Honeywell International Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
July 23, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Honeywell Technologies reported 4% organic sales growth, 16% organic orders growth, and a 100 basis point margin expansion in Q2, with results coming in above expectations.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company raised full-year guidance for organic sales growth, segment margin, and adjusted EPS, now targeting $8.20 midpoint EPS and expecting to exit 2026 above 22% segment margin.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management highlighted strong momentum in Building Automation and an expected sharp second-half inflection in Process Automation & Technology, supported by backlog conversion, LNG activity, and stronger catalyst shipments.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The company completed the Johnson Matthey Catalyst Technologies acquisition and said it adds strategic capability in refining, petrochemicals, and renewable fuels, with management expecting commercial and cost synergies over time.
  • Negative Sentiment: Honeywell expects the earlier-than-planned divestitures of Productivity Solutions & Services and Warehouse & Workflow Solutions to reduce 2026 revenue by about $400 million, even as the portfolio becomes more focused.
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Earnings Conference Call
Honeywell International Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Honeywell second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Mark Macaluso, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Mark Macaluso
Mark Macaluso
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Honeywell

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Honeywell Technologies second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Honeywell Technologies Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Vimal Kapur, and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Mike Stepniak. This webcast and the presentation materials, including non-GAAP reconciliations, are available on our investor relations website. From time to time, we post new information on the investor relations website that may be of interest or material to our investors. Our discussion today include forward-looking statements that are based on our best view of the world and of our businesses as we see them today and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, including those described in our recent SEC filings. This morning, we will review financial results for Honeywell Technologies for the second quarter of 2026 and discuss our updated guidance.

Mark Macaluso
Mark Macaluso
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Honeywell

As always, we'll leave time for your questions at the end. I would also like to take a moment to remind our audience that the 2026 results and guidance we will present today exclude results from Honeywell Aerospace following the spin-off on June 29th. Additionally, our guidance reflects both the completion of the Johnson Matthey Catalyst Technologies acquisition as of July 17th, as well as the anticipated closures of the productivity and warehouse divestitures, which we now expect by early August. Pension income and the results of Quantinuum have also been removed from our adjusted results in all prior and future periods. Finally, adjusted EPS for Honeywell Technologies now reflects the impact of the 1-for-2 reverse stock split. You'll find a summary of these changes on slide three. With that, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Vimal, who will begin on slide four.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you, Mark. Good morning. The second quarter marked an important milestone for Honeywell Technologies as we began our next chapter as a pure-play automation company. At Investor Day, we laid out our go-forward strategy of growing and monetizing installed base through outcome-based services, software, and new product innovation. We also introduced long-term targets for Honeywell Technologies, which will be our roadmap for the next three-plus years. As you can see, we are laying the foundation today to deliver on our commitments. Our results this quarter have demonstrated the strength of the new Honeywell Technologies portfolio. We delivered 4% organic sales growth driven by continued strength in Building Automation and a better than anticipated performance in both Process Automation and Technology and Industrial Automation businesses. Orders grew 16% organically with broad-based demand across all segments, resulting in 9% increase in ending backlog.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Notably, short-cycle orders grew double-digit across all segments. In PAT, orders were up 24% organically, led by roughly 50% orders growth in process technology, providing even greater confidence in their expected second half growth inflection. We also expanded segment margin by 100 basis points, overcoming significant cost inflation headwinds and unfavorable mix through a combination of productivity and volume leverage. This drove earnings in the second quarter above our expectation from early June, with increased confidence heading into the second half of the year. As a result, today, we are raising our full-year outlook for organic growth, segment margin, and adjusted earnings per share. We continue to expect a sharp growth inflection in Process Automation and Technology and continuing momentum in Industrial Automation in the second half of 2026.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Combined with the sustained outperformance in Building Automation, we now expect to grow 4%-6% organically in second half of the year, in line with our long-term targets. We're also raising our adjusted EPS outlook by $0.10 at the midpoint, which reflects a second quarter outperformance and improved second half outlook that is more than offsetting the loss of income from the earlier than anticipated close of the two divestitures. We also took important action this quarter to strengthen the portfolio to support long-term growth. On the portfolio, we closed the acquisition of Johnson Matthey Catalyst Technologies business on July 17. With this business, we add a differentiated technology portfolio that'll expand our installed base and strengthen PAT's portfolio across refining, petrochemicals, and renewable fuels.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Ken and his leadership team are already fully engaged with our new colleagues, meeting with over 90% of employees globally at key sites in just the first week. They have been involved in all aspects of the transaction and are prepared to hit the ground running to deliver for our customers and our shareowners. I could not be more excited to welcome the JM Catalyst Technologies team to Honeywell Technologies. As part of the final stage of our portfolio transformation, we completed the separation of Honeywell Aerospace and also supported the Quantinuum team in their successful initial public offering in June. On Quantinuum, we expect to provide more color on our plans of our 47% ownership stake by early next year. We remain strong supporters of Raj and his team and are excited to be shareholders in such groundbreaking quantum computing company.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thanks to the great work of our team, we also now expect to close the divestitures of both Productivity Solutions and Services and Warehouse and Workflow Solutions business by early August. This is approximately two months ahead of our initial planning assumption, which has reduced our 2026 revenue expectation by approximately $400 million. We're also confident this will drive greater focus and further simplification of Industrial Automation portfolio, which is already beginning to see improved financial performance. We wish both these businesses and their team continued success as they embark upon next chapter. Our transformed and simplified portfolio is well-positioned to outperform with momentum in both long-term and short-cycle orders, ramping activity in pipeline, and meaningful macro tailwinds for the next several years.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Let's turn to slide five to recap our recent Investor Day, where I had the pleasure of spending time with many of you in New York City last month. On June 11th, we hosted investors, sell-side analysts, media, and others at our Investor Day for the new Honeywell Technologies. We kicked off the day laying out our revamp and focus strategy that will drive value-enhancing solution for customers and drive out performance in our focus markets. Each business leader walked through their differentiated offering, connected strategy, growth framework, and three-year targets. Guests also heard directly from our leading customers and partners, including Exxon, Dangote, Google, Equinix, Duke Energy, and others about the differentiated outcome we are delivering and the long-standing relationship we have built over many decades. My team and I are highly confident in our ability to deliver on our three-year commitments.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

