Honeywell International Inc. (NASDAQ:HON) Morgan Stanley’s 11th Annual Laguna Conference Call September 12, 2023 11:45 AM ET

Company Participants

Vimal Kapur - Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Joshua Pokrzywinski - Morgan Stanley

Joshua Pokrzywinski

All right. Thanks, everybody. We are going to keep going here with Honeywell next on stage. I'm joined by CEO, Vimal Kapur. Vimal, really appreciate you coming out. Obviously, a lot of things on your plate is the new CEO as you were talking about before, shareholders, customers, internal folks. So appreciate that your calendar is busy and you made some time for us. I know there's a few things you want to go over and just sort of level set folks on. So I'll let you take it away, and then we'll get into some questions.

Vimal Kapur

Thanks. First of all, thanks, Josh, and thanks for having us here. I would say in opening comments, 14 weeks into the role, and really firming up my priorities to think about where do we take Honeywell to the next level and really want to talk about that in a short period of time.

I have set up myself four priorities. The first is, how do we further simplify Honeywell? And I talked about that during Investor Day, the one way to look at Honeywell is we can look at it as for businesses, aerospace, building technologies, et cetera. That's one view. You can look at Honeywell.

I'm looking at Honeywell more with a view of macros as addressed. And 90% of the Honeywell is really can be split into three macros: aviation, aerospace, whatever you want to call it; automation and energy transition. This is 90% of Honeywell. That simplification gives you a north star on where the company wants to go, where the acquisition should happen, where the product should be developed. So that's like my first pivot to really define and simplify the organization to a more broader macros, which are long-term and here to stay. These are not going away. And this probably is going to take one or two rounds to get it done.

The second priority is how we accelerate our growth. Our commitment is 4% to 7% organic growth. We are going to meet that this year. We are going to meet that next year, but how do we make it a sustainable engine to grow at a higher end of algorithm. And that requires really pushing hard on new products.

New products, dynamic is not new to Honeywell, but I will admit that the COVID did not do a favor to us or to any working remote at home, not meeting with customer, doesn't create an environment of innovation. And really upping the game here on putting the right bets on the product so that our vitality keeps going up, which is a leading indicator for growth. That's going to be my priority. My background helps here being in the company for three plus four decades, gives me a lot of context, where to invest and why. So that certainly is a part of priority for us.

Third priority is how do we rejuvenate our portfolio. Our portfolio requires work. I fully accept that. Part of it is going to get driven by my pivot to three big macros. So that requires, therefore, to adjust a few things so that we can really become aviation, automation, sustainability company. And part of it is by strategy, where we need to make additions so that we are becoming a better business.

So our acquisition strategy will be more driven by business strategy rather than we acquired something because we think it's a great idea. We can take the cost out, and that's not the mindset I have or we have right now. The acquisition focus will be in $1 billion to $7 billion enterprise value range. Think of revenue anywhere from $150 billion to $1.5 billion. And of course, we want to do acquisitions which meet the financial algorithm, and we can create value. So that's our third priority that we rejuvenate the portfolio.

And finally, operating system, we, as a company, has to constantly improve our operating system. I'll call it 3.0 of Honeywell operating system. It's not new for us. But I clearly see opportunity for us to take it to the next level and really create more shareholder value.

So those really are four priority simplify, grow, rejuvenate portfolio and Honeywell operating system, and that really is how I'm going to drive Honeywell for the next few years. And I'm pretty confident of the results we are going to deliver this year and next year, and we could talk more about that.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q - Joshua Pokrzywinski

Excellent. I want to stay on that for a second. I do want to get into the macro, but maybe just to keep with your new priorities or I guess the priorities of the organization. Clearly, there's a lot on your plate. You mentioned all of them. And those are all competing for your time.

I think there is some notion of – you have to choose in some instances. I think maybe even, last quarter the HBT had sort of a phenomenon of how to balance growth versus margin. But maybe not as specific to that business zooming out, where do you see kind of a choice that needs to be made as you balance some of those priorities?

Vimal Kapur

I look at the growth and margin expansion as to exclusive events, while there could be some linkage, but fundamentally, the drivers for margin expansion for us are different than driver for growth. The growth really comes from two things in my mind. If you are investing in the right products and if you have the right portfolio, that inculcates the growth. If you're in the right segment, then the growth should happen. If you're investing in new products, the growth should happen.

The margin expansion really comes from actions on productivity, actions on you're driving your mix in the right area. So I haven't seen that a) one impacts the other. We want to drive both, and that's why our financial commitment is both 4% to 7% organic growth and 40 to 60 basis point margin expansion.

