Honeywell Aerospace Inc. (HONA)
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Morgan Stanley's 14th Annual Laguna Conference

Sep 15, 2026

Summary

Revised 2026 guidance reflects ongoing supply chain constraints, but investments and operational changes are easing bottlenecks and boosting key commodity output. Demand is strong in commercial and defense. The company expects aftermarket and margin recovery from 2027, supported by innovation and clear capital allocation.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Good morning, everyone. Lots of exciting things in industrial world at Morgan Stanley, but things are looking up for sure. I'm Kristine Liwag, Morgan Stanley's Head of Aerospace & Defense Equity Research. I'm very excited to host our next panel. For our next panel, we have Jim Currier, CEO of Honeywell Aerospace. But before we get started, we'll do the standard disclosure for these, and you'll probably memorize them by end of day. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, and I'm not sure anybody ever actually did have questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. With that, very excited to have Jim here with me.

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Thank you.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Jim, good morning.

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Good morning. How are you today?

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

You've now been the CEO of Honeywell Aerospace as a standalone company for about two and a half months. Can you share with us what have been the biggest surprises, either positive or negative, that you've come across in your tenure?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yeah. First and foremost, I'll hit on the negative. It's undoubtedly very clear the most negative thing that has happened since the separation was the fact that we had to revise our guide on a full year basis for 2026. Some of the things that we were expecting from a supply base standpoint to unlock and some of the transformation initiatives that we had in works were not materializing at the pace that we had expected them to. It's largely attributable, a couple of things, some delays and transitions that were occurring, some delays in second sources that were coming online, and then also some yield and quality issues that were occurring with those transitions and/or those second sources.

As a result of those moving to the right, it required us to do an adjustment to our guide for 2026, and I would say understandably, and that is the most negative thing coming out of the spin, relative for us in our first couple of months. On a positive note, coming out of that revised guide, it's really reflective of the speed at which we can move as well as a standalone, as opposed to being a part of the conglomerate.

The way we've reacted as a result of that issue that we have encountered with our supply base, and the fact that some of that transitions were moving to the right, is the speed at which we were able to change the operating system, the speed at which we've been able to change some of the ways we wanted to invest in the supply base to continue to unlock more going forward. Those are things whereby without the layers of the conglomerate to have to go back and see how we want to invest and where we want to move capital and the like, that allows us that ability with none of those layers in place to be able to move at speed. That's actually been a very positive as a reaction from this.

I think the second positive I would make mention of is the resiliency of the demand that we have coming into Honeywell Aerospace. Even though we've had an inability to meet the current demand profile as required by our customers, whether it's commercial or whether it's defense, what we've noted is that the resiliency of that demand, the resiliency of the order book, the resiliency of the backlog that we have, has been untouched and is actually at record levels for us on a go-forward basis. I think those are the two that I would say are very positives, but obviously offset by the major negative that we had to do.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Yeah, super helpful, Jim. Now that you're a standalone company with the separation, has anything changed in your thinking about your top three priorities in the next 12- 18 months?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

From a priority standpoint, I don't think anything has changed. The way we attack those priorities is changing as a result. I'll go back to the supply chain issue that I mentioned a moment ago. How we were addressing it, the level of focus that was being applied to it, the operating system that we have built around that is changing. Case in point is that as a result of what transpired here, we have roughly 10 or so suppliers that we consider to be constrained. Those are suppliers that just cannot meet the demands for our products and our portfolio across both commercial and defense.

