One of our star attractions for the event, we have Trane Technologies. We have the company's Chairman and CEO, Dave Regnery, and Chris Kuehn, EVP and CFO. I think Dave has a short, very short introduction, and then we'll go into the fireside chat. Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew. I don't think I've ever been called the star attraction before, so I appreciate the warm welcome. But thanks, everyone, for joining us. And really, Andrew, thank you. We were just talking up here about I think this is my sixth or seventh year with a B of A conference like this, and it's always a great event. Your team does a great job, and I'm just not used to not hearing all the accents from London. But we're here in New York this time. So anyways, great to be here. Look, we had a very strong first quarter as Trane Technologies.
So our order rates were up organically 14%. I'm sorry, our revenue was up 14%. Our order rates were up 17%. Our EPS growth was 38%. Strong free cash flow. Our backlog ending the first quarter was $7.7 billion. So we're in a very strong position, not only for 2024 but well into the future. So I appreciate everyone's time today. And I'll start with where I left my last meeting. We had a global town hall meeting for Trane Technologies. So envision 20,000 people somewhere listening to Chris and I talk about our company.
And I left that team with, "Our best days are yet in front of us." And we have a tremendous pipeline of activity. We have a great backlog, and we have an innovation pipeline that is, I'm certainly very excited about all the innovations we've put into the marketplace, but I'm more excited about what's to come. So I appreciate everyone's interest in Trane Technologies. Company is doing an exceptional job. I'm very proud of our team. So with that, Andrew, I'm happy to talk about whatever you'd like to talk about.
Yeah, sure. So maybe we'll start your sort of highlighted strong performance, just looking at your guidance for the year, 16% EPS growth at the midpoint. So just what are the scenarios bookending? And I know it's a fairly tight range, but low end, and what would it take for Trane to sort of outperform the initial guide the way it did in 2023?
Dave, you want me to start?
Sure, go ahead.
Yeah. No, Andrew, with the strong first quarter that Dave highlighted, we raised guidance on 2024 to 8%-9% revenue growth, 15%-16% EPS growth. And we started the year top quartile. And based on what we can see, it's looking as if we're still in the top quartile amongst industrials for 2024. The first quarter, it's the smallest quarter of the year for our company. So we really just wanted some more time to get through the second quarter to see what the cooling season starts to play out. So let's just have that time to go do that.
But we're very confident in the guide we went out with a few weeks ago. The backlog, as Dave said, gives us a lot of visibility to our commercial HVAC business and cautiously optimistic around the residential business and the transport markets. We know where they are now. Yeah, let's see how the year plays out.
Echoing your being the star attraction, we are standing room only. So if we could get more chairs, if somebody could help with that, that would be fantastic because we just started. We're right out of room. So that's a good problem. So yeah. So look, I mean, just maybe going by verticals, revenue guide 8%-9%. Clearly, Americas commercial HVAC up low double digits, low teens. EMEA also quite good commercial HVAC.
Transport is down. And just as we and there are multiple moving pieces here, obviously. But as we think about things that can move the dial other than the weather in the spring, which end markets should we focus on for sort of thinking about what can really move performance in 2024?
Well, I think the biggest piece of the business is going to be Commercial HVAC. It's around 65% of the global revenues of the company. Think of that roughly half as equipment and half of that services. About a third of the company revenues are services. So let's see how Commercial HVAC plays out throughout the year. It's going to have a very strong year. But look, the comps get tougher as you move through the second quarter, third quarter, and fourth quarter of 2024. Go back a year ago, we started the year up mid-teens in Commercial HVAC in the Americas.
And in the fourth quarter of 2023, it was up mid-20s. So those comps just get progressively tougher as you move through the year. But we're excited. It's going to be a very strong year for that business. But I think that's the one inflection point. Second area, let's see where residential plays out for the year. Cautiously optimistic where we started in the first quarter. But again, not even in the cooling season yet. Let's see how the next three months play out.
Just maybe jumping to price, you raised the price two points, potentially a little better. I think during 2023, pricing leveled off as the year progressed. How should we be thinking about the cadence of pricing through the 2024?
Yeah, I'll start. We raised our guidance a few weeks ago from 1 point of price, approximately one point to two points on the full year. But let me start with our Business Operating System. It covers many aspects of how we go to market, how we operationally execute within the company. And I think one of the most improved areas of our Business Operating System has been how we take those inputs, whether it be our own costs or supplier costs, commodity costs. We look at Tier 1, Tier 2 freight, and making sure that we're pricing effectively.
