clearly, you know, when we talk to people who get their software from you-
Mm-hmm.
It's a big focus from them. They're experiencing good growth.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe you can talk about BMS businesses, how you're integrating. Clearly, you know, it was fantastic to see your software offerings-
Mm-hmm.
-which clearly position you as the leader in the market and very differentiated from your competitors' offering.
Yep.
Maybe just talk about that software BMS and, you know, how you think about growth in that business, specifically BMS over the next several years?
We, you know, building automation business is very nicely positioned in terms of having 1/3 play in, you know, fire, 1/3 security, 1/3 BMS. It's kind of we equally balance all the three domains. BMS, we grew our business by providing Niagara, which is a control layer which we provide.
Right.
That has been a core for our business for now two decades. What we have created over the last three years is the Honeywell Forge, which is able to get data from multiple underlying BMS system, regardless of Honeywell or anybody of our peer companies, and able to build higher level of application capability on top of it for driving predictive maintenance, energy efficiency, emissions reporting. That segment of offering is growing quite very rapidly because it's a purpose-built offering. We have worked really hard to build a solution which is frictionless. It means you can get it started in matter of hours.
Yeah.
When you connect it collects the data of the whole asset, and customers get good visibility of their entire infrastructure, which was not possible earlier. I mean, if I have 30, 40, 50 buildings, how do I get full visibility of my entire asset base? How do I know performance? How do I drive maintenance drivers? That has been having a huge traction, and we are selling it through channels. We are training our channels to sell software, and they're slowly now turning into a company which was providing them hardware, also giving them software tools to drive their monetizing, their data installed base much better.
A very interesting change of our own business model that we grew a lot over last many years by providing hardware solution, and we are adding software in addition to hardware, that remains because that's our core business, to further grow our, you know, our position in that segment.
As we sort of go, you know, I was gonna ask about these strategic priorities, but you sort of alluded to power management, on-site power management. A lot of focus-
Mm-hmm.
-on behind the meter. You know, when we go to industry shows, clearly the data centers, battery storage
Mm-hmm.
A huge thing people definitely talking about just generally. Battery storage. I remember you had these large-
Mm-hmm.
-projects managing-
Mm-hmm.
-the control system for battery storage farms, you know, years ago. Can you just talk about that, how big a business it is today and how, because it really seems something has changed in the market.
It has. I mean, we started that process automation business, developed this offering of doing control for battery storage in front of the meter, and we've done a few projects in large scale, gigawatt hour scale.
Right.
What we realized is that opportunity set is greater behind the meter because there are so many assets in the world. Think of a hospital, stadium, a mall which has 2, 3, 4, 5 MW consumption, and we really are working to turn the demand from front to behind the meter. We have a solution which Process Automation developed couple of years back, our Building Automation business is gonna sell it. Because advantage Andrew, we have in buildings is we can also control the load dynamically. The system can perform to the demand of the grid, and we can do the peak management more dynamically. Whereas in the front of the meter, it's just a static system. It's responding the frequency and providing the resiliency it needs. It's early days.
If you ask me rate of change of our business, which can change a lot, is energy storage, if it shapes up. What I don't like about that business is batteries. You know, we don't make batteries.
Right.
It's like 70% of the content. It's like pass through a lot of volume without much margin.
Okay.
What I like about it is the control solution is very unique.
Yeah.
That's what we do as a core. We connect with the grid, we can provide dynamic controls. Like any other segment, we just need to put our bets into multiple new things so that we keep our optionality open on where the world really want to move in. I do believe that as the U.S. and even in Europe, there's more and more grid demand. The demand side, while the supply side is being created by having more power generation through gas or nuclear, the demand side also has to be managed by putting energy storage.
Right
To reduce the peak consumption. We work with multiple customers to get them excited, but it's early days of that business.
As I think about priorities, we sort of talked about data centers.
Mm-hmm.
We talked about BMS and Forge.
Mm-hmm.
We talked about battery storage. Anything else I missed in terms of growth priorities for the business?
In building automation, I would say we are focusing our focus on 3 growth markets. We talked about data center. We're really excited about hotels.
Yeah.
The world is building a lot of hotel rooms. We have purpose-built control for hotel rooms. The thermostat which you all see little there, it's Honeywell. We have a high share of demand in that product category. Electronic locks, if you use a Hilton or a Marriott app, the digital keys which get issued is our product. We have a lot of content in hotels and then hospitals. Those are the three verticals. In U.S. actually, we also see a lot of demand for battery manufacturing plants.
Okay.
Because they need sophisticated environmental controls. If you'd make battery and humidity is not controlled, you have to, you know, throw the batch. Focus on high growth vertical to generate more installed base and mine new installed base through our Forge platform. That is the momentum we are carrying in that business. We have been gaining share for last five quarters. Our guides suggest mid- to high-single-digit . If we continue to gain share, will be an upper end of the guide.
Right.
Don't be prudent on our part to beat our chest to say we'll gain share all the time. I think we have to be cautious to say, "Yeah, there are other people working equally hard," and we have to just, you know, settle back and come to the more towards mid-single. We'll see how we perform.
Any signs of life in just U.S. non-res market in general? Are you getting more optimistic about it or?
I mean, the markets we serve, our business in U.S. has moved much more toward institutional buildings.
Right.
Think about university campuses and schools and hospital systems. Actually there, the demand remains very stable year-on-year. Within the building automation business, actually, the U.S. is the highest growing market for us, and we don't see any change 2026 over 2025.
Maybe we can dig into industrial automation. The only thing sort of industrial automation makes sense.