I personally spend my time with them as a result of that, going to their facilities, working with my counterparts at those sites, looking at the root causes, identifying the action plans associated with resolution, and then a weekly cadence of follow-ups with them, making sure that we're on plan. We're seeing the benefits of that materializing as well as a result. We'd have sunrise meetings, sunset meetings. Sunrise meetings are associated with truly what is needed for this week, next week, the following week. The sunset meetings are strategically around the transformation initiatives that we have in place. That's how we're re-energized and refocused around the operating system to attack those particular issues. The priorities are the same. It's just the way we are going after them with a much higher sense of urgency and speed and reinvestment profiles is really what has changed.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Yeah, super helpful. Supply chain has clearly been a pain point, and this pain is more acute for you versus some of your competitors today. Can you take us back in time for some of the investors who may not have followed Honeywell before the spin? What is the root cause of the supply chain? Why is your supply chain more fragile than peers? Any sort of tangible examples of what's really happening in these watch suppliers.

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yeah, it's a really good question, and I think we have to go on a little bit of a historical journey here as part of the conglomerate of Honeywell as we were operating within. It really starts back in about the 2010 timeframe. From 2010 to 2019, as the industry for A&D was not growing at the levels that we see today, there was an initiative that was launched around maximizing our supply chain efficiency, maximizing the productivity. So we went very heavy in single sourcing across the supply base. We went very heavy on outsourcing across our supply base. I am not saying that others in the A&D industry did not do that, but I would argue, did they do it at the same scale at which we were doing it? The way I look at that is the data point.

If you look at how our margins were growing over that period of time compared to our peers, is sort of indicative of the scale upon which we exercised that operating playbook and the depth and the breadth that we did across that playbook. Now you pivot into the 2020, 2022 timeframe. COVID hits, and that was really a huge distinguishing moment between ourselves and the rest of our A&D peer group. Again, as part of the conglomerate of Honeywell, the focus was preserving margins at all costs. So there was a substantial amount of cost-cutting that was occurring across the organization, and doubling down on that supply chain initiative that I mentioned a moment ago. In the aerospace part of the business, we fully recognized that demand was going to come back.

The difference was our A&D peers did not follow that same sort of mantra around deep cost-cutting, and therefore, they were preparing over that two-year period for when the demand cycle was going to come back. You think about now where we are, and when I came into this role back in 2023, I pivoted around to know we are going to invest back into our supply base. We are not going to continue what we were doing from 2020 to 2022, put in over $1 billion over the last couple of years. We have been unlocking the supply base as a result of doing that across our entire breadth of our portfolio of electronics and mechanical, and we have been continuing on that path for quite some time.

The net-net of all of that is that we are running about 18-24 months, that period of time between 2020 and 2022, where we were deep cutting, where others were not. We are running about 18-24 months behind our peer group. But now, as a separated entity and a standalone, we control our ability to continue to invest, and at the CapEx levels that are necessary for the business. We will continue to do that in the manner that we have been doing it over the last couple of years under my tenure.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Jim, it is great to hear that some of these progress initiatives have started in 2023. Why is it that forecasting the recovery has been more difficult? When you think about what drives your confidence in your ability to meet your forecast, what has changed? Did it change regarding the forecasting approach, your inventory approach, any sort of change within your expectations? That will help drive some of that confidence?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yeah. It is the complexity of the transformations that we are underway at the moment, which tends to have a little bit of more ambiguity around the completion thereof and then the eventual wrap. Last week we put out a scorecard. We kind of provided a lot more detail and granularity as to what is happening within our supply base across Honeywell Aerospace. If you would have looked at that scorecard at the start of 2023, it would have looked very different. Today we have about 70 suppliers that we consider to be critical or constrained. Critical being you have the capacity to deliver to our needs, but you just have an inability to do it reliably and consistently, and you have an undue impact on our revenue for the cost of the commodity that you provide to us.

A constraint, being those 10 that I mentioned a moment ago, kind of fall into the four categories of complex machining, castings, forgings, and bearings. That's kind of been where we're at at this particular moment in time. That scorecard that we put out, if we would've recreated that scorecard back in 2022, the 70 that we're talking about would've been in the hundreds of suppliers that we were dealing with at the time. Those investments that we've made from 2023 have whittled that down to resolving our electronics portion of our supply base, a large portion of the mechanical portion of the supply base, and now we're down to these four commodities. And these four become very complex. It's not like we're starting that journey now. We've been on this journey for some time.