We have a strong position in key end markets, differentiated technologies, a global footprint, and a clear competitive advantage in high-growth verticals. Our team is comprised of Honeywell veterans, talented new additions, and even some folks that rejoined us after successful careers elsewhere. All of this, coupled with a proven Honeywell Technologies Accelerator operating system, positions us for a new chapter of growth and profitability as Honeywell Technologies. The event concluded with us delivering our new three-year target, which you can see on slide six. Over the last three years, we transformed our portfolio through acquisitions, spin-offs, and divestitures into a pure-play automation company focused on innovating in mission-critical environments where uptime, safety, productivity, and efficiency are paramount. This has set us up to deliver on these commitments.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Our strategy focuses on two key pillars, growing our install base, and then monetizing this vast install base through innovative software, services, and outcome-based solutions. While maintaining our leading position in core verticals, we are also increasing our exposure to higher growth verticals like data centers, LNG, grid infrastructure, and life sciences as examples, which are all linked to compelling mega trends. Our projected top-line growth and margin expansion is also underpinned by more meaningful shift towards services and software, annual recurring revenue. On margin, we have over 200 basis points of margin expansion coming quickly from stranded cost removal, portfolio actions in Industrial Automation, and benefit of aerospace trademark agreement. On top of that, we expect to drive 60 basis points a year of operational margin expansion through price, improving mix, new product introduction, and productivity.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

As you heard from our CFO in June, we are confident that the 24% target is achievable and provides meaningful upside as we execute our strategy. Collectively, this will drive approximately $12 of adjusted EPS, representing more than 10% growth annually. The important point here is that we will generate these returns right out of the gate given all the actions we took to prepare the organization ahead of aerospace spin. And finally, on cash, we expect to improve our conversion to over 90% and have line of sight already in the second half of this year to hitting 95%. I want to talk more about acquisition of Johnson Matthey Catalyst Technologies business, which will become part of our Process Automation and Technology segment. This addition to Process Technology will unlock strategic growth by increasing our existing install base and creating a more integrated offering across Catalyst and Process Technology.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