So we think about the inflationary periods of 2021 and 2022 and a bit in 2023. We've been price cost positive on a dollar basis throughout that entire period of time. So our teams have done an absolute great job taking those inputs and making sure we're taking the cost side, but also making sure we're pricing for innovation, right? Well, no doubt we're going to do a question around our investments and where we're leaning in investments this year, Andrew.
But we want to make sure we're pricing for innovation and having customers for life. So I would tell you, we're really confident on the two points of price for the year, and we should be at or maybe slightly above our target of 20-30 basis points of price over inflation.
Some of the CEOs we've had conversations sort of highlight that structurally, labor has become more of a headwind, and it's more structural in nature. For some companies, sort of some CEOs have noted that labor now outstrips raw material inflation for them. How do you think about sort of the mix between sort of raw mats and labor in terms of input into your cost structure going forward? Not necessarily specific numbers for this year, but the balance between the two going forward.
I mean, for our operations, labor would not be the number one cost. It would be more of the raw material inputs. But we are seeing wage inflation. We're seeing it in the Tier 2 for the components that we do buy. And we don't disagree. I don't think we see wage inflation going backwards or actually that being reclawed. So these are just new levels we need to make sure we're pricing for. And we're also making investments around automation of our own factories and where we want our suppliers to do that as well.
But I think we've done an effective job pricing and making sure we're staying ahead of that, but also, again, making sure we have customers for life, especially in the applied business when these are highly customized engineered solutions. They play to a lot of the high growth verticals we've been, I think, very successful with, making sure that we have the upfront install and then a service tail that goes with that. We want to make sure we're pricing effectively across that over multiple years.
Let's go to sort of the core of your business strategy, service growth. We've definitely gotten a question of investors. You've delivered high single-digit growth over the past several years, and people just sort of really sort of laud you on sort of ability to get this consistent growth in the aftermarket. What is the sustainable long-term rate of growth for service?
Yeah, we haven't provided a guide out there for the long term, but I will tell you that our past performance, I'm very proud of, right? We've had high single-digit growth on a compound annual growth rate for the last six years. And that includes a pandemic year where we were flat. So this is a very resilient business. We invest heavily in our service business. It's roughly a third of the company, and it's performing very, very well.
How should we think about the impact of services growth to mix?
Well, obviously, when your equipment business is growing at 30% on order rate, it's hard to keep that same split. But right now, in the Americas, in our commercial HVAC business, services is about 50%. It's about 50% in Europe. It's less in the Middle East and Africa. It's less in Asia. But look, it's a very strong part of our business. It's one of the areas that I often talk about that differentiates us as Trane Technologies. And we're going to continue to invest heavily in our service business. And we have a great operating system around our service business. And I think the results kind of speak for themselves.
So Dave, can you talk about the evolution of the services business model and what do services attachment rates look like within the applied business? Because you razzed me for sort of missing the stock. And this is.
I didn't say that.
No, it's fair. And I would say this is the part that I've missed, right? So can we just talk about the evolution?
Look, we have a very detailed Business Operating System around our service business. It's focused on our applied systems, right? So commercial HVAC applied is a key focus of our service business. That's why when I talk about the backlog being $7.7 billion, over 90+% of that is commercial HVAC applied, which means there's a very long tail on the service side of that. I was saying earlier that we have I think we track I think it's well over 30 KPIs within our service business.
I've been very nondescript on telling people about those KPIs that we track because I don't want to really create a roadmap for everyone else to build a great service business like we have at Trane Technologies. I will tell you that attachment rate is not one of the KPIs we track because I don't even know what it means.
I was asked at an earlier meeting today. They said, "What's your attachment rate?" And I was like, "So what are we attaching?" Right? And it's one of those things where you sit there and say, "Well, what do you mean? What are you attaching?" Well, these applied systems have a lot of proprietary components that are part of them.
So if I sell a proprietary component, I'm the only one you could buy it from. Does that mean I'm attached to the system? I mean, I don't know what that definition is. I will tell you that as an applied system is installed today, we're digitally connected to it, right? We want to be digitally connected to it. We want to make sure that the system is performing the way it was designed. And why would we not? It's under warranty, right? So we want it.