Mm-hmm.
How should we think about industrial automation as a platform for Honeywell going forward, right? There have been headlines about streamlining the portfolio.
Mm-hmm.
We really have parts of what was inside Process Solutions and Sensing at the heart of the business. You know, they sort of sound the same, but they're different businesses.
Yeah.
I know you and I have talked about sort of industrial automation research versus development.
Mm-hmm.
You know, two years out, three years out, what does industrial automation look like as a segment?
We are building a business in which we want to be the leader on sensing and measurement in industrial. What we realize is that after we complete the transaction of the two business which are held for sale, the remaining business will be just shy of $4 billion, and it'll be entirely sensing and measurement.
Right.
There's no category leader in critical sensing, critical measurement. Our business is all about sensors for medical devices, sensor for planes, gas detection for hazardous environment-
Yeah
-in semiconductor fabs, oil and gas, critical metering for gas for homes and commercial buildings. We believe there's no real category leader in industrial world of having critical sensing and measurement.
Right.
Now, we have created a category in building automation or building controls. There was no large building controls company in 2018 till we decided to create a category, and now we have a $7.5 billion business.
Right.
These products have the similar characteristics. They are all mission-critical, they're all sensing, and therefore they need a good product development process, which we are good at. They need a good manufacturing process. We know that how to do it. We need good channel management process. It plays very well to our core, and it's all automation. We are gonna work very hard to run the business what we have well and add more to it through acquisition to the core which we already possess. We are not gonna go too far away.
Right.
Critical sensing, critical measurement will remain the theme. The way we look at new Honeywell's portfolio, buildings, process, and industrial.
Right.
In process, we are primarily a solutions company. In industrial, we are primarily a sensing company.
Right.
In building, we are a combination of the both.
Right.
It's all automation control and-
Right
- playing in different sense of the stack is our capability.
It's great. Thanks so much. Maybe finally, you do have an aerospace business.
Yeah.
You know, maybe we can talk about commercial OE. How should we think about the margin impact and timing of new contracts with Boeing in aerospace?
You know, these contracts are long-term and, some of them are expiring, so we are negotiating some of the OE long-term contracts as we speak. This negotiation process could be as long as 18 months because we're not talking about, future pricing for contract, but also looking at volumes. We're looking at some things which are selectable moving single source, looking at commercial terms like liquidated damages. As these contract get renegotiated, that should act favorably for aero margins 2027 onwards, because they really start ramping up later part of this year.
It's late, so we should be thinking impact late 2026, but really 2027.
2027. Yeah. I think aero has a great setup for 2027 in terms of getting the, you know, headwinds going away because we've been absorbing inflation for these contracts for many years. Tariffs threw more headwinds for us for 2025, but as they all lap back now, that's become the new baseline. These contract get renegotiated, that should position business quite well for 2027 from a margin standpoint.
Thank you. Can you talk about just sort of commercial OE shipments recoupling with build schedules? Where are we?
It's mostly synchronized, I would say. You know, our guide this year, you know, is based upon that the commercial OE shipments and our total order growth is quite synchronized now. We will see quarter to quarter, there could be some differences, but on a yearly basis we think it's on a same rate basis.
Excellent. Thank you. The message on margin, as I said, still margin improvement second half weighted.
I think, yeah, overall for the year, the margins will improve. We have been, you know, bouncing around 26% margin for the last few quarters. We think we have a pathway in order to get from there to the next step. Bill and Isaac mentioned before, it's hard to predict within a quarter, you know, but confidence for the full year is very strong.
As we think post the spin, what's the right range for? You know, right, because it's gonna be a standalone company.
Mm-hmm.
It's gonna look different. What's the right way of thinking about aerospace margins on a standalone basis when it's its own company?
Right now, I'd say Aerospace margin is 26%. Subtract from that one-time corporate cost, which is to stand up this company, so they come more towards 24% because 150 basis points in that range will be the setup cost for the company. Originally we had said that margin rate can go up to 29% when it was part of Honeywell and there was a margin expansion, say from current rate of 26% to 29%. As it re-rates itself from 26% to, say, 24%, that 300 basis point margin expansion runway still exists. It's gonna come through with the volume leverage as volume continues to grow. It comes through the point which you mentioned earlier, the inflation headwinds become less with the different pricing contracts. Then the mix is normalizing now.
I mean, we at one point had extreme mix of OE. That's synchronizing more and more. It all trending towards we normalizing our margin expansion story for the business moving forward. It's gonna grow at a high single, and margin expansion will also exist. It's gonna be a good story.
The stranded cost impact on your business?
We will talk about it, you know, in our Investor Day.
Yeah.
Coming up shortly in about, what, three or four months.
Three or four months, right.
Yeah, 11th of June. Look, we already are estimating it, and our goal is to eliminate all of it, you know, 18 months or less. Do I like 12 months versus 18? Absolutely.
Yeah.
The challenge is we are one company till we are not separate aerospace. We can't eliminate any cost right now because we have to run this one big ship and do the separation in a perfect manner.
Right.
We can really have entitlement to do the cost reduction right after that. We are making all the plans, but I do remain confident that's just a transitory thing. It's not gonna have any long-term impact on our P&L. Quicker we do, I think we'll share the absolute numbers and its wind down schedule during our June Investor Day.
Thank you. Maybe you've done a whole bunch of recent acquisitions.
Mm-hmm.
Just maybe through it a little bit. Access Solutions, Civitanavi , Sundyne. How are they doing versus the plan?
We, you know, took quite a different view to rebuild our portfolio while we're doing the separation.
Right.