It also expand Honeywell UOP's capability across refining petrochemicals and renewable fuels with complementary offerings and capability, which you can see on slide seven. What makes this acquisition specifically attractive is its strategic fit with our existing business. We are already on many of the same customer with complementary process units, and the business perfectly aligns to our core verticals. The acquisition also enhances our end-to-end solutions by combining Catalyst Process Technology and digital capabilities powered by Honeywell Technologies Forge. We have clear visibility to both commercial and cost synergies and our long-term outlook for this business as part of Honeywell Technologies has not changed. Let's now turn to slide eight to discuss our order strength in each business. As you can see, our orders growth has been accelerating across the company, driven by strong demand generation, NPI, and continued share gains.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

This resulted in 16% organic orders growth in second quarter, with broad-based growth across all short-cycle businesses, driving considerable momentum on the LTM basis as a result. PA&T had incredibly strong quarters of orders growing nearly 25%, leading to a book-to-bill for PA&T above 1.2. Our refreshed portfolio with the addition of Johnson Matthey Catalyst Technologies business is set up well to benefit from an energy upcycle, particularly as customer CapEx forecasts support the ongoing transition to LNG and renewable fuel as priority. Strength across both long and short-cycle orders growth, including increased pipeline activity from refurbishment, rebuilds, and mid-lease, will provide meaningful macro tailwinds for the next several years. In Industrial Automation, we saw strong demand across Europe, Middle East, and China. For the core business that remains after the divestitures, order grew 11% or 7% sequentially, with sensing and industrial measurement orders up over 20%.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Pete and his team continue to execute the turnaround strategy in IA to win back share and grow the core business. Finally, in Building Automation, the team continues to drive innovative NPI that is driving share gain, while growing our position in a high-growth vertical. This quarter, we drove over 50% orders growth and 30% organic sales growth in high-growth verticals while maintaining our strong position in the core with approximately 30% orders growth in our fire business. Orders in Middle East grew over 50% this quarter by our Process Technology business. Regarding the conflict, we are assuming the situation remain as it is today with no improvement from the current tension, but also no significant escalation in the war or further disruption to the supply chain.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

This is, of course, a very fluid situation, but our teams in the region have done a tremendous job minimizing impact to our business while ensuring our employees are safe and we're able to continue to support our customers. Finally, book-to-bill for the total company was 1.1, and our ending backlog was up 9%. This and continued momentum we see in all segment supports 4%-6% growth outlook in the second half and over medium term. It's been our pleasure speaking with you this morning, and let me now turn it over to Mike to discuss our second quarter results and 2026 outlook in more detail.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Thank you, Vimal, and good morning. In the second quarter, Honeywell Technologies delivered strong results that surpassed our expectations. Sales grew 4% organically, led by continued momentum in Building Automation and stronger than anticipated growth in Industrial Automation. Process Automation Technology sales decreased 1% organically, but we're still materially ahead of our original outlook for the quarter. On a segment basis, Building Automation delivered 9% organic growth, driven by double-digit growth in products and continued strength in solutions. The teams drove double-digit growth in the fire and services businesses, respectively, and we saw strength in all regions led by Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Americas. All in, another strong quarter from Billal and the Building Automation team. Industrial Automation sales were up 4% in the second quarter, exceeding our expectations led by strength in solutions. Products grew slightly with continued momentum in sensing and industrial measurement, partially offset by utilities.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

The core Industrial Automation business, excluding planned divestiture, grew 2% organically in the second quarter. Process Automation Technology sales declined just 1% organically in the second quarter. Ahead of our prior expectations, as the upcycle in energy end markets and activity in global projects begin to materialize. Projects grew 5%, driven by strength in gas, LNG, and petrochemicals. This strength was offset by a 6% decline in aftermarket, due primarily to a tough prior year comparison from a large catalyst shipment in the second quarter of 2025. Consistent with our messaging at the Investor Day, we expect a sharp inflection in growth in Process Automation Technology beginning in the third quarter, led by process technology and driven by backlog conversion and much stronger catalyst shipments.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

On profitability, segment profit increased 9%, while segment margin expanded 100 basis points to 19%, with strong margin expansion in Building Automation and Industrial Automation. In addition to ongoing volume leverage and productivity actions, stranded cost removal continues to track ahead of plan. Building Automation segment margin expanded 90 basis points to 27.1% on volume leverage and price, which was partially offset by inflation. Segment margin in Industrial Automation also expanded 90 basis points to 17.2% as pricing and productivity action more than offset inflation and unfavorable mix. In Process Automation Technology segment, margin contracted 180 basis points to 22.1%, largely driven by unfavorable mix from lower catalyst volumes as expected. This, however, was also ahead of our original margin outlook for the quarter. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.95 was up 10%, driven primarily by higher segment profit.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

We drove lower net interest expense stemming from debt paydown, which was partially offset by higher reposition costs. As we previewed in the first quarter, a higher adjusted effective tax rate drove a $0.16 headwind, which we overcame with stronger operational performance. You will find additional information on the segment performance in the appendix of our presentation. Rounding out the results, free cash flow grew considerably this quarter, both year-over-year and sequentially to roughly $500 million. This was principally driven by higher income as well as improvements in working capital, which more than offset ongoing collection headwinds in the Middle East. This quarter, we deployed $1 billion of capital through roughly $800 million of dividends and roughly $200 million in high-value capital expenditures.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Year to date, we have deployed over $2.8 billion in capital to repurchase our own shares, pay dividends, and invest in future growth. Let's now move to slide 10 to quickly discuss the second quarter adjusted EPS bridge. As you can see, we delivered high-quality results in the second quarter. Strong segment profit growth, including elimination of stranded costs, lower below-the-line expenses due to interest expense, and lower share count allowed us to overcome the higher tax rate. Excluding the tax headwind, earnings would have been up 20%. Let's turn to slide 11 to discuss our updated 2026 guidance. Today, we're increasing our organic sales growth outlook to 3%-4% for the year, up from previous guidance of 2%-3%, and now expect the second half to grow 4%-6% versus 3%-5% previously.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Building Automation continues to execute well, leading to a mid-single-digit plus organic growth outlook, supported by incredibly strong orders growth in the second quarter, particularly in our focus verticals, including healthcare, hospitality, and data centers. We expect Process Automation and Technology growth to accelerate to high single digits in the second half as global energy projects resume, backlog conversion ramps, and catalyst shipment volumes increase significantly. Finally, Industrial Automation growth will continue in the second half, driven by resilient short-cycle demand for industrial measurement and sensing, continued growth in Europe and China, and strengthening Americas demand. As a result of the momentum in Process Automation and Technology and Industrial Automation, we're increasing our full-year organic growth expectations for both businesses from roughly flat to up low single digits for the full year and meaningful improvement from our original expectations coming into the year.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

We now expect full-year segment margin expansion of 250-290 basis points, up 25 basis points at the midpoint from the previous guidance. This reflects the outperformance in the second quarter in Process Automation and Technology and Industrial Automation, significant progress on stranded cost elimination, and accretion related to the accelerated timing of PSS and WWS divestitures. Importantly, we expect Honeywell Technologies will exit the year above 22% segment margin. We now expect full-year adjusted earnings per share of $8.20 at the midpoint, or up approximately 27% versus prior year, and up from our previous midpoint of $8.10. Finally, we continue to expect free cash flow of roughly $2 billion in 2026, with the majority of this coming in during the second half and approximately 95% conversion rate. You can find additional information on 2026 outlook in appendix of our presentation, which includes estimates for corporate and other below-the-line items.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

On page 12, you will find the bridge from our June 8th guidance call to today's update. As you can see, we expect full-year adjusted earnings per share will be $8.20 at the midpoint, up from our previous midpoint of $8.10. Let me now turn the call back to Vimal to wrap up before Q&A.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thanks, Mike. We are pleased with Honeywell Technologies' second quarter results, which enabled us to increase our 2026 outlooks across all key metrics. We successfully navigated an uncertain geopolitical backdrop with the strength of our resilient business model and the rigor of our Honeywell Technologies' Accelerator operating system. With our portfolio transformation complete, our simplified pure-play automation portfolio is well-positioned to benefit from long-term macro tailwinds, including the proliferation of AI, increasing global energy demand, and an aging population, and increased consumption. This, combined with our focus on increasing exposure on high-growth verticals, driving annual recurring revenue growth from outcome-based services and software, and maintaining our innovation engine, will enable us to achieve double-digit annual adjusted EPS growth at greater than 90% free cash flow conversion.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

We hit our three-year targets for this new business. I look forward to updating you on our progress to achieving them in coming quarters. Today is only the beginning of that journey. I'm pleased with how we have started, but we have considerably more work and opportunity ahead of us. With that, Mark, let's take the questions.

Mark Macaluso
Mark Macaluso
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Honeywell

Vimal, Mike, and I are now available to answer your questions. We kindly ask that you please be mindful of others in the queue by asking only one question and one related follow-up. Operator, please open the line for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to join the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Deane Dray
Deane Dray
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, just like to say congrats to Vimal and the whole leadership team on the successful spins. You got them all done on time. It was well communicated, I do like seeing that boost to guidance here right out of the block. Congrats.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Thank you, Deane.

Deane Dray
Deane Dray
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Hey, since it is so topical, I'd like to circle back on the Middle East impacts. You still had double-digit orders, you still have got momentum there. I'm interested about the idea that you've got some collection issues. Is there any risk of force majeure here, any kind of disruptions like that?

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

I would say, Deane, the Middle East is, the way we have guided the second half, it is the normal which exists today, as we said in our prepared remarks. How things have shaped up over the last four or five months.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

We have understood the dynamics on the ground. We did lose some revenue in Q1 and Q2 as we had guided. Now we are assuming our future state is built upon how the conditions prevail today, unless things change dramatically. To your question, we observed some collection issues in pockets. They are modest, they are not material. We have taken a prudent decision to address the customer set where we have limited risk. We don't have any risk to a point of any major disputes and things of that nature. We think business is in good shape. As an example, 50% orders growth in Q2, primarily driven by a few big deals in our process technology business. In a refurbishment which are occurring there, that certainly is providing us some tailwinds. Overall, we believe that we are well-positioned.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

As this region invests more, as the things settle mostly in transportation and logistics-related investments, and some resiliency will benefit from that.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Deane, I might just add that majority of our collection issues happened in March and April in Middle East. That started to normalize. We still expect the revenue in Middle East to be about high single digits this year, and orders should be about 40%. We look really forward to seeing Middle East perform in the second half and next year.

Deane Dray
Deane Dray
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Good to hear. Just as a follow-up, and congrats on getting the Johnson Matthey deal closed. Can you talk about the implications? You did renegotiate a lower price. What were the circumstances there, and the conditions that you got the lower price, and what are the near-term plans for integration?

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah. We are excited about having this business, the business is really built upon our fundamental belief that the world needs more energy and energy mix will change. Those are the fundamental principles. That was the reason behind doing two acquisition in LNG, the reason behind doing the JMX acquisition, primarily, we believe that the world will need more investment in petrochemicals and renewable fuels, the JM acquisition strengthens our portfolio around that. We also get more install base, our ability to serve it. The negotiations are just part of the normal course in my view, as any deal transaction occurs. There are a few milestones, depending on how the business was trended, we worked with our counterparty to look at how we should value the business.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

I don't want to dwell a lot upon that, we remain excited about how we got the deal done at about 13x EBITDA with cost synergies, no sales synergies. You will agree with me that we have acquired this business for commercial synergies at the heart of it. We are not going to count on that in our early innings, we'll build upon it.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

I would just add that just I think we got the business at the bottom, I would say that the second half looks good. Even in our own catalyst business, the second half is sequentially versus first half up 25%-30%. We look forward to getting our hands on this business.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Deane, congratulations on retirement and you should have good next innings and we will stay connected.

Deane Dray
Deane Dray
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Appreciate it. Wish you all the best. Thank you.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Thanks, Deane.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the question. Mike, it's obviously good news to see the guidance increasing. You did indicate in June that there was scope for upside, but I'm curious if there's anