You and the team always do a great job here at Barclays, so we're always, always glad to be here. You have great food here, too. I want to let you know.
Thanks.
Look, we ended the year with a backlog that was equal to what our backlog was at the beginning of the year, that being $6.9 billion. I will tell you that the, the composition of that backlog has changed over a year, and we had about $1 billion move from residential and Thermo King into commercial HVAC applied. And we are seeing tremendous growth within our commercial HVAC business, but really on a global basis. And there's some verticals that are very, very strong right now. We track about 14 different verticals. Now, if you look in A HRI, or if you look in Dodge, you may not find 14 verticals. We tend to subdivide some of the verticals, like office.
But areas where we're seeing a lot of strength, which is really helping to drive our backlog and our order rates, are in areas like data centers, high tech, industrial, education, healthcare, all very, very strong verticals where the solution typically requires an applied solution. So, and that's a sweet spot for Trane Technologies. So these are all highly engineered with our direct sales force, calling up end customers, helping sell solutions, not just products, but solutions, to these end customers. So this is a sophisticated sale that we do with our direct sales force that's highly technical and can have those conversations. So that's where we're seeing the growth. And, I think the advantage that we have is, with a direct sales force, we're really able to run to where the opportunity is. And it's not gonna be in traditional office.
At least it wasn't in 2023, and we think that's gonna be a soft vertical again in 2024. But we will go to where the opportunity is, and we have the opportunities to do that.
Perfect. And on that point, on kind of backlog strength in Applied HVAC, you know, are you expecting kind of the year ahead to be similar, you know, book to bill, let's say, at least one times, or it's getting against very tough comps now?
Yeah, we have very tough comps, and we've said for a long time now that backlog will normalize over time. We could argue about what the time is and what normal means, but I would say that our backlog is gonna be high for an extended period of time. And, you know, last year, for those that remember, I was trying to signal to everyone that we were gonna go into 2024 with a very strong backlog. So we said that: Look, the backlog is gonna be at least $6+ billion . Now, everyone forgot the beginning of that sentence, and they just remembered the $6 billion. For the last, I think it was the last nine months of the year, I answered questions about, mathematically, how do I get to $6 billion?
And I was like: I'm not saying I'm gonna be at $6 billion. I'm gonna be at $6+ billion . But the concept here is we're gonna have a very strong backlog going into 2024, and we obviously did. So I won't say a number, but I would tell you that we're gonna have a very strong backlog going into 2025.
Yeah, that's good enough. One of the areas of pressure, you know, as you said, there's two areas of pressure in the backlog the last year, residential and then transport refrigeration. So maybe sort of touch on residential first as a mix of direct and distributor channels. How do you see that distributor channel inventory level today? You know, when do you think we sort of come out of that overhang or headwind on distribution?
Sure. Well, residential, just to remind everyone, it's about 20% of our, our business. But I'll start with saying that this is a great business, and we really like this business. Over time, we see our residential business being a GDP plus business over time. To answer your question, Julian, we're about 50% two-step distribution, or 50% three-step distribution. So with a three-step distribution, we're selling to an independent wholesale distributor, who sells to a dealer, who sells to a, a homeowner. That's where we have inventory that's been in the channel. At the end of the third quarter, I told everyone that I believed that the destocking would be completed in the fourth quarter. I, I was wrong, okay? I think there's more destocking to happen in that channel.
I think it will continue, certainly through the first quarter and probably into the second quarter, but we'll see how the year plays out. You know, obviously, peak season doesn't start for a while, so we'll wait to see how that kind of is in front of us. We'll see how that plays. But I would also tell you that for the full year of 2024, we're calling residential to be flat. Okay, could it be ±1 or ±2%? Sure. But we're calling it flat, and that's what we have modeled into our guide for the year, and we're very confident in our guide.