But when these start to materialize, from the moment that you initiate them, can take anywhere from a couple of months to a couple of quarters, depending upon if it's CapEx related, tooling related, and the like. And so these become very complex. Even though we started some of these about a year ago for these high critical areas, the point in time where they're materializing, because they are incredibly complex, and as you ramp, we started to see yield and quality issues at the supply base. It ended up pushing that to the right as a result.

Because of that yield quality that we were dealing with as part of the transitions, either from supplier going from site A to site B or bringing on a second source, has made the predictability of that to be much more complicated than what we had envisioned it to be just a few months ago. However, the action plans that we have launched as a result of what has transpired, we're starting to see the benefits of those, particularly across those four commodities.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Jim, it's really helpful to get these KPIs from you, going from 100 to 70. That's a clear measure of progress. And now, down to these 10 companies, four commodities. I guess, are there additional detailed KPIs that you could share with us to see your progress in addressing these four constrained areas? And can you share what you've seen in the most recent data to give confidence for your outlook for the rest of the year?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Of course. Some of it was in the KPIs that we shared a little bit last week in the presentation that we've put out there, and that's available to everyone. It kind of focuses around, as you would imagine, supplier output. Are they growing year- on- year? Are they meeting the demands of our business? Not only are you growing, so if you're growing 5%, that's interesting, but are you growing 10%, 15%, 20%, which is what we need out of the supply base to drive the growth for the demand that we have coming in within the business. How is your yield looking? How is the quality? How is the scrap? How are your detailed plans coming together relative to that?

Those are all a set of KPIs that we track on a regular and recurring basis, particularly around these key four areas of constraint that exist within our supply base. What have we seen in terms of some benefits that have been realized here as we have focused around these four, they have different problem statements associated with them. When you think about complex machining, we have two very specific suppliers within our supply base where we represent a very disproportionate amount of their business overall, and their constraint is skilled labor. They have no issues in getting the material. We have no issues in getting the material to them. It's just critical, skilled labor that they're unable to recruit in the areas that they're at to meet the demands.

What we have done is we've actually taken dozens of our own skilled labor, moved them out of our factories, and we have embedded them within these suppliers as a result. Therefore, enabling a second shift operation to be realized, or a third shift, or weekend shifts. The output transition that we've seen over the last 30- 45 days, just off of that low-hanging fruit of just injecting the right skilled labor, has been about a 30% increase year-o n-y ear as what we've seen over the last 30- 45 days. If you pivot down to castings and forgings, our tooling is now that we had invested in is starting to come online.

We're starting to see the benefits of capacity output increases because the tooling that we're putting in place is to replace older tooling that has worn and started creating yield and quality issues as a result. We've been able to get rid of some of the quality issues, get rid of some of the yield issues, and then by natural effect of that is the output increases as a result of doing that. In the area of bearings, as an example, one of our suppliers did a transition from within one of their facilities, has had additional capacity at one location, so they wanted to move one of our products over there, and we had a second source come online as well. They're coming online. That transition is materializing. The second source is materializing.

What we've seen on the bearing side is that 35% of our total annual demand that is necessary for bearings has all come in in the last 90 days. So in one quarter, it has all come in. We are seeing that progression of increases in output from them as a result of these investments that we are making. That is going to set us up very well for 2027, because as this supply base is unlocking under those critical commodities as a result, it will set us up so that our 2027 looks very different than 2026.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Great. Thanks, Jim. One of the key areas of focus for investors right now has been air traffic flattening. At the same time, when you look at the spares market, the constrained supply really provides very scarce supply coming into that market. Can you give us a level of status in terms of where are you able to ship today versus where that demand is? What does that demand curve look like, especially as air traffic flattens this year as a result of what is happening in the Middle East?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yeah, I think it is important to understand our commercial aftermarket a little bit here and just our commercial business overall, because there tends to be an over-index onto the air transport market for a moment. I think that is where Honeywell Aerospace is somewhat unique. If you look at our commercial OE business, half of that business is air transport, half of that business is business aviation with two completely different sets of economics associated with them. Pivoting to the commercial aftermarket, as you mentioned a moment ago, 60% of our commercial aftermarket is air transport. 40% of our commercial aftermarket is biz av. Where we are positioned in business aviation is exceptionally well in the high growth aspects of the market segments within business aviation that are growing.

That is going to be anywhere from super mid-size category to long range to ultra long range aircraft, where we have our HTF engines and our APUs and our avionics and environmental control systems and cabin pressurization control systems. So albeit we are seeing some pressure globally in the industry around the air transport, we have seen zero decline in our entitlement relative to that as we measure that on a month-over-month basis, as well as what we are seeing is this continued growth in business aviation, which has been highly resilient, particularly in the categories of aircraft that I am mentioning a moment ago. So our demand in commercial aftermarket has been exceptionally strong and is actually above what our entitlement is in that particular business.

As we look, however, around supply output, as the OE is growing and our aftermarket is growing, if we are not getting the supply output that is necessary to support both, we have to make some decisions at that point in time. One of the key tenets within Honeywell Aerospace is that we will not allow an aircraft to go out of the production site missing any Honeywell parts at the end of the day. If that means we need to allocate more to the OE, which is what we have been having to do here over the last few months, particularly in Q2, that means less goes to spares for the aftermarket, then hence it creates a little bit of a depression for us in that transitory period that we are going through.

You do not need a tremendous amount of additional output to be able to feed the aftermarket side and get a nice lift in your revenue because as you know, the economics in the aftermarket are very, very different in the OE, particularly as it pertains to spares.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Now, Jim, do you think when supply comes back online and you are able to deliver, do you expect a catch-up period for spares? Or is this kind of period more of a lost revenue and you go back to a more normalized trajectory? How do we think about that curve?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yeah, I think I would anchor it first on 2030 for a moment. We are still committed to our 2030 financial targets that we had set out at Investor Day, which was that 6%-8% CAGR between 2026 through 2030. Clearly, with a reset of our guide to 4%-5% that we have had to do for 2026, what that means is there will be a period of catch-up, and that period of catch-up will start in 2027 as we get more output from the supply base due to the initiatives that I mentioned a moment ago, and then our ability to now start allocating more to the aftermarket, which again, has those different set of economics, and therefore, that is why we say 2027 is going to look very different than 2026.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Super helpful. Going back to margins, you called out earlier with the actions that Honeywell has taken from that 2010 to 2019 period, that yielded insignificant margin expansion. When we think about the supplier initiatives you have to do today in order to increase output, how do we think about the balance of margins for those components? Because presumably, they could cost more than the previous strategy, and then also the balances of additional initiatives you have for reducing costs, and also, you have significant volume as well. How do we balance these items, and where should margin trajectory be in the next few years?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yeah. It's still going to be on that path that we committed to our 2030 targets that we mentioned at Investor Day. Now granted, going through this transitory period, it does create some margin pressures as a result through the investments that we are making, through the fact that we're not able to allocate as much to the aftermarket, which again, has those very different set of economics associated with them. It does create those pressures. But as we look upon 2027 and beyond, the unlock of just having more supply going in through our factories and the productivity efficiency that is enabled, the productivity enhancements that are enabled, the fixed cost leverage that we get, the volume leverage that we get from that, more than offset through our analysis, more than offset the cost that we are incurring at the moment.

At present, our factories are operating very inefficiently due to the disruptions that are coming in. When we stabilize that, and as that output increases, it drives a tremendous amount of productivity and volume leverage for us that's going to be able to mitigate those concerns going forward. Then there's the element around price. Price will change for us starting in 2027 and through that 2030 period of time, which also becomes an enabler for us as well. We're still very confident on our 2030 algorithm for the financial targets, both top line and bottom line.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Going back to the supply chain, we've seen a major competitor of yours acquire a large casting house.

When you think about the pain points that you have in your supply chain, you've talked about the actions you're taking and some insourcing, but do you see the need of potentially buying additional suppliers, taking them in-house? Can you share some sort of magnitude of the pain points that you have and what it takes to just buy machines yourself versus buying additional companies?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yeah. I think just one point of clarification, the acquisition, the acquirer of Consolidated Precision Products is not necessarily a competitor to Honeywell. We don't have any overlap within the portfolio, and actually, I view that as being a positive for the industry overall. The type of parts that we receive from Consolidated Precision Products are very different than the type of parts that GE Aerospace receives from them as a result. The product portfolio for those product sets do not overlap in any way, shape, or form. At the end of the day, I view that as a very positive for A&D that that acquisition transacts and goes forward. In terms of how we look at our own supply base, I go back to what we were doing during that 2010 to 2019 time period where we're doing a substantial amount of outsourcing.

The typical process is you look at what's core capability, what's non-core capability. What's non-core capability, you move out. We did that very quickly in that period of time that I was referencing. The question came back, "Is that really core? Can that line move to the right a little bit more?" We pushed a lot of core out. With that understanding, it does beg the question, do you start becoming more vertically integrated? We've done some of that already. Some of those core technologies and capabilities that we had outsourced over the years, over the last two years, we've been bringing those back in-house. Is there more to be done relative to that? Absolutely.

I think there's an ability for us to be able to do that short-term and longer-term as well as we think about driving more output and as we think about driving more resiliency and robustness of our supply base across the industry.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Thanks, Jim. We've covered commercial aerospace quite a bit, maybe pivoting to defense and space. Defense and space is also showing significant robust demand and s upply also has constrained that environment. Can you talk about milestones that you're watching to convert the backlog faster, and also how to think about the demand signals from the U.S. versus international customers?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

That's a really good question. I think everyone knows that 40% of our business within Honeywell Aerospace is defense. I think it's important also to characterize a little bit what that 40% represents. About a third or about 30% of our total defense business is international defense, and the bulk of what we provide into the international defense market is at commercial pricing. I think it's important to understand that landscape a little bit. What we have seen is incredibly strong demand, both domestically and internationally for our products. Internationally, our book-to-bill is about 1.5 and growing double digit in that regard. To your earlier comment about supply output, there's a similar parallel when we talk about commercial markets, OE and aftermarket, and then having to allocate to the OE side versus the aftermarket.

Remember, the supply base within our industry is one and the same. There is no such thing as a commercial industrial supply base or a defense industrial supply base, particularly for a company like Honeywell Aerospace, where most of our products are commercial that we end up selling into the defense market. My point around that is that if there is limited output coming from our suppliers, we make that same sort of decision on the defense side of the portfolio, and we will always prioritize national security as the number one priority in terms of allocation of parts. We do allocate more then to the domestic defense market than we are doing in the international market. That became very acute in Q2, as an example.

Our overall growth in Q2 on the defense side of our business was about 3%, rather anemic, of course, in this high-demand environment. But if you click one layer down relative to that, our defense domestic growth was about 10% year-on-year. Our international had declined about high singles overall, net the 3%. That again, was attributable to the limited output from our suppliers and us having to make the decision to prioritize national security versus our international defense partners.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Thanks, Jim. I think part of the separation of Honeywell Aerospace is that the big question from investors were the market share losses that the company has had for new Boeing and Airbus programs. Maybe looking in, likely this is beyond 2030 for the new clean sheet airplane, but can you talk about how you think about the opportunity set when that new clean sheet airplane comes? Also, when you would have to spend money on R&D, what level of commitment that you are willing to invest and how we think about that opportunity set?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

No, it's actually a really good question as we think about the future as well and where we are investing our R&D dollars. To be very clear, about 10%-11% of total revenue is actually invested in new product innovations and technologies, of which about 6% of that is customer funded and just north of 4% is actually internally funded. You can see that we're spending a lot of money on innovation and technology, point one. Point two that I would say relative to that is an understanding of our process or the way we approach the investment of our money. There is nothing that we design, develop, or innovate that is bespoke for an end market, whether it's air transport, business aviation, or defense, and there's nothing that is bespoke for a particular aircraft platform.