The customer wants it. And then the customer sees the value that's created. As far as what's changed in the business now, I've been around the business for a long time, so I could probably go way back in history. But I would say over the last 10 years, what I've seen in our service business, it's really transformed to it's no longer just a break-fix, meaning that my system isn't heating or cooling properly. It's now about how much energy is being consumed. So a system is not operating properly today when it's using too much energy.
And this is an area that I don't believe it gets enough focus and certainly doesn't get enough airtime. And that's the demand side management. And we know because we've done hundreds of thousands of energy audits in buildings, most buildings operate very inefficiently, about 30% inefficiently.
If you're connected to the building and by the way, in a building, 40% of all the energy is for heating and cooling. If they operate 30% inefficiently, think about the savings. If you're connected to that building, you could always ensure that that building is going to operate the way it was designed, at least from a heating and cooling standpoint. So there's an unbelievable opportunity in front of us. And you're going to hear a lot about electrification, especially on the heating side. I was just at a conference out in Arizona, and everyone was talking about all the stress you're putting on the grid.
And I'm like, "Let's talk about demand-side management because you could eliminate the stress you're putting on the grid by electrifying the heating." I was just in our New York office, and they were telling me about a project that I'm not allowed to talk about by name. But we replaced the heating with a thermal management system. So we no longer are burning a fossil fuel. Because we're now connected to the building, we have our BMS system on the building. The electric cost is neutral to what it was before, and you no longer have a fossil fuel for heating.
So this is the impact that I'm talking about that's real, that we have the technology today to deploy, and we are. I just want you all to be good stewards of making sure that we could deploy this faster and educating others as to what's possible. I'm not sure I answered all of your questions there, but I probably answered about five of them.
No, it is interesting. We definitely have some people who don't compete with you directly, definitely sort of relying on your expertise with digital layer. We certainly hear some companies cite you as an example and sort of pursue that strategy. What are the sort of another one of the things you have done is you do have a different distribution model. So what are the competitive advantages to owning your distribution?
Look, I'll talk about our commercial HVAC business, right, because we're direct. It's a pretty simple concept. We want to be very close to our customers. The closer you are to the customers, the better you're going to be about understanding what their needs are today and what their future needs are going to be. It's fundamental to who we are as Trane Technologies. I know many of our direct competitors are somewhat episodic there. They'll be direct one year, and then they'll switch to a rep agency or a distribution model the next year. We're very consistent.
On a global basis, we love being direct to our customers. We understand their insights. We have an appetite to close long projects. So think about infrastructure projects, right? They don't close overnight. We have the ability to call on all of the different influencers on that job, whether it be the engineer, the architect, the GC, the owner, the mechanical. We have touchpoints in all those areas with the direct salesforce. And I was telling a group earlier today, engineers don't buy product. But if you could become the basis of design on a complex system, it's very, very difficult to change that.
If you're a mechanical contractor, you don't want to change basis of design decisions because you know who owns the liability when you do that. It's not the engineer. It's the person that changed it. So we have the ability with the direct salesforce to call directly on these influencers on a job. And it's very, very important, and it's key to our strategy. On the residential business, we do go through distribution, okay?
So we have about 50% of our business where we go through independent wholesale distributors who sell to dealers. The other half, we are that independent wholesale distributor, and we'll sell directly to dealers. So that is either a two-step or a three-step model. And in our Thermo King business, we have dedicated independent dealers for the most part. Sometimes we own the dealer, but for the most part, it's independent. And if you saw one of those locations, it's branded Thermo King, okay? So it becomes part of the I always tell our Thermo King dealers, "You are the family of Thermo King," right?
So you're part of it. So it's a little bit different model. But on our commercial HVAC, being direct, okay, having those touchpoints with the customer is fundamental to our strategy. And hopefully, you see the results that we're able to achieve with it.
One of the themes that have come up from this conference is sort of uncertainty about regulatory and tax environment post-IRA. How does Trane work with customers to educate them on new regulations and tax incentives? How do you incorporate it in your bidding activity? From a macro standpoint, are you seeing some projects being pushed out because of this uncertainty? People are trying to figure out, "What does the tax code look like? When does IRS approve? When does IRA sort of make its way through IRS?
Let's start at.
So it's to A channel B, what's happening in the building.
I would say at a fundamental level, if you're going to build your business around an incentive, you have a bad business model. I'll start with that, okay? I think that incentives become tailwinds for your business, and we're certainly seeing that. But I would tell you, our projects stand on their own and have great paybacks regardless of a particular incentive. So we'll start there. As far as how do you keep the customers aware? I'll go back to our direct salesforce and our local knowledge, right? In New York, here, you have a Local Law 97.
I mean, and in Boston, you have a different regulation that they're following. In Austin, Texas, it's different. And in San Francisco, it's different. You need to be able to have that local knowledge to keep your customer base informed as to all the possibilities that they have available to them. We're able to do that. We're able to take these relatively complex structures and make them simple. That's the key to success, right? If you can make something simple where people understand it, that's where the tailwind really starts to kick in. We're really good at that.
As far as IRA goes, look, we've been using the IRA funds in our Commercial HVAC business for a long time, right? I mean, it's been available now for over a year. There's certain credits that are available based on energy efficiency improvements that you're able to achieve per square foot. It gets very complicated. Again, we'll simplify it for our customers. On the Residential side, it was a lot of buzz about that maybe 18 months ago. It's taken a lot longer to get the funds appropriated to the states so they could be distributed.
That's starting to happen. I think we've had 11 states that have their applications in some sort of approval process. One state, New York, has been approved. I think others will follow fast. And once those funds get appropriated, they're very, very hard to claw back, okay? So that's why there's this push right now to get all these funds appropriated. And that will be a tailwind for our business, as you would expect. It's just a little early to say what that tailwind will be on the residential side, but it will be a tailwind for us.
So on the applied, you would argue on the applied, we're well on the way understanding what the structures are.
There's 179D, all these different structures that are out there that are being utilized.
The resi, there is a push pre-elections to get it out there.
I didn't want to say anything about the election.
I said it.
You're right.
What are the initiatives over the next three years to increase your share of the customer's wallet? What are the opportunity? I can see what the answer is going to be, but I'll try.
Look, I always lead with innovation, okay? I think the more innovative you could become, all of a sudden, you start to create differentiated product offerings in the marketplace. That's number one, right? We're always going to start there. Do we look at M&A if that's where your question is going? Absolutely, right? We're a major HVACR player. We're going to get to see everything. We have a very robust pipeline. We like technology.
We like channel. We don't really need to do anything, but we're always interested in learning about technologies. And we're really, really good at taking these bolt-ons and scaling them. So it's not just about having a great technology. It's about how do you put it into your operating system, and how do you scale it, whether it be on a regional level or on a global level in some cases.
Dave, Chris, just thinking about backlog going forward because I think a couple of years I remember a quarter that was in focus, but at this point, 90% of your backlog is Commercial HVAC. So does it make sense to talk about normalized level of backlog going forward? How should we think about backlog going forward for Trane?
Elevate it. I mean, look, it's going to be.
It'll be a while.
It will normalize over time. I think we could argue about what normal is going to look like. Now, we're a much larger company than we were three years ago. I think the dynamics are a little bit different from an ordering pattern. Look, it's going to be elevated. The next question is, what about your lead times? There was kind of this belief that in the past, we had extended lead times as we were coming out of the supply chain challenges that were leading to this elevated backlog. Yes, that was true. I would tell you that lead times are now normalized for the most part.
They're normalized. We still have this backlog that is at record level. Look, it's going to be elevated for some time. Last year, I tried to explain to everyone that we were going to have a very strong backlog going into 2024. So I said the backlog would be $6 billion+. Well, everyone forgot the plus. And I ended up answering questions for about the next three quarters about, "Well, if it's going to be at $6 billion, then mathematically," I'm like, "No, don't do the math like that," right? "It's going to be elevated." So this year, I'm going to just tell you that our backlog will be elevated for the foreseeable future.
The composition has changed too, Andrew. Think about the backlog's up 5% year-over-year at the end of the first quarter. That's on a net basis. If you just look at commercial HVAC, the backlog is actually up over 10%.
With that normalization of supply chain, as Dave called, the lead times, residential backlog is back to weeks like it normally was, and transport backlog is back to a normal level. So really, while the inflection is backlog's up, it really is up, say, more than double just due to commercial HVAC. And that really biases to those applied systems. That's really what's making up the majority of that backlog of commercial.
Let me ask you the question another time. Do you think it will normalize over the next two, three years, or do you think it's just given what's happening, it's just hard to call?
I think it's going to be elevated for some time.
Okay. Maybe we can talk about BMS. And I wonder you sort of highlighted this digital layer. But what is the strategic positioning? Because you have it. And what is the strategic positioning versus bigger industry players? And I would just add, it's certainly a space where you're willing to deploy capital, Nuvolo. And just, yeah, how does it fit within your digital connectivity strategy? And how does your BMS offering fit with other players' offering in a building?
Yeah. Let me just start with kind of when we think about controls, okay? Sometimes it's a confusing subject, and people tend to hear one thing, but it's really something else. So we think about controls. Think of it at four different layers, okay? So think of it at unit controls. So those are the controls that operate. They're the brains of your product, right? And 100% of that is what we do. We're insourced. We have all of the intelligence of our products. We design it. We implement it, etc. The next level up, think of it at a system level.
So think of this would be like a chiller plant controller where you'd be controlling a particular system within a building. The next layer would be at the BMS level, the building management system. Think about that's where you're controlling the entire building. And you're not only controlling HVAC, but you'll interface in through middleware different types of applications that are running within the business and create the single plane of glass for the customer to look at to make it very easy. Dashboarding is what we call it.
The fourth level would be think about that same concept, but more on a campus level or even at a regional level. Think of a fast food chain that may want to look at all of their stores across a region or a country. So think about that in the four levels. We have leading technologies in all of those levels. And I was a long time ago, about 10 years ago, when I was running our commercial HVAC business, we did not have a very strong BMS portfolio.
And I used to tell people that we're investing more in our controls than we are equipment. No one really believed me, but it was true, right? And a couple of things that we did, one was we led with wireless because I really believe that the retrofit market was where we were going to win. And if you have to retrofit, and you have to pull wires through ceilings or walls, it's very, very complicated. It's very costly. So we led with wireless. And today, we're the leader in wireless technology.
Then the second was, we wanted to make sure we had open protocol because as you connect these different systems, we wanted to make sure that, again, with a customer mindset, it was, "Look, I don't want anyone to feel like they can only call Trane Technologies to come out and work on their BMS system." That was like, that's where you would hear the terms proprietary protocol, right? I thought that was yesterday's thinking.
So we said, "We want to have open protocol, and we'll stand on our own." And that's what we did. And today, I'm very proud of the offerings that we have. And I'm also very proud of the success that we've had with those offerings.
Would your work, also just to understand it, Bill, would your work was a competitor system, or would you just own everything?
Sure. We could. Absolutely. Look, there are people out there, competitors out there that only sell BMS, right, that third layer or even the top layer, the campus. They don't sell HVAC systems, right? So they interface into our products as well. And that's where you think of the base as the controls, the brains of the system, right?
We know that we're not going to own everything in that domain, right? But we are going to add a lot of value when we do own the home. I mean, and we've closed some very big controls jobs that I'm very proud of because I know where we started, and I know where we are today, and I know how competitive we are today.
Just maybe looking at the M&A, for example, in 2023, so you did Diversified Laboratory Repair, Helmer, MTA, Nuvolo, minority stake in LiquidStack, sort of multiple thematic areas of M&A, life science solutions, cooling for data centers, cloud-based connected workplace, industrial refrigeration, thematically. So it's interesting. You're not doing heat pumps, although you are.
We have great heat pump technology. It's more than a heat pump, a thermal management system.
Yeah, yeah. You're doing TMS. Fine. But thematically, what are the key strategic vectors for the M&A pipeline going forward? And what does an average target look like in terms of size? Because I think it's also been underappreciated how active you guys have been.
I'll start. Look, as Dave said, we love technology. We love channel. And where we can scale up these applications, especially early-stage technology, we've seen a lot of wins. So some of the acquisitions you mentioned, Andrew, I'll even go back to AL-KO in 2022. Think of AL-KO and MTA, both acquisitions supporting our MEA business. MTA actually has a business here in the Americas as well. Good technologies, good revenues, maybe more defined around the geographies they played in. So in Europe, maybe only two or three countries they were very strong in.
We're strong in 30-plus countries. So they've been home runs in terms of bringing them into our channel, training up our sales teams and their sales teams. And think about it as it's not Trane coming in to do the acquisition, and we're going to go turn you into Trane. This is actually an absolutely great opportunity for us to learn from what the success of these businesses are and bring that into our own operations. At the same time, you're bringing some manufacturing footprint into the fold as well.
So as we think about that growth in EMEA, it's not just bringing a strong revenue base that we can expand, but now we have some more manufacturing footprint as we think about the growth of the applied business and how do we want to organize that. So these are hitting on multiple layers in terms of benefits and opportunities to grow. But I'll tell you, we like being a pure play. We've got a very strong balance sheet. It gives us a ton of optionality. And as we think about deploying capital, I look at it between we're going to toggle between M&A and share repurchase. And we've got a lot of firepower to do both.