How do you see the sort of final demand on the consumer side of residential? You know, is there any kind of fatigue from paying up high prices, or do you think the overall demand, leaving aside destock, restock, is this final demand kind of very solid in reality?
It's a great question. I think there's a lot of variables there, and if you listen to the evening news, you'll hear all the bad news. Okay, I don't think it's that bad. But we always look at what we call sell-through. That's what's actually getting to the end consumer, and it hasn't been horrible, okay? It hasn't been as strong as we thought it was gonna be in the fourth quarter, just to be clear, but we'll see how it plays out. We won't really know until we get into peak season. So-
Yes.
You know, let's wait till April and May. We'll see how the season starts, and we'll see what demand is. I think there was also some confusion in the resi I don't want to spend too much time on resi, but-
Yeah.
There was a lot of confusion at the end of the year, right? There was this EPA ruling, which was, you know, what's the sell-through period gonna be? So we had some independent wholesale distributors got a little bit nervous about that. That's been now clarified by the EPA, so you now have until the end of 2025 to sell through a 410 product or older product. So I think that's kind of a burden that's been lifted, and we support that decision by the EPA.
Perfect. On the transport side, you know, how are we thinking about kind of typical downturn there, duration or magnitude?
Yeah, I, transport business, again, great business, okay?
Yeah.
We love it. I had the opportunity to run it for a long time, at one time in my career. Look, it's, it's more cyclical than HVAC, and, you know, a downturn started there. We could say in the back half of 2023, certainly the fourth quarter, which was even weaker than we thought it could be. 2024, we've been very clear. We see the Americas market will be down 10%. We'll do better than that, which, by the way, we've been better in our transport business for a number of years now. In Europe, it will be down, you know, thinking of it as mid-single digits. Again, I think we'll do better than that. The good news is that in 2025, the markets are projected to snap back, and we'll see.
But it's a great business, and it's... I had the opportunity, right after our fourth quarter earnings call, in fact, got on an airplane and went to the Thermo King North America dealer meeting, right? So we have all of our dealers together, and you know, you could see that they were all concerned about the year in front because the forecast is to be down. And it was funny because when I ran the business back in 2008, if you go back in time, what was happening in 2008? It was called the Financial Crisis, right? The bubble, right? Real estate bubble. And you would have thought the world was ending. And I told them back in 2008, 2009, I said, "Look, we're gonna pay attention to three things.
We're gonna pay attention to the customer. We're gonna continue to invest and be innovative in our business, and we're gonna make sure we have the right culture for our people. And those are the three things we're gonna work at." So I was speaking to them, and I reminded them as to what I said in 2008, and I said, "So I have three words to leave you with, as we go into 2024. Let's pay attention to the customer. Let's make sure we continue to innovate business, and we're gonna always pay, you know, attention to our culture to make sure it's a great place to work." It's a great business. It really is. I've been in it for a long time. It's more cyclical. It will snap back, and it's a great part of our portfolio.
Great. Then, firm-wide, you know, there's always discussion about sort of price versus, particularly in HVAC. Your price assumption for the year looks low, perhaps to many people. Maybe just any sort of context around that and industry competitive distribution.
Sure. I'll let Chris fill in on that one.
Thanks, Julian. Yeah, we guided to 6%-7% organic revenue growth, 70% reported growth for 2024, and threw out an early estimate of around 1 point of price. We think of that as primarily carryover from 2023, and we had some announcement actions in fourth quarter, maybe through early January. Look, it's not a cap, it's a starting point on the year. We like setting targets that we can meet or exceed throughout the year. So could the price be a little bit stronger? Could it be 2 points? It could be. We'll update investors as we work throughout the year. But what I would tell you is the business operating system at the company really has improved over the last five years in terms of the nimbleness around price.