We do this mantra of we develop it once and we're going to deploy it everywhere. The reason why that is very important, particularly for a company like Honeywell Aerospace, where we operate in three very large end market segments of air transport, business aviation, and defense, is that the investment cycles for new aircraft and new platforms are different. The timelines are very different across those three end market segments. My point being is that the technologies that are going to be required on next-gen single aisle are going to be founded upon bleedless architecture systems from engines that change the entire infrastructure and architecture of the aircraft. You're going to move away from hydromechanical actuation systems to electromechanical actuation systems.

Those are all technologies that we are already developing today, and technologies for which we've already been selected for said technologies onto other platforms, non-commercial air transport, because there's nothing being developed in commercial air transport today. If you think about vapor cycle cooling systems, electric pressurization systems, electromechanical actuation systems, hybrid systems as well, our technologies that are under development will be certified on other platforms, non-commercial air transport in business aviation and defense, and be at the ready for when the selections are made on next-gen single aisle. The reason why that is hyper important is because it substantially reduces the risk of incorporating those technologies on a next-gen single aisle aircraft.

One of the biggest concerns that an OEM is going to have is: What is the technical maturity of these products that I am selecting to put onto my next-gen single aisle aircraft? Well, they're already certified. They're already qualified. They've already got a production plan in place and a manufacturing line in place producing for other end market segments. We develop it once, and then we deploy it everywhere. Not only are you reducing the technological risk associated with introducing that technology on next-gen single aisle, you're also reducing what we have all come to realize as a pain point, is the manufacturability at scale to support the demand. As we are developing these technologies, it's not just about technology differentiation, it's not just about reliability of the product, it's not just about performance of the product.

We are hyper-focused on the manufacturability of the product at scale so that all of these issues that have been occurring within our supply base, that become mitigated as we think about the future for new products that we are developing today, that are going to be highly manufacturable at volume to support all of the end markets.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

With this product portfolio that you have today, when you think about your content share on the next-gen programs today versus your content on the previous generation, do you think you can get back to where you were with the previous generation, or is it somewhere in between?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

No, I think we can get back to where we were. I think it's important to understand, though, some of the economics around some of those earlier selections that were made, those were decisions that were made 15+ years ago relative to that. It wasn't a question of the technology, because I get asked a lot of questions, have you under-invested in innovation? Is that why you lost perceived market share on the platforms? I can tell you categorically that is not what we have done within Honeywell Aerospace. Have we under-invested in other portions of the business? We talk about CapEx, we talk about factories and the like. I would say there's an argument to be made about that that has happened over the last 15- 20 years as a result.

Those were economic decisions that were made at that time, whereby the products were being looked as commodities, prices were being driven down, and it just did not make economic sense to continue forward with said selection on a platform. So they were economic decisions that were made as a result of that, not technologically driven.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Super helpful, Jim. I'm sure you get that question a lot.

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

I do, actually. I do get that question a lot.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

You'll probably get it more until the next program, so prepare for the next decade of the same question.