I'll agree with you, Josh, that we are over biased on margin expansion versus growth over the last couple of years. And I certainly want to stay more focused on growth versus margin expansion. It means that I'm not going to sacrifice. I want to stay in the algorithm of 40 to 60 versus breach it and go towards 100. That's what I've been doing.

So we are conscious on the top line growth. Nobody undermines the need to acquire installed base, but we are really disciplined and the discipline, like in a family, it takes a while to put kids in discipline and takes you break one rule and things can go haywire. We certainly are in projects business in particular, we acquired projects, which have got aftermarket. That's been Honeywell culture.

We don't like to acquire trophy projects, which have a big top line and can be very attractive on a short-term, but can be dragged to the organization from an execution perspective, cash generation or really. So that's been our philosophy. I think overall, we have always proven this algorithm works for us, and I'd like to – I would not compromise growth because we are trying to meet our margin goals. I want to make it very clear. The two are two exclusive categories and one should feed into another, and we should deliver on both of them.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

And you mentioned new products maybe having a slower cadence during COVID, the reasons it all makes sense. But if you had to throw out a KPI there, whether it's new product innovation velocity or product vitality, like where sort of the ranges there that you've been in or where you maybe want to go with that as you get back up to speed?

Vimal Kapur

Yes. I think the NPI vitality is a well-accepted industry metric, but that needs to deliver growth. So to me, there are – I look at the overall new product vitality. But within that, we have started looking at what we call new categories of products. We call it NPI new. It's a new category. We don't have the product. The SKU did not exist in ERP. We created it new.

So it's less debatable that it's a new product because given we have a platform-based system business model for large part, we make cockpit control system, process control system, they can't be reinvented every year. So those need to be – there you need new product for keeping it contemporary and keeping relevant for the market share. So that's important.

But you also need to create new categories, and that's much more relevant into the product businesses than in the solution businesses. So we measure two metrics. And we measure the core. The overall net new product vitality and NPI new. NPI new is absolutely a new revenue stream. We typically felt that 2% vitality improvement is what an industrial company like us need. I'm getting more and more bias that number has to be three versus two. If one person looks very small move. But when you do the math, it's hundreds of millions of dollars, which it can generate when you move that needle by extra 1%.

So I think that's going to be our overarching theme here, more focus on new products. Making sure that you invest your R&D dollars wisely, putting more bigger bets versus smaller bets, putting new bets on new categories. And that's where I mentioned before, a lot of my experience, I practically been all parts of Honeywell except Aerospace and my carrier. So I can add a lot of value and bring a lot of context from a strategy perspective, not on a tactics basis.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Got it. And then I just want to shift over to the macro. Obviously, a rich environment here, kind of post supply chain, higher interest rates, a lot of mega projects, a lot of change going on there. What are you seeing in the business today? And anything regional that would stand out, I guess, particularly China, given that there's maybe a little bit more volatility there.

Vimal Kapur

So maybe I can answer your question in two parts. From a business perspective, it's likely two universe, long cycle and short cycle. Long cycle businesses are doing extremely well. Everybody is aware of aerocycle. Our Aero business continues not to have a strong revenue growth, but continues to have strong order booking. And our order booking continue to be exceeding our revenue every quarter.

So long cycle business and Aero is doing well. Long-cycle business in our process automation, process licensing business in PMT is doing very well. Backlog is – of orders is historic high. So it means they will do well from a revenue perspective next year. In building solutions, which is a long cycle business, our pipeline of activity is very strong, so is in Intelligrated business now.

So generally, the trend line in long-cycle business is high growth or emerging growth vectors clearly seen. Now on opposite end as a short-cycle business where we face the challenge of channels having more inventory than the run rate inventory. All the data we see that channel stocking for the products and businesses we serve has been wired down now.

And we are looking more for demand to return versus the stocking issue to go away. I mean because I think we sometimes mix the two. And I will acknowledge that we faced the two issues together probably in the front end of this year. Channels had more inventory than the run rate. Therefore, they won't buy anyway, whether demand exists or not. Now that problem has generally gone down, and it's really the demand side.

So the good news here is that the short-cycle businesses are not deteriorating quarter-to-quarter. I don't see that it's coming down. It's stable or sometimes it's a minor improvement. So as economic conditions become better, we will definitely balance from the short cycle recovery, but our long cycle is doing well.

On your second part of the question, geography, I think a few geographies stand out. Europe, as many of us will anticipate, continues to be underperforming compared to other regions for Honeywell portfolio. China is not doing bad. We will grow high single-digit this year, driven by the demand which came back in Aerospace business, which is very large for us in China.

I am also counting the China recovery pretty strongly coming back in energy segment. China had a super cycle of building refining petrochemical plants in 2017, 2018, 2019, and then there's been a pause for 4 years. And one of the reasons China put a pause was very tough energy policy on having a very strict regime on how to license new projects.

This has been revised. I was in China about three, four weeks back, and they have revised it to based on energy intensity. If you bring a project, which is energy efficient, they want to go ahead with that versus saying, I don't know it's a bad thing. So that's going to unveil more activity in China as that rule comes in. So I think China is now going to be double-digit growth, what it used to be, but it's not going to contract or shrink for us.

The real hottest region in the world right now is Asia, ASEAN, India, Middle East. You can pick your choice 15% growth in each of these regions is not unheard of, and we are very big in each one of them. And that really is kind of from our high-growth regions volume standpoint, Honeywell does about $9 billion out of 36 in high growth regions. So China slowed down to a certain degree, get offset by growth in these. So our algorithm that we drive 10% growth, which contributes a percent of Honeywell growth overall. That will continue. I have pretty high confidence on that.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

And then on the, I guess, the cessation of destocking in second half, being sort of the trough for your shorter-cycle businesses. It sounds like that inventory picture is cleared up enough to be confident in that. Underlying demand is stable? Or is it that as destocking has abated, it's sort of been offset by weaker demand. I guess that was a little hard to read, but how do you feel about the second half trough?

Vimal Kapur

I would say it's more stable, as I said to you before, I don't see any deterioration. I don't see any recovery. I mean I'm talking Q2 to Q3. Now I'm going to forecast how well next Q4 will do. What we are doing is in this economic cycle, how do we generate more demand and take more share? Because what's in our control is I can't control economy, but I can control market activity.

So more focus on commercial excellence, how do we deploy our salesforce, how do we run new campaigns so that we can drive some demand generation. That should certainly help us to drive better-than-expected recovery if market recovers, when it recovers, but we want to self-help is more important than waiting for things to come back.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Got it. Then just one more through I'd like to pull on what you mentioned there on the macro overview. Intelligrated having sort of this improving pipeline. I think a lot of the indicators around warehouse automation, particularly for the e-commerce folks are still pretty weak. So that's encouraging. Where are you seeing that? And over what time frame do you think that starts to convert into orders?

Vimal Kapur

It's one of the most fascinating business for us. We acquired Intelligrated in 2016 revenue was a little shy of $800 million and became $2.5 billion in about five years. That was an early signal of that this is extraordinary and something is not normal here. And now the normalization is happening. If you look at the 2016 to 2023 CAGR, it's still greater than 10%. So I guess sometime we look at now, but I just want to remind everybody where we are coming from.

The activity of pipeline, what we really pivoted to was that we were very big in e-commerce, and we felt that's our key focus area. We really pivoted to multiple other segments where people have warehouses, and they want to automate them. The fundamental factor helping us to labor shortages, I don't have to explain that. Labor is short.

So everybody is really thinking about how to automate the warehouse operation, pick-pack operation, loading, unloading operation due to shortage of labor. So the diversity of warehouse automation has increased, who wants to do it. So it's not only post and parcel. It's not only e-commerce, it's not distributor like pharmaceutical distributors, groceries, retailers.

So the diversity has grown. That has given us more pipeline. I'm quite optimistic we are going to have a strong booking in Intelligrated in second half of this year, which then pulls us to next year with more stable backlog. Couple that with our continued growth in aftermarket, we crossed $0.5 billion of revenue in aftermarket.

We will cross in 2023. When we acquired the revenue was partly anything from an aftermarket perspective. That's a value-add Honeywell has done. So aftermarket expect will continue to grow. So the likely scenario I see in Intelligrated is flattish revenue, but significant margin expansion. And why margin expansion will occur. There are three drivers for that. Our new project bookings are very little practically not much from Amazon, and Amazon is not a very profitable customer. So that better customer mix Services continues to outweigh projects.

So that mix really happens. And we have taken a major productivity action. Our manufacturing operations have been moved into Mexico. So we're going to see benefit of that in 2024. So when you put it all together, even at the same revenue base, our income generation is going to be far more greater, which I'm pretty confident on.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Understood. So a lot of your peers have outlined sort of this funnel of activity with the surge in mega projects clearly, just based on your end markets, you guys are seeing something similar. But is there a way to quantify what that's looked like over the last one to two years? And when we should start expecting orders to precipitate out of that funnel?

Vimal Kapur

Orders for us. I mean, if I compare to our peers, I mentioned very strong bookings in aero, aero backlog is historic high. In process business in PMT business, the bookings for both UOP and Process Solutions are going to be extreme double-digit growth. HPS grew its order double-digit in 2022. We'll do that in 2023. This is happening now.

We're not – HPS performance has been pretty strong this year, will be strong next year. UOP is doing extremely well because of the market activity, both in traditional energy and all the renewable energy technologies. We see activity in renewable fuels and now we see activity in carbon capture shaping up. People are moving more and more projects development in carbon capture. And we also see activity starting in hydrogen. So that pipeline is working well.

In Building Solutions, the pipeline is growing, driven by higher I would say, understanding of energy efficiency across the globe. Buildings are a big source of energy consumption and a lot of retrofit work can be done to drive energy savings. So that's driving demand there for projects and infrastructure growth in high-growth regions.

I would say that all our long-cycle businesses is going to have strong bookings in 2023, which gives me a confidence in 2024 because we carry that backlog. And even at a current state of short cycle scenario, if that doesn't change significantly, I'm very confident that we're going to stay within our 4% to 7% algorithm.

If things improve in short cycle, we'll telegram you good news. But for now, I remain pretty confident that we're going to have a good 24-year ahead from us, both from a revenue growth standpoint, margin expansion and cash generation.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

And then just given some of these projects are a little longer, I know you guys avoid things like turnkey where you're taking on a bit more risk. But how would you characterize the margin mix of that just given that you throw a few more zeros on and if you guys show up?

Vimal Kapur

Yes. I mean we talked about it earlier. We are – we have to acquire install base goes without saying. So it's a choice to be made, which install base matters, which has more service and more service come from having more first-party content.

So our discipline is really – it's less about this project has 15% margin, and that project has 10% margin. We can get lost in that semantics. We really look at net present value, it will create on a 15-year horizon. That really determines our driver. So in a given year, you can have one or two big deals, very good deals, which can have higher project margins because you had an existing customer, and they were willing to pay you higher. And next year, you may have a lower project margin because you really were acquiring install base.

So our discipline is really driven by the NPV calculation and cash flow. We look at our project level cash flow margins. The cash flow has to be net positive. We should not drain our shareholders' cash. And net present value should be, which meets our – so that sophistication is really what drives us. We book project at zero margin? Absolutely, we do that. I mean, that's not uncommon. Because we have a very strong aftermarket service visibility. So this is not an uncommon thing that – but it's done with a lot of know-how and a lot of understanding on why we are doing that.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Got it. And then maybe just to drill down on a couple of the businesses picking up on a few things you mentioned. On the aero side, clearly, a very healthy cycle there in terms of visibility. As you said, you're growing backlog of already high levels. I think the broader concept of selection credits and OEM mix headwinds are things that folks are becoming more sensitive to Honeywell is in the nice position of actually making money off of the OE, but it still is more dilutive than the base margin. How do you see that mix dynamic playing out over the next couple of years, just given that broad strength in OE?

Vimal Kapur

I think, Josh, you put it correct. Our volumes are growing pretty high. We're going to have double-digit growth in aero this year. That gives us volume leverage because our supply chain cost is not going up, our fixed cost is fixed. So that's getting offset by OE volumes are higher compared to aftermarket – that will probably prevail in 2024 also because the OE demand continues to remain very high. It is not really changing.

But I see two positives in this, which I want to leave with everyone. Our margins have not dropped. It's about 27%. In spite of this mix, it means the underlying margin of business is stronger because we are dealing with a mix, which is unfavorable to us. So we have to recognize that fact. The business is worth greater than 27% today, if it was a normal run rate. Number two, OE mix is positive news. We are creating install base. It's a 30-year life cycle in Aero in some of the other end markets we serve, the life cycle is more like 15%. Here it is 30 years.

So from a shareholder perspective, it's a good news. We are growing business double-digit, and margins with the same rate. It's going to continue and drop at 27% margin. So it's not a trivial number. It's dropping at that rate. It's going to continue 2024.

I don't see a scenario, by the way, also margin dropping because of that. But the OE demand being higher, we need to satisfy all our customers from Boeing to Airbus to GE to Bombardier. They are very demanding, and that's my job. They keep me on my toes. That's part of my new role, and it's good to talk to them, say, they're very collaborative. They all want us to grow with them. But the demand on the OE side remains pretty strong, at least the visibility they provide us till end up 2024, it remains pretty strong for us.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Got it. So you think you can go through the next few years even with that mix headwind and still sustain these type of margins?

Vimal Kapur

We did an aero rollout for the first time till 2030, which we typically do a strategy cycle, we'll do revenue roll up for three to four years. We did aero for seven years. We do not see any down cycle for aero till 2030. There is no cycle. And this is based on actual platform level demand inputs we have today.

This is not – let's make a nice spreadsheet and put a couple of percent. This is an actual – you do a good job. So it's a pretty accurate model. So we believe aero cycle is here double-digit growth in 2024 and pretty elevated growth rate still 2030. And margins as the mix become normalized, we'll hit the margin growth automatically because it's diluted right now because of the unfavorable mix in the business.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Got it. And then just shifting over to SPS, at the analyst meeting, you raised the margin target there. I think there are a lot of sort of under the hood mix phenomenon, especially with Intelligrated ebbing and flowing that impact that. But raising the margins to 20% with where we are today and Intelligrated sort of troughing, I think there's maybe some moving pieces over the next couple of years, Zebra payments as well that will roll off. How do I think about the linearity of that path to 20%? Could we – do we step back first before reramping?

Vimal Kapur

I see three drivers of – let's assume – I mean Zebra related income will go away in 2024. And we always knew that. That's not a news for us. So there is really three drivers for us to have continue to have margin expansion in SPS. First, we have rebaselined our cost base based upon current volume. We were not waiting for that to happen. We were proactive.

So volume leverage is going to be very strong because these are higher margin greater than 50%, some are even 60% VCM businesses. So you can imagine the volume leverage we get when the volume comes back. So that certainly is because we are at the trough right now. So when the volume comes back, that certainly helps. Intelligrated business, margins are improving dramatically. I mentioned that.

And third thing is our Sensors business, which is the highest margin business in that segment. We are very bullish on its growth. And the growth of Sensor, I don't have to make a case for growth of IoT and how sensors are becoming so pervasive. But one application, which is growing pretty rapidly, EV cars. EV car is sensors on wheels. That's the best way to describe it. Battery requires a lot of sensors and that sensor is provided by Honeywell.

So that segment growth, we are seeing we expect them by OEM as the cycle of that is specking your product. And as OEM demand grows, we see pretty strong shipset per car on the Sensors business. So higher margin Sensor business growing and Intelligrated margins are becoming more accretive and the volume leverage. They all come together, and we are very confident on 20% margin rate in this – there's zero doubt in my mind. This is not we will see and all that. There's no ifs and buts. There's – when we committed, we absolutely knew what we are committing to.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Understood. I appreciate that. I see we're running up on time, but I do want to fit in a couple of quasi-related thoughts here around portfolio. First, on M&A, if there's any specific product gaps or focuses that you have at the moment and then sort of shoehorned in into the same concept is quantinuum and how we should think about where we are on that journey?

Vimal Kapur

Maybe I can answer the second portion first here. Continuum, I really look at it from two perspectives. One is the business making progress from a technical platform – and are we hitting all the milestones. The good news there is that we are accomplishing all our technical milestones. We are launching new application on cybersecurity, on chemistry-based research on quantum. So that's all working really well. So that bores more revenue.

On the other side, we're looking at monetization of Quantinuum from Honeywell's shareholder perspective. Their options include looking at private markets, options include IPO, and we've given ourselves time of next 12 to 18 months to accomplish that. So expect 2024, 2025, that to unfold, and we should hopefully get good return. AI is definitely a tailwind for us. I think it's helped us to see people value.

If AI is true, quantum is true, one doesn't exist without another. Either you have to come out of this statement or you have to come out of that statement. So we really feel that that's going to help. On overall M&A, the strategy of taking Honeywell to three big vectors will drive the M&A. How we make Honeywell focus on aviation, automation and energy transition, our M&A pipeline is driven by that. I can share with you, Josh, that our M&A pipeline right now is most active we have ever seen over the last five years. Greater than 50%, almost 60% is outbound.

We want – we have called people that this asset is better fit in Honeywell because of our belief in that strategy because we look at our strategy – we can do this organically. This is too hard, too difficult, and we want to acquire those assets. Darius spends pretty much all his time on M&A as being Executive Chairman. That's a separation of duty between two of us in near term. And I remain pretty confident that we should be able to bring up some outcomes for our shareholders in the next 12 months' time, more than we have ever done.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Excellent. Appreciate the time, Vimal. Really helpful as always, pleasure.

Vimal Kapur

Thank you very much.

Joshua Pokrzywinski

Thank you.