So as we see cost inputs today being primarily what's called tame around the Tier 1, other than maybe, you know, steel. Tier 2 is inflationary. Wage inflation would be a really strong example there. Refrigerant inflation would be an area there. We're making sure we're pricing effectively for cost inputs, and that's where we need to remain nimble. We're pricing for innovation. Dave talked about the transport portfolio and investing the same in the residential portfolio, investing for pricing for innovation. But then last but not least, we need to make sure we've got a customer for life, right?
So we're gonna make sure that we're pricing effectively and think about commercial HVAC systems and the backlog that Dave talked about, really shifting to applied systems that have long service tails, that can bring 8x-10x the amount of revenue over the life of that service contract or agreements, versus the original, cost of the equipment. We want to make sure we have a customer for life there. So we're not hard capping it at one. Let's see how we do throughout the year.
Perfect. And maybe on the commercial HVAC side, you know, there's different definitions, I guess, of what light commercial means, but I don't know, how would you characterize that cutoff? And, you know, is there any kind of split you could give us on applied versus
I think in 2024, applied is gonna be a lot stronger than unitary.
Yeah.
We saw the same phenomena happened in 2023. It's always different. I, I know that there's a lot of different definitions out there, which always makes me nervous about what, what people consider light versus large. And it's always difficult to say, well, what's the compare look like in the light side-
Yes
... versus a competitor? And there's all different variables that go in there. Some of the light product is actually stored or stocked in IWD, so it's very confusing. At the end of the day, look at light product that's less than 25 tons, look at large or greater than 25 tons in unitary. But I would tell you that we don't look at it at the product level. We don't forecast it at a product level other than through our SIOP process to make sure our manufacturing is smooth. We look at it as selling solutions to customers. When you have that type of perspective on how you take care of a customer, it's you're agnostic as to the product that you're going to use for the solution. You're more interested in the outcome that the customer is going to see.
That's kind of how we approach it with our direct sales force.
When you look at the applied business, you know, I think something that Trane did earlier than most was you know, a lot of sensors packed into equipment, you know, every piece leaving the factory. Have you seen kind of utilization of those sensors, that data, whether yourselves or the customers, you know, how has that evolved the last five, 10 years, let's say?
Yeah, I mean, we were probably one of the first out there with what we called at the time, I'm—though I'm not gonna take credit for this marketing because I didn't agree with it, but factory-mounted controls. It has a different nomenclature than what we're really doing here. But yeah, we put a lot of intelligence in our product early on because we had this vision that said, "Look, we're gonna be able to get a lot of data from our products, and we're gonna be able to make the asset perform the way it was always designed over time." And, you know, seven years ago, when I made that decision, it was sort of like I didn't know exactly what it was going to be, but I knew it was gonna be a big idea.
And here we are, you know, in 2024, and we're connecting our assets. I mean, we have, we hired a Chief Digital Officer, and I was saying that we had 2 million connected assets. He came to me and says, "Dave, I think your number's off by a factor of two. We have, like, over 4 million connected assets on a global basis." But at the end of the day, it's not how many assets you have connected, it's the data deriving from those assets, and then how do you, how do you use that data in a structured way to make the asset perform the way it was always designed to handle it, believe it. So it's not just about predictive, to say, "Oh, what, what might, might happen? When will this fail?" That's part of it. Sure, there's goodness that comes there.
It's really about the data and then being able to compare that to others to make sure that it's, in fact, optimal. I always tell people that our service business has moved from, you know, 10 years ago, it used to be break/fix, or we want to be connected to an asset so we can reduce truck calls, right? So our service business can become more efficient. And that happens, but really what it's about is how much energy is being consumed by the product. And that's where the... If 40% of all the energy in a building is heating and cooling, that's where the opportunity is. And myself, as well as a lot of other people, had that, you know, foresight, you know, seven, eight years ago, to really build all this intelligence in.
To be fair, we're winning in the marketplace today because we have this data, and we're able to take the data and turn it into useful information for our customers.
When you look at the aftermarket portion of the large commercial business or the applied business, you know, how much of that, if it's possible to say, or what's been the increase in the portion of it that's tied to more contractual or recurring?