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yes.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Stepping back from the end markets, looking at your portfolio, you've got significant exposure across avionics, navigation, engines, power systems, control systems. What part of the portfolio are you most excited about, and which technology do you think you've advanced that the market underappreciates?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

It's a hard question, because the breadth of the portfolio makes it difficult to say is there one technology that I'm more excited about than another technology. If I break it down into the three businesses of electronic solutions as one, very excited about our sixth-gen Anthem avionics cockpit solution that started the qualification phase on other platforms relative to that, and the ability of what that new cockpit system represents for the future of aviation. This system is architected and designed completely different than any other avionics platform that we have designed before, such that it's scalable and applicable everything down from a smaller aircraft through a biz jet, through an air transport, and defense platforms, because it's so modular and scalable in how it's done. So that's exciting when I think about the avionics Anthem cockpit that we are developing.

If I look at our engines and power systems business, what we've been doing on HTF for biz jets and the technology that we're developing for our next-gen version of HTF is always very exciting. We think about what we're doing on APUs, auxiliary power units, for commercial air transport going forward is very exciting. What we do in our control systems business with our Honeywell Assure technology, which is that electromechanical actuation system or vapor cycle cooling with Honeywell Intune are all very exciting.

I think the point that I would make is that there isn't anywhere within the portfolio that we are not investing and are not investing heavily, because that's one of the things that I've always realized in my 20 years at Honeywell Aerospace as a key differentiator for why customers want our products is because of the technology and the capability that we enable on these aircraft platforms. The one I did not mention, though, which I would say is probably one of the more underappreciated technologies within Honeywell Aerospace is our navigation technology. It's commercial technology that is universally applied across air transport, business aviation, and defense. It is across every single precision-guided missile ammunition system in the U.S. arsenal, across almost every single precision-guided missile system internationally as well. The capability that is afforded by that technology is unbelievable in terms of its performance and capability.

The fact that we make over 100,000 nav products per year is just indicative of the robustness of the supply chain, the robustness of the manufacturing lines, and the ability to take that and address the current issues that are affecting the industry around resilient navigation, addressing spoofing and jamming issues that are occurring, and then developing alternate navigation technologies to address those issues. I think that's one thing that I would say within the portfolio is probably one of the more underappreciated assets.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

I tend to agree. The spoofing and the anti-jamming capabilities, seems like could also be applicable to the aerospace world commercial from the defense business.

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Absolutely.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Unfortunately.

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Yes, unfortunately.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

With that, how do you think about priorities for capital deployment? You are making investments for the supply chain, you are making investments in R&D.

You've got a lot of organic things to focus on. How do you think about that balancing with reducing leverage and also potentially doing buybacks or increasing dividends?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Number one priority for us is driving output growth. As we look about every investment dollar, the highest ROI that we're going to see is the more that we continue and invest in our own factories and in our suppliers to drive more output growth is the best benefit that we're going to realize. Part of that is also continuing that innovation machine that I mentioned a moment ago. Second priority would be around dividends and being comparable with our peers as we go forward as a standalone publicly traded company. Third priority would be around bolt-on M&As and maybe looking at more vertical integration that we can do relative to that. The fourth priority from a capital allocation perspective is going to be share buyback.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Thank you. Lastly, as you look at the next two quarters, what two or three proof points would you guide investors to know that the transition for the supply chain is being successful and things are going well?

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Tracking our KPIs. The KPIs that we were showing last week that's available. We will continue to show those on a go-forward basis. You'll be able to see the transition from suppliers that have been red that are moving into yellows and the output that we're realizing from there. That is a key set of KPIs that we will be very transparent with and share to be indicative of what the future growth of the business is going to be. The second part that I would say is just around commercialization. The continued capture of new business, new opportunities. What we did in securing the largest ever win in selectables when we secured the IndiGo win with 800 aircraft.

The continued winning and securing of those platforms, building off of the $105 billion worth of wins that we've had over the last four years, $15 billion of wins year to date, and seeing that commercialization engine continuing to go forward, for me, I think are the two critical things and the most important things that investors should be looking at.

Kristine Liwag
Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research, Morgan Stanley

Well, great. Well, thank you very much, Jim. This concludes our presentation with Honeywell Aerospace.

Jim Currier
CEO, Honeywell Aerospace

Thank you. Thank you.