So that we don't have to ask for another reason why we, you know, will not deliver strong performance post-separation. I would say our acquisitions are performing actually better than our own financial algorithm we had in terms of returns. Access Solutions business is performing extremely well above TBA. LNG business is performing extremely well. Sundyne business is performing extremely well. We also made small acquisition in cybersecurity for in process automation that's performing well. We acquired a business in BA on specialized sensing for battery sensing, Li-ion Tamer. All the acquisitions are performing above financial rubric. We are adding sales synergies, and they are gonna help us to bring our momentum of the top-line growth because our strategy of having bolt-on acquisition is working. We have never moved to any unknown space.
Mm-hmm.
We all know these spaces. We play in these. We clearly know what gap exists in our offering and how much of momentum we can build in our growth. Staying disciplined is the name of the game, and we have stayed very, very disciplined on acquisitions we have made.
What have been, you know, which one has done the best? What are the key takeaways, lessons as you're rebuilding? Because you deliberately went and you rebuild, you know, you have new head of M&A, you're rebuilding your M&A muscles. What are the key learnings, I guess, from as you're getting more in the groove of making these deals?
I would say, bolt-on acquisitions is key. You should be more confident on what you wanna acquire, how does it fit into your strategy, and test really hard your ability to do sales synergies. Cost synergies can be done by anybody. You know, Honeywell doesn't have to buy an asset. Another sponsor can do it. They can actually do a better job of cost synergies than we can do.
Yeah.
Our value come to make the asset better with new products by scaling it globally and driving sales synergy. That's a lesson learned. Stay disciplined, stay bolt-on, don't move too far away from your core, and, you know, and also stay disciplined. You know, we are not gonna overpay beyond a point we don't feel comfortable, and financial discipline is key for acquisition. There's no must-have acquisition. We love our portfolio. We're very happy with what we have, but we keep looking at optionality if something exists which can grow us better. We want to acquire more should it fit into our financial algorithms.
IA seems to be a big target.
IA, we will absolutely look at it because in our new construct, we are 40% process, 40% building, 20% IA. I like to balance it.
Mm-hmm.
We have optionality to build a new set of portfolio of sensing and measurement in industrial. We're excited about that option. Again, we'll see what comes across our way and if we can execute it.
Maybe the last question, sort of maybe you can talk about software, and I think software is tricky because you have OT integrated with your DCS offering.
Mm-hmm.
I think you've also identified $1.8 billion of other more like which I think more like IT-like offering.
Mm-hmm.
My understanding, vast majority of it is ending up in.
Yeah.
The RemainCo.
Yeah.
How should we think about, you know, lots of discussion about threats and opportunities presented by AI to your sort of software business?
I would say, look, the segments which we serve in Honeywell are all mission-critical. We serve critical refineries, petrochemical plant, life sciences, data center, hospitals, sensors for planes. If you just take the type of offerings we do, the financial return for using AI versus risk of replacement is very high. You know, you can really create a big downside.
Right.
Just by the segment we serve, we're heavily protected because we do deterministic controls in mission-critical segments.
Right.
I don't see, unlike some other segment where replacement can occur because risk is lower, because the very nature where we play, I don't see any risk. In fact, as I mentioned to you, the Forge platform is all about taking capability of AI, connecting our installed base, and building new offerings. In fact, for me, that's an upside of taking our automation business towards autonomy. Because what I always ask my team is, if cars can be autonomous, why industrial plant is not autonomous? But autonomy in our world is gonna be much more different. It's gonna be giving tools to the people, making them more productive. It's less about replacement. It's more about driving customer throughput with better tools. Overarching story is, we are quite protected for any AI-related replacement because of the very nature of our business.
Right.
We only see an upside possibility into our
You probably don't want probabilistic, thing or whatever.
Probability-based systems don't work. I mean, you want your plane to land, not almost land, right? You know, it could be dangerous.
98%.
That's right.
probability.
Yeah, it's gonna land. Maybe, may not be. We'll see what happens. I think that's it.
Well, with that, we're right on time, Vimal.
Thank you very much. Thanks for introducing.
Thanks so much. Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Feniger, the machinery, engineering, and construction analyst in the U.S., and I'm happy to host AGCO. Greg and I were talking. We've been doing this for over a decade, and the rooms just keep getting bigger. Credit to you guys. Really happy to have AGCO here at the conference to host them. They're one of the leaders in the farm equipment space, which is a little different for a lot of the, you know, European investors relative to what you see in the capital goods space in Europe. With that said, I'm gonna actually pass it off to Greg, and they'll introduce themselves, and we'll jump into some Q&A. Greg.
Right. Greg Peterson, I handle investor relations for AGCO, have done for almost 20 years. Prior to that, other investor relations roles, outside of our industry.
Well, good morning. I'm Damon Audia, the Chief Financial Officer for AGCO, and I'm coming up on four years in the position here.
Great. Thank you for being here.
Yeah, of course.
Well, maybe just to kick it off and bring everyone online and in person on the same page. When you think of the farm equipment space, Deere is usually the first name that comes to mind, particularly in the U.S. For investors that are new to this space, new to AGCO, where does AGCO fit into the ecosystem when you think of the global farm equipment industry?
Yeah, sure. Maybe I'll give a little bit of a backdrop here. AGCO is the largest pure play agricultural equipment company in the world. Unlike our two other global competitors, we don't play in the construction business, so we are purely focused on ag. We go to market on the equipment side under three primary equipment brands. Fendt, which is our premium brand, and then Massey Ferguson and Valtra, and those play more in volume-oriented segments of the market. Those three on the equipment side. Then with our strategic joint venture with Trimble that we did in 2024, where we own 85%, we combine that with our other technology businesses under a technology umbrella called PTx, so Precision Technologies Multiplied.