Yeah, I mean, it's a difficult question, but first of all, if we sell an applied system, these systems are under some sort of warranty for a period of time. And depending on where you are in the world, or depending on if you buy an extended warranty like that. During that time, we're connected to the asset, and we want to be connected to that system because obviously we want to make sure it's performing the way it was designed. And then, you know, as that, the warranty period would end, we're back with our direct sales force again, showing the value of what it's like to be connected to an asset. And you might, you know... I was, I was asked a question earlier, like, "Well, these are new systems. Of course, they're going to perform." You'd be surprised, right?
It's all mechanical that goes wrong with the system. There's a lot of human interface. Think a building like this, think about all the overrides, the people that override different programs, and they don't even necessarily know what they're doing, and all of a sudden, now they, they got a system out of balance. We're able to detect that now, and we're able to fix it. Sometimes we can fix it remotely, or sometimes we have to come out and readjust what's done. So anyways, there's a lot of value in being connected. We're going to be connected to every system that we put out there, and the customer wants us to be, and obviously, they see the value in it. A great example was during COVID, right? Remember, the healthcare market, very strong for us, connected to a lot of assets there.
You couldn't even go see someone in the hospital if they were sick, right? You couldn't even get access. Well, they sure as heck didn't want HVAC technicians in the hospital. But because we were connected, number one is, we were able to fix a lot remotely. Number two is, we were able to diagnose what could be wrong before we got there. So it was much the time there was reduced. So they saw a lot of benefit in that, and that actually has helped propel us, too, at least in the healthcare vertical.
Are there any verticals specifically where you see a stronger uptake of that contractual element or the element that's more tied to connected units, or it's universal, most geographies, most verticals?
I think the more sophisticated the vertical, the more, think about the more sophisticated the applied system that's being adopted, there's a greater propensity to want to be connected. So think of a data center, right? That's a great example of yes, of course. Think of a hospital, right?
Yeah.
A lot of sophistication goes into those systems, a lot of different elements of a hospital, right? It's not just the room. Think about the operating room. Think about the fresh air exchanges that have to occur in an operating room by code. All those, they want to make sure that that's performing the way it's designed.
One vertical, I guess, that has been seemingly a clear benefit from stimulus is education. I think that has grown very well for you and your industry peers in the U.S. the last two or three years. Do you worry that maybe some of that ESSER funding plays out, the program ends, that vertical comes under some pressure in a year or two? Or you think there's enough spending there?
Yeah, I think, I think we have certainly benefited in, in the ESSER funding, okay? By the way, the education vertical is one of those 14 verticals that we track, and we've always been very, very strong on the education vertical. It's a very large vertical.
... Look, ESSER funding is going to be with us now until I think we have installed the product. The latest I saw was by the first quarter of 2026, so there's still some time there. As far as if ESSER funding ends, does the vertical stop growing? I think the answer is no. I think there's a lot of, you think about municipal bonds and, and the appropriation of those bonds, and, there's a whole mechanism there that keeps that as a very, very strong vertical, not just today, but it will certainly be strong in the future. The ESSER funding, if you remember, a long time ago, we were. I was probably up here talking about indoor air quality audits. Remember those days?
Mm-hmm.
We were talking about during the height of COVID. Maybe I was talking remotely because we were probably on a Zoom call.
Yeah.
But, and we took those audits, and then we were basically created roadmaps for superintendents to make their schools safer for the students that were learning there. And that's why we were able to get a jump start on ESSER. We already had the roadmaps for many of these school districts across the country, so it was just about implementing that. I would tell you that work continues and this will be a strong vertical, not just today with ESSER funding, but also into the future.
Then I think, you know, one topic of discussion among investors is, you know, HVAC, in theory, should have been the beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act. It's debatable how much is actually happening. I guess, where do you think we are on the state of that tailwind? And I guess the concern would be if you get some dismantling of pieces of it in a year or two, you know, any concerns there?