And again, just to reiterate, look, we don't have to do anything, right? We have a great portfolio of products, the broadest in the industry. We have an unbelievable service business. And we have a great controls business. But as Chris said, we're always going to look at, as a major HVACR player globally, we're going to see every opportunity, maybe not every opportunity, but we're certainly going to see the majority of them. And we like technology. We like bolt-ons. But remember, we also like being a pure play.
I'll ask questions because data centers.
Nobody's asked me about data centers today, right, Betsy?
So just how should I think about your exposure to data centers? Because you sort of talked about the percent of revenue your applied business has. Within that half is aftermarket, quarter unitary, quarter applied. So any part of unitary plays into data centers?
Not typically.
Okay. So I appreciate the applied sliver % of that. But how should we think about the aftermarket, right? Because I would imagine now, I asked that question to Nicole. It's more complex, right? It absolutely plays to everything, energy audits, whatever it is you want, absolutely plays to every strength you have. So how should I think about what % of aftermarket is data center today, and will it be disproportionately larger going forward?
We haven't sized the data center vertical for a reason, okay, for competitive reasons, either on the service side or on the equipment side. But I want everyone to understand that, look, I've been talking about data centers. We've been talking about data centers for many, many years, probably a decade, okay? We've been very strong in that vertical for a long time. And we're going to continue to be strong in that vertical in the coming years as well. Our growth rates in the first quarter were broad-based. We were very strong in the data center vertical.
We were also very, very strong in other verticals as well. I know there's a lot of companies out there saying, "We do data centers too," okay? Reminds me a little bit of the dot-com for those who lived through that. Look, and that's great. We have a very competitive offering in data centers, both on the equipment side, on the service side. We think a little bit differently about it.
We look at the system level within a data center, right? It's not just the terminal product or direct to cooling. It's about the entire system, including what are you going to do with that rejected heat, that heat that you're removing from the data center? What are you going to do with that? Do you just put it out into the atmosphere, or can you repurpose it? Some creative thought going around there. So look, we've been very strong.
I want everyone to know it was broad-based growth in the first quarter. We're not a company that's just built around data centers. We're not a company that's just built around a policy or a particular incentive, right? Our products. I had the opportunity to be on Bloomberg yesterday, which is a lot of fun if you've ever been on live TV. But I was explaining that, look, we have products that are green for green, right?
We have products that have great paybacks for our customers. And they're also really, really good for the planet. And they're going to help us decarbonize. So strong first quarter. I'm certainly very proud of what our team's been able to accomplish. I would also tell you that our best days are in front of us.
And just going back, I will try taking a bite of the apple on data centers. So you said you view your core competency as systems. So I'll use Eaton as an example. They don't do thermal management. They only do the electrical part. But they integrate systems. So that's how they leverage it despite not having thermal. And the way it was explained to me is sort of when you deal with the heat, right, so you get energy into the data center, and then you have to get it out in the form of heat.
And the way it was explained to me, there are plumbers, people who move the liquid around, and there are people who move the air around, right? So do you view yourselves as, "Are you the plumbers? Are you the HVAC guys? Or do you do both?" What is your core?
We've never been called the plumbers.
No, I know. I know.
The way you described it, I would say, "Yes, we move water around because it's a chilled water system.
Right. That's right. But the idea is that you can also move water, right? I think a lot of questions. Do you just move water through the server? Do you move liquid inside the server? How do you view your core competency inside the data center?
It depends how the data center is designed. So right now, you're hearing a lot of buzz around direct-to-chip cooling. In that particular application, we would move chilled water to the CDU that would move it to the server, right? We would also have a separate system for the air handling that would all be connected through the controls of the data center. So it depends really on the application. I've never been called the plumber before.
But in your application, I guess I'd be a plumber and an air specialist. But I would tell you, the big opportunity there is how do you fundamentally change the terminology, right? So think about all that heat that you're rejecting right out into the atmosphere. Is there another purpose for that heat? And we've done a couple of jobs in Europe where we've created district heating loops from that heat.
So you're now heating municipal buildings, or you're heating housing developments. It's a creative thought, and proximity matters. But there's a lot of heat that's been generated. Do we want to waste it, or do we want to repurpose it?
I think we're out of time. I think we should go on for another hour. Dave, thanks so much.
Well, thanks, everyone. Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Andrew.