That basically covers all of our technology that we sell to our AGCO OEM equipment part, but we also sell to 100 other OEMs, and we sell in a unique differentiated retrofit channel, and we take that technology straight to the farmers first through this differentiated channel, and we'll touch on that. When you look at those brands and that and the PTx Trimble or the PTx umbrella, last year we delivered revenues just over $10 billion. Sitting in the trough of our industry last year, we delivered adjusted operating margins of 7.7%, which were almost double what they were the last time the industry was at this level. We did that through an array of strategic changes in how our CEO has transformed this company, where we have really focused on bringing our Fendt brand into North and South America.
We've doubled down on our parts business, so leveraging things like e-commerce, having the industry-leading fill rates in North America and in Europe, but then also growing our technology stack. As I mentioned, bringing on the Trimble joint venture, growing our Precision Planting business, all of those things, improving the profitability of our business, while at the same time driving incremental growth. If I look at last year, in addition to the adjusted operating margins, we generated a record free cash flow of $740 million. Really positioning ourselves in a much more profitable position than we were the last time the industry was at this level back in 2016.
[Hey, Damon] , look, the world is as uncertain as ever. You were formerly the CFO of Kennametal. A lot of members in the audience will know Kennametal well as a peer to Sandvik. Obviously, that's short cycle. That's PMIs, it's industrial production type of stock and sentiment. If you could help everyone for AGCO, what is mostly tied to those farmer purchases? What are the drivers of farmer equipment purchases that we should keep an eye out for, as we've gone through an upswing, and now obviously we've been in more of a downturn the last few years?
Yeah. Well, at the highest level, net farm income is the biggest driver to a farmer's willingness to engage in upgrading his or her equipment. It's important that when you hear the profitability or the net farm income, you've got to unpack it, because depending on how that's driven, in many ways, in many parts of the world, can influence the farmer's desire or willingness to purchase. When we look at it, what we would say is commodity prices are by far the most important thing, 'cause that's what's giving the farmer confidence or comfort as he or she sells their grain into the market. The biggest part is gonna be what are the commodity prices, which can be influenced by stock-to-use ratios, weather events, global trade dynamics.
You look at commodity prices first, and then you look at your input cost second. Obviously, a lot going on in the world right now. You've heard a lot about fertilizer prices going up, but they've been going up for a while. Seed prices have been going up. When that farmer looks at what he or she is selling their grain at versus what their input costs are, creating that net farm income is really the catalyst for reinvestment. Now, here in Europe, farmers get a lot of subsidies from their government. Those are fairly stable and consistent, so their order patterns tend to be more consistent 'cause they have a base that they can rely heavily on. When you look at the U.S. farmers, the subsidies tend to be more infrequent.
Even in the U.S., you've heard about some of the subsidies given to the U.S. farmers. Because those are not consistent, the farmers are less willing to invest that money into equipment, but using those sort of subsidies because they're one-time in nature to pay down their debt, buy their seeds, do the things they have to do rather than upgrading their equipment, which they'd like to do. That can fluctuate, it can improve the net farm income, but it doesn't necessarily translate into equipment demand. We've got to see commodity prices strong, input costs, hopefully stable or lower, driving that farm income. Then you get to some of the secondary things about the age of their equipment.
Interest rates can influence that because as a farmer's trading in a piece of equipment, he or she's likely going to be borrowing some money. Interest rates can influence that. But those are much more secondary effects versus that net farm income.
I'm curious, obviously, it's been a volatile two-week period. When we think of some of these moving pieces, you know, obviously with the Iran war and the conflict, you know, you're seeing really outsized moves. You're seeing outsized moves when it comes to certain chemicals, certain fertilizers. Obviously, it also depends on the timing in terms of harvest and planting. Just when we sit here today, when we see soybeans have had a nice move higher, corn is actually breaking out a little bit, it looks like, but also see these inputs. How should we put that all together to think about what are the farmers thinking and watching right now?
Yeah. Well, I think the global environment we're operating in creates a lot of uncertainty. And generally speaking, when there's uncertainty, that's reasons for farmers to pause in making large investments. We saw that in the U.S. last year during the trade dynamics between the U.S. and China. Again, farmers sort of conservatism in waiting to see what had happened. Whenever you see an event like this happen, we'll talk about some of the near-term and medium-term effects. That just creates another reason to pause to see what's going to happen. What are my costs going to be? Who's going to buy my grain? When will they buy my grain? All of that uncertainty creates reasons to hesitate. If I look at the events themselves, obviously the nearest-term issue for the farmer is dealing with our diesel cost.
Mm.
You know, with the event in Iran and how that's affected the gas prices or diesel prices, farmers are gonna be paying a little bit more for running their operations right now. In the grand scheme of the farmer's cost, it's probably not going to make a decision to buy or not buy. It's one more thing when we think about that net farm income. If fuel costs have gone up by, pick a number, 10%, that reduces or compresses his or her net farm income, and thus their willingness to have excess cash to invest elsewhere. That's the near term, and that's gonna affect most farmers around the world. The bigger issue is going to be fertilizer. Again, you've probably read fertilizer costs have gone up.
As we look at farmers probably here in the northern hemisphere, probably not as big of an effect on most of them. Most of them have probably already purchased what they'll need for the season. There may be a couple, you know, that have to deal with spot purchases, but that's more of a medium-term effect if these prices stay elevated for the longer term. Now, you do have a lot of farmers down in Brazil which have a different planting season. They're gonna be, you know, effectively having to look at those costs and manage that as part of their overall net farm income, 'cause those input costs, if they don't come down here in the near term, will affect what they're purchasing. You're gonna sort of see that fertilizer cost have an effect here in the medium term.
Again, to the extent that this is a new level, that will affect farmers a little bit more in the longer term as they have to buy their fertilizer for the following year.
When we see these charts of what's happening in fertilizer, it's gonna hit probably the Brazil farmer first. As you just said, the northern farmers kind of have locked in their costs for basically the season.
Mm-hmm.
Is that correct?
Most likely. Most of them have.
Is that gonna change, you think? Just 'cause we're on this, I'll pull a thread. Does it change any planting expectations or any rotation? 'Cause while this is happening, we're also seeing soybean prices starting to go up a little bit, and that might be some disruption to the Brazilian, you know, farmer at that point in time. Some of it might be just oils going up and maybe some biofuel displacement. But I'm just kinda curious how we should kind of think of this as it's impacting in Brazil to the U.S. farmer.
Yeah. I mean, on the margin.
Yeah
You may see some changes. Generally speaking, the farmers have the rotation that they go through, whether they're planting soy in certain fields or whether they're planting corn in certain fields. There's always a little bit of variability that they can see.
Yeah.
Short-term changes like this are not likely to have a significant deviation on their long-term plans. Again, if you look back and you're seeing corn, as you touched on, corn has ticked up, soy has ticked up. A lot of farmers stored their grain last year because if you remember, commodity prices were quite low. They were below the break-even point. You heard about the storage. A lot of farmers just sort of holding that grain. As that's now coming out into circulation, they're getting that value. Now, does that change if they sold their soy? Do they plant more if they sold their corn? Do they sell more? Again, I think in the grand scheme of things, you probably won't see a significant change on what they're planting.
On the edges, each farmer's gonna look at what he or she could do maybe modestly to see if they can pick up a little bit of incremental value.
Mike, the flip side of that.
Please
Flip side of that would be that if there is less fertilizer used this year and even next year, that probably means yields go down, which should result in higher commodity prices. It might be a negative in the medium term, could be a positive as you get out maybe beyond that first harvest.
Understood. I think, just to go back, circle back to what you were saying prior, is it just feels like the last two years for farmers going into their early order season, when they're starting to place those orders, seems like they just, there's always some macro event hitting them. One of them, obviously, as you referenced, was the trade war. I'm curious, is this something that you think farmers are watching? 'Cause we're months away before they start placing orders for next year. Is this, do you think, one of the single most things that the farmers are keeping their eye on? Because they did lock in their costs, so their costs aren't really that high yet. Is that something that you think is making people look at their earlier orders for next year?
Yeah. Obviously, they're watching who's going to buy their grain.
Yes.
Again, we have the agreement between the U.S. and China, where they've said they're gonna purchase 25 million metric tons of soybeans. To the extent that comes to fruition as planned and the farmers see that demand actually translate into their for them, that will rebuild confidence. As Greg said, as whether it's lower fertilizer uses, whether it's increasing demand, at least here in the U.S., they talk a little bit more about changing the policies on things like ethanol, looking at more on renewable fuels, which if they do make any changes to renewable fuels for renewable diesel, that could consume a very large percentage of the U.S. soybean crops. To the extent that that is incremental demand, you know, you will see the prices of those commodities pick back up. You'll see the farmers' net farm income improving.
Again, because it's coming from a commodity price, builds more confidence for them knowing that they need to change out their fleet. When we look at the age of the fleet in the U.S., unfortunately, the way our industry works because of the cyclicality, normally the fleet goes from old to average to young. When we went through the last peak in 2022 and 2023, there was the supply chain challenges that our industry was dealing with. The fleet in the U.S. only went from old to average. Then in 2024, 2025 and 2026 now, because we're below this mid-cycle, the age of the fleet is now creeping back up to being at the peak or what, at historical high levels. Farmers know they need to upgrade their equipment.
The technology, the fuel efficiency, there's a lot of value in bringing on a new piece of equipment onto the farm. If you're not profitable, there's that ability to defer, and that's what we're seeing right now. As that commodity price comes up, as that farmer feels that's more stable or sustainable, he or she gets the confidence to then start to reinvest into their equipment and bring on the latest technology.
Maybe just to help put this in full context for everyone, because, you know, you mentioned there was a peak in 2022, 2023, and we've been in this downturn, and many are hoping and calling that 2026 is gonna be the bottom, that we're gonna start to stabilize at this bottom. I mean, how far below on units are we from peak to trough to mid-cycle? Just to give everyone context of, like, where are we on the cycle if we are bumping along the bottom to start to look at what does this look like on a mid-cycle basis or what the next peak looks like?
Let me take a shot at that, Mike. Damon mentioned that commodity prices and farm income tend to be the biggest or most highly correlated demand driver for the industries. Now, if you look across the three major markets, for us that's North America, South America and Europe, the consistency of that farm income tends to be the most stable in Europe. Not surprisingly, the cycle in Europe tends to be more muted. We would say, you know, between maybe 90% and 110% of what we call mid-cycle.
As we saw last year, we ended the year, I think right around high 80s, almost 90% of mid-cycle. This year we're calling for that to improve 1% or 2%, so low 90s% in 2026. In South America, that's kind of at the opposite end of the spectrum. Income tends to fluctuate more significantly. In Brazil, there's not as much subsidies, and so farmers' income, you know, tends to, it tends to fluctuate. In Brazil, the normal cycle life, I would say would run from maybe 70% to 125%, 130%. This cycle's been a little bit different. Last year, Brazil was in a mid- to upper 80s%. This year we're saying it doesn't change much, so maybe, you know, maybe up 1% or something. Upper 80s% for Brazil.
Lastly, North America tends to be kind of in the middle. Normal cycle in North America tends to go from maybe 85% to, you know, 110% or something. This year, though, North America's gonna be in the upper 70s%, so we're in a very unusual place. If you look at demand for big equipment in North America, we are bumping up against, you know, times that are into the 70s% and 80s%, kind of to go back to find the kind of volumes we're looking at for 2026 in North America. This year we're gonna be below 80% in North America, so very unusual. Damon touched on age of fleet, so that is really creeping up and ultimately will be a demand driver for us here.
Below 80% of what we would typically look at as like replacement demand and mid-cycle.
That's right.
Just to give some context. You know, look, you guys are a global manufacturer. You touched on a lot of the reasons. Just the other news was, you know, Supreme Court decision. I know tariffs has been a headwind for you guys. Maybe we can just update everyone on, you know, the tariff impact that you guys faced in 2025, what you're kind of guiding for 2026, and how we should look at some of the, you know, basically policy changes that we're starting to see after Supreme Court decision and where ultimately you guys are kind of ending up.
Yeah, sure. Last year we incurred right around $40 million or so of tariffs in our P&L. Again, pre-Supreme Court ruling, what we had said is this year there would be about another $65 million of P&L headwinds rolling through our P&L. Put the total tariff cost somewhere in the range of $105 million-$110 million of total cost. With the Supreme Court ruling related to the IEEPA tariffs and then now the new 10% tariff in place, you know, we're still working through the calculation. There's also been a couple other rulings on the 232s on how they're calculated, and we're sort of bringing all of that together. We're finding our number. We'll give probably a more concrete update on our first quarter call.
The general answer, I don't expect a significant move between the 232 changes and the IEEPA tariffs coming off with the 10% coming in. You know, we still expect to be directionally in that $65 million of an incremental headwind, but we'll work through that, and we'll give a more refined number in Q1. The way that we've tried to address this, again, if you think about the cost of the tariffs are really centered in our North American operation. That's really challenged the profitability there. Working to mitigate it where we can, so wherever there's dual suppliers that we can mitigate or reduce the level of tariff shifting to supplier two instead of supplier one, you know, trying to find ways to minimize the overall cost.
To the extent we can't do that, and at least based on our forecast, we've not been able to offset those costs, we've tried to handle our pricing more globally. Even though the costs are centered in North America, our products are positioned relative to our competitors in a relative value position. We know that our Fendt products usually price at around 105% of one of our competitors. To the extent that pricing dynamic needs to sort of stay in that environment, if we're not able to push through the full cost, we're now looking to push that more horizontally across the globe. Where do we have stronger positions? Where maybe there'd be an opportunity to pass an incremental 0.5% in a region that may not be subject to the tariffs?
The way that we've approached our outlook this year is we have our pricing at around 2%-3%. What we've said on the call is if we were to hit the full 3%, that would cover our inflationary headwinds and our tariff costs on a dollar basis. It would still be margin dilutive for us, but from a dollar standpoint, we would cover. If we were at 2.5, which is the midpoint of our outlook, we would be negative from a margin standpoint and from a, an EPS standpoint. Really looking to try to spread that pricing across the globe where we can to try to mitigate that for the total company.
That makes sense. I mean, you talked about Fendt, which is the product in Europe. It is that premium product. What was interesting, Greg, when you were giving the way we are globally by cycle, Europe's right now in one of the best positions. It kind of feels like an anchor really to your earnings. It's such a big part of your profitability. Can you just help everyone understand why has Europe been more steady relative to North America, Brazil? What are you seeing to start Europe? You know, people look at the CEMA Index, it came back a little bit. So what would kind of surprise that European market positively? What would maybe make you start to be a little bit more concerned about the durability of that region?
Yeah. For us, again, the European market is, for those who are not familiar, it's about two-thirds of our overall business comes here out of the European market. Europe tends to be the most stable region for a couple points. One is you have the highest level of government subsidies. Generally speaking, in Western Europe, a farmer, around 50% of his or her income comes from government subsidies, and those tend to be very consistent. In addition to that, you have much better crop diversity for these farmers here. They're not completely focused on soy or corn, but you see much better crop diversity, and you also see a higher percentage of livestock here in Western Europe than you would see in the U.S. farmers. Livestock and dairy tend to be somewhat inversely correlated.
Grain prices are low, livestock and dairy farmers are doing well. Because you have a much better diversity of what's being grown here, coupled with those subsidies, it tends to result in a much more consistent order and pattern. As Greg said, as we think about relative to mid-cycle here, Europe usually fluctuates in the 90-110 range, and so a much stronger, more consistent order pattern for our farmers here. Now, the team in Europe has done exceptionally well. If I look at all of the volatility, whether that's been the Russo-Ukrainian War, the supply chain challenges in 2022, 2023, and just the general uncertainty around the world, the European team, our European team has excelled. We've grown market share.
Despite the strength of Fendt, they've actually grown share the last couple years with some of their new product introductions. The profitability has stayed exceptionally strong. Our Massey Ferguson and Valtra teams have also done very well in introducing new products, improving the quality of those products, improving the delivery to the dealers, and doing quite well in improving their share as well. The team in Europe has done an exceptional job in really maintaining a very strong margin profile while continuing to introduce new products that set the standard for the latest technology coming out of Fendt.
Perfect. You know, we just talked about Europe, which if you look, really has given you guys a steadiness to your earnings. The torque, one could say, is like North America, where if you look back at North America, you guys were doing near a 13% operating margin, just 2023. Now, you know, the business is loss-making given the deep downturn and what you were talking about with tariff costs. Just curious how far below when you look at that U.S. market, you know, Greg gave us where we are at mid-cycle. Just where do you feel like, Damon, is the break-even level where we start to see these volumes come back and you laid out what could be the driver of that?
How much do we need that market to come back to get back to break even? Can we get to be more profitable on a lower unit number relative to where we were last cycle?
If, again, if I'd asked this or answered this question pre-tariffs.
Yeah
I would have told you we needed to be around $2 billion. That's about the break-even point for our North American business. Obviously, with the current situation with tariffs rolling in, we'd have to be $200 million above that. Now, you know, we're working through that. Again, that North American industry, as Greg Peterson touched on, is extremely low right now, and our dealer inventories are a little bit above where we want them. We've been underproducing significantly now for the last six or seven quarters in North America. When you look at the level of our factory utilization in North America right now, it's down around 70% versus 2024 levels. You hear us talk about 50% year-over-year, but we started underproducing even in 2024.
You're running these large factories in North America at around 30% utilization. You can imagine the cost and the inefficiency rolling through those factories right now as we try to right-size dealer inventory relative to retail demand. When we think about the long-term run rates for all of our regions, ideally, we see them all in that mid-teen sort of range. Call it 13%-16%. South America was higher. At the peak, we saw that hitting 18%-20%. You alluded to North America. The potential for our businesses are there. Again, given the what we do in manufacturing large piece of equipment, when the industries are low, that absorption is quite punitive to us.
When we think about the long-term run rate, we can definitely get back into the double-digit margins in North America. When you look at what we've done, two things, with adding PTx, the Trimble business into the portfolio, that's running at the time when the markets were stronger, that was running at around a 30% operating margin or EBITDA margin. We see no reason that business can't go back to that. The gross margins continue to be strong. It's just that the industry has gotten so weak that that business carries very high incrementals and decrementals. As we see that business coming back, we see huge opportunity there. The other thing that we did is we sold off our Grain and Protein business, Michael, and you remember that.
That was sort of an ancillary business, heavily centered in North America. It was a low growth, single-digit margin perspective. When we look at just the acquisition of Trimble, PTx Trimble into our portfolio, the divestment of grain and protein, moving us back up to mid-cycle, that alone adds around 150 basis points to the total company's business, just that portfolio change. Significant opportunities for us to improve our profitability, but significantly in North America, where PTx Trimble has good margin profile, and there was a heavy weight of grain and protein there.
That was really helpful. I like to actually bring that to another big conversation that was happening after your Q4 results, where, you know, in Q4, you hit what a lot of, like, cap goods analysts would say is kind of like the trifecta, where you got inventories down, you got better than expected pricing, and you were able to gain share. I think that the question I got from investors was, How is that possible? Is that sustainable? I know there's a lot of moving pieces there, but like you said, you guys are taking inventory out. We're trying to get pricing because of tariffs, and you're even gaining share.
Can you kinda walk through what you're able to accomplish in Q4 and how that kinda sets you up of being able to pull on all those different levers as we think of 2026 since we are in a very dynamic environment right now?
Yeah. The team in North America did an exceptional job last year, and it's kind of a culmination of several things. There's not one variable. Last year we had great market share performance. North America had its best market share gain ever in our history. When I unpacked the market share gain, it wasn't one brand, it was both Massey Ferguson and Fendt. It wasn't even one product. It was across the portfolio. Tractors did well, sprayers did well, combines did well. When we step back and say, "Well, what are the drivers that are leading to that?" It's a couple things. You know, there's a few things. One is we've worked to be the most farmer-focused company in the industry. What does that mean?
It means trying to deliver the products that the farmers want, but also delivering in a way that's advantageous to them. We talk about our net promoter score hit the highest level we've ever had in the company. That means for the net promoter score, that means the farmers like what you're doing. It's making sure the products are ready for them. It's making sure they're ready to receive those products. It's making sure that our dealers know what they need to do to help them come up to speed. It's been a very concerted effort to make sure that between us, our dealers, and our farmers, they know what they're getting, they know how to use it, they know how to operate it, they go through the training, and we've really seen that net promoter score step up.
The other thing that we do in North America, which is unique to AGCO, is we have what we launched is called FarmerCore. FarmerCore, because we're really building out the Fendt brand in North America, we've been able to leverage mobile fleets, the connected machines, much more effectively than maybe others who have a very strong established brick-and-mortar distribution network. Our dealers now, as we roll out FarmerCore, they're doing 85%+ of the work on the farm. You think about the old days when you and I grew up, we used to go shopping at the mall. We used to go get everything there. Well, today, we, you and I shop on Amazon, everything comes to us.
FarmerCore is the equivalent of Amazon, where based on those connected machines, that dealer's going onto your farm, doing the work there, doing the service, potentially doing other work. That farmer, he or she's getting a lot of that work done at a time which is convenient for him or her. They're getting usually more work done, which is great for the farmer. They love it. Our independent dealers like it because now they're building smaller brick-and-mortar stores. Instead of these big 10- or 12-bay stores, they're building three or four bay stores, putting mobile trucks in, so they're covering a lot more white space with their trucks. Their investment costs go down, so their payback is their investment cost is lower, their payback is better, their absorption through parts and service is better, so they're generally more profitable.
AGCO's better 'cause we have a happier farmer, and we're getting better parts and service revenue because those dealers are using our parts and to really drive the parts and service. It's really worked out well. When you explain that to the farmer between FarmerCore, the quality of the products, and how we are explaining the value of what we're bringing, that's really translating into a lot of that share gain that we've been able to see here in the North American market. We feel good about what we're doing. Again, if it was one new product, you may wonder whether it's sustainable.
When you see it across both brands and across all the products, and you know things like FarmerCore are really gaining traction in the industry, you know, those give us a lot of confidence that we can sustain this and continue to grow.
That's great. An area that always gets a lot of focus when we talk about growth is Brazil, and you guys have good share there as well. You know, Greg, what are we seeing in Brazil? Because it feels like structurally that is where there's gonna be a lot of growth. You know, you can harvest twice. You know, it feels like that is the next ag superpower in terms of regions. It's been in a kind of a tough spot, so the data looks like it's been a little tough to start the year. Any kind of shed light on what we should be looking at in Brazil over the next few quarters to get us comfortable if we're turning?
Sure. Brazil is one of the few places in the world where there's actually new farmland being put into production. That's quite unique. That's in the Mato Grosso region, the Midwestern part of Brazil. Historically, most of the farming's been done in the southern part of the country where, you know, all three of the major players have very established dealer networks and where a lot of the smaller mid-sized farms are. Over the last decade, a lot of resources have been put into developing massive farms using, you know, the latest and greatest farm techniques. You know, Brazil's become leaders and, if not the leader, one of the leaders in most of the major agricultural categories. They've stepped up while the trade conflict's been going on between China and the U.S.
Brazil has stepped up and has kind of filled the void, especially for soybeans. They're quite productive. Farming down there has been, you know, very important to their local economy. Normally, the governments are very supportive. This is an election year. We're expecting to see support from the government in advance of the election in order to maybe help them with the election. Typically, that happens during election years. Just because of the infrastructure build that's gone on because of the real fertile land in that Mato Grosso region, that's a very important area for farm investment. We're expecting, I guess, as we get through this kind of drought condition as we see an inflection in commodity prices to see demand pick up in that region.
Makes sense. Damon, I do wanna touch on this 'cause it's usually saved for last is capital allocation. Yet there has been inflection when we think of AGCO and the capital allocation priorities, it feels like. Obviously, you know, there was a big shareholder, and you guys came to agreement. I think this is important because it is a little bit of a step function change for AGCO and how they think about you generate a lot of cash, how you think about that cash. Just for the audience and everyone, like, can you kinda give everyone an update of, you know, this has been a priority for you.
Mm-hmm.
Like, since you've come here, the change that's been played and how that's kinda inflecting your view on how you guys allocate capital for shareholders going forward?
Yeah, sure. Again, as I say, I'll elaborate in a second here.
Yeah.
It's a sign, huge opportunity. As I said, last year we generated a record free cash flow of $740 million. When I think about the uses of our cash here, first priority is gonna be for us to reinvest in our business. As we said, we're growing. We see huge opportunities to grow our PTx business. We wanna get that up to $2 billion, so we're gonna continue to focus on capital. We're gonna continue to focus on R&D back into the business. I think what you should expect to see for us is an engineering and R&D budget around 4% of sales. As we grow, we're gonna continue to invest for those new innovative products coming out of our equipment side, but also PTx.
That'll be first and foremost, we'll be reinvesting back in the business. Wanna retain my investment-grade balance sheet. Again, we sit here today as an investment-grade company, both by S&P and Moody's. Hopefully, we don't see any changes with that, but I wanna make sure I preserve that for access to capital. Third is gonna be tuck-in acquisitions. We did the large joint venture where we own 85% of the JV with Trimble. If you look at, we did five or six other smaller tuck-in type acquisitions. We'll continue to be active in that front. Again, as the industry continues to evolve, as we start to bring more and more technology to the market, whether that's autonomy, things like targeted spraying, there's a lot of small companies out there who struggle to commercialize that.
They're things that we may be building internally, where if I can buy that technology and accelerate my access to market by a year or two, that buy versus build may make sense to buy. We'll continue to be active looking in areas like that. I would expect we would use free cash flow for any. There's nothing big out there, but most generally would be free cash flow to acquire those tuck-in type acquisitions. Then we get back to our shareholder returns directly to shareholders. As you alluded to, we were in a period with our largest shareholder, who was not interested in selling their shares as part of a broader repurchase.
Given the ownership structure and some of the history of that shareholder showing an activist tendencies at time, we had opted out for special variable dividends to pay these once a year. With the agreement that we reached with them, they are now willing to participate pro rata in our share repurchases. We announced middle of last year a $1 billion share repurchase authorization from our board. In the fourth quarter, we did a $250 million ASR. TAFE will deliver their $50 million of that here in the first half of the year, so we'll have about $300 million done. We will focus our free cash flow more on that. We'll still do our quarterly dividends.
We normally reassess our capital allocation to shareholders in the second quarter, and so we'll decide whether we change the quarterly dividend at that point, and then we'll also present to our board of directors our recommendations for any incremental share repurchases under that $1 billion authorization. As we look forward here, again, you should expect to see us with our strong free cash flow generation really directing more of that into the repurchases. If I look at the outlook that we've given this year, we've assumed nothing related to share repurchases, so any announcements would be accretive to the earnings per share outlook that we've given for the year.
Perfect. All right, gentlemen. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thanks, AGCO. Thanks, everyone.