Yeah, I think that IRA is, it's still alive, okay? It's still well. We are seeing benefit today. The tax credit portion of that is actually happening. So think of it as, you're residential, and you bought a high-efficiency heat pump unit, you still get a tax credit. On the commercial side, you have 179D, a tax deduct, that's alive and well, and that has to do with efficiency per square foot. So that's actually, it has always been there. They doubled it, theoretically doubled it with IRA. So that will continue. Okay? Now, what hasn't happened yet is the state rebates. So that's where it's been a little bit slower than anticipated, which will be a tailwind for the residential business. We're still optimistic that that will happen.
If it doesn't happen because of, for whatever reason-
Yeah
... these projects or these products still have really good payback. So it's not gonna, maybe a little bit of a tailwind goes away, but it's not gonna be, it's not gonna be detrimental to the business.
Then maybe switching to margins. You know, Trane's been very consistent at driving gross margin over time. You have that 25%+ placeholder there, medium term this year. It's a little bit of a step down, not meaningful versus what you saw in 2023. Is that just a function of narrower price cost tailwinds or more investment? Any of the sort of the main moving parts there, aside from volume leverage?
Julian, it's a number of things, but we like the long-term framework of 25% or better incrementals. It means that we're able to invest back in the business and really drive the market outgrowth. I mean, the conversations we've had so far with transport and HVAC, I think we can see a lot of the outgrowth there, especially on the order front and then on the revenue side, as those orders turn into revenue. But think of it as price will continue to be less of a top-line benefit, right? We saw that through 2023, with the first quarter over 6 points of price, and we ended in the fourth quarter just under 3 points of price. It's still elevated, though, when you think about, you know, pre-pandemic levels.
We're in a range of, call it, 30 basis points-50 basis points of price a year. We're getting to a point that could be better in 2024. So look, it's still going to be a bit higher, but that contribution from price and offsetting inflation will be a little bit less. The dovetail here is really around productivity. Okay, think of that as you're hitting 2 points - 3 points of productivity. You're talking about $300+ million a year of growth productivity the company is driving. And we're going to be able to ramp into that as our engineers and product managers, who thankfully, were spending a lot of time in the last couple of years solving supply chain issues, and those have been largely resolved in 2023.
Dave and everyone's been really pushing their efforts back into, "Let's get back into value add, value engineering of the product. Let's make sure we're getting the right cost for the product. Let's lean out the flows in the factories as well." We've talked about this in the past, but it's highly inefficient when you don't have all your components ready to go when you're building that chiller. A 70% or 80% machine that gets taken off the line, sits for a couple of weeks. Components come in, you put it back on the line, you add the components on, you retest it, you're now getting it out for transport. That's really expensive to do that instead of the one time through.
So for us, it's really driving to, let's call it, $300+ million of gross productivity, and we're beyond that path in 2024 as we get those teams geared up again. But I'll tell you, the 25% incrementals, I think it's strong. It's a strong bottom line growth.
Mm-hmm.
We're calling for 11%-15% EPS growth in 2024.
Yeah.
And it allows us to invest back in the business. Start with innovation, start with automation in the factories, sales and service investments on upfront tools and people. It's really just going to be high returns there again, for the investments. And we want to start early. That's why we've got into the first quarter around 25% incrementals as well. The earlier we start those investments, the earlier the payback comes.
Perfect. And then on, you know, inorganic growth, let's say. So as the balance sheet looks from the outside, quite underlevered, just wanted sort of your characterization of it, how you see it. And then on the acquisition front, there's some things, you know, we've seen some of your peers do heat pump acquisitions. How appealing is that vertical, particularly as the market has come down a lot? Maybe any thoughts around that specific question.
You want to start with the balance sheet?
Sure. I hear you say underlevered, I say really strong. I'd say, I'd say we have tons of optionality on the balance sheet. And if we saw the right opportunity that we needed to lever up for, we would. But I would tell you, we like the ability to be disciplined. We like the ability to do both on acquisitions, and you saw us in 2023, put about $900 million to work-
Yeah.
For both on acquisitions. If I go back to 2022, late 2022, with the AL-KO acquisition, they're executing above business case, right? They're driving some of the growth you're seeing in Europe and the Americas as well. We like that bolt-on strategy and, I think we'll continue to look for opportunities there, but we have a lot of optionality with the balance sheet.
Yeah, and on the M&A front, look, as a major HVACR player, we're going to get to see everything. And I've told this many groups before, "Look, we don't need to do anything. We love our portfolio, and we're executing at a very high..." But we'll get a chance to look at everything. We're going to be disciplined, though.
When you think about reinvesting organically, you know, what are some of the main areas right now that you're? You know, like, if we look at, say, heat pump, sort of air to water technology, like, you know, how big could that become?
I think, I think we have a proven track record of investing consistently within our business. It's not about taking a period off or, "Oh, our Thermo King business is going to be down in 2024. Let's pull back investment.
Yeah.
That's a really bad strategy, and it's not one that we execute to. So we're the company that will consistently be investing in our business, and hopefully, everyone sees the results, right? We had very strong results in 2023 on both the top line and on the bottom line. And by the way, the quality of our earnings, and if you use free cash flow as a proxy for quality of earnings, has been very strong for an extended period of time. So look, we like our model.
Yeah.
We're going to continue to invest in the business. We like innovation, we like investing in our channel. Okay, and by the way, because we're a direct sales force, that means we're investing in educating our, making sure that our account managers are the best in the industry. We're always adding to that field. Our service business, we're always adding to technicians, we're always training our technicians. We want to make sure that they're the smartest than anyone else in front of the customer. So we pride ourselves in that, and those are investments that we're going to continue to make. We're also doing a lot in digital. You heard me talk earlier about, you know, seven years ago, we had this crazy vision where we're going to go out and start sensing our products in different ways than maybe some of our competitors.
We know the benefit that's derived there. That will continue. And then the last area I would hit on is factory automation. I think of factory automation, I know everyone has this lens that says it's about productivity, and yes, you're right. It's also about safety. We want to make sure that every job can be performed in a safe manner, and it's also about quality. And we've had great success in all of those. And when you think of productivity, don't just think of it going to the bottom line. Think about adding capacity within your four walls. That's a great form of productivity that we get with automation. And because of the strengths that we're seeing in the workforce, don't think about people leaving the Trane organization when you automate.
Think about it going to another role and we're helping to train those and creating career ladders for all like before.
Fantastic. Well, I think it's time to switch to the audience response survey questions. First one, do you currently own this stock? Please use those gray boxes.
This is where I get a report card.
Live, real time. So fairly balanced. Still, maybe 40% no ownership at all. Second question, what's your general bias towards Trane right now? Positive, negative, neutral. So generally very positive. Third question, around through cycle earnings growth versus the, call it, multi-industry average. So almost all above-
All right. We got zero on below peer.
Thank you very much. I feel like a-
I got an A on that one.
Fourth question. Yes, very widespread there. What should Trane do with excess cash? So generally, buybacks and smaller M&A.
Yeah.
Fifth question, what P/E multiples should Trane trade out on this year's earnings? So generally a premium to the market. And then last question is really around, you know, what is the main sort of fundamental headwind or reason for not owning more of Trane? Fortive is up there, but this should be about Trane here, nothing to do with Fortive.
We'll share with Jim the answer, if you want us to.
I just saw Jim, so I'll let him know.
Please. Thank you. Okay, so generally, I think that 25% incremental is pretty good. So thanks very much, everyone.
Well, thank you all.
Okay. Thank you.
Dave and Chris.
Thanks. So next year, we'll do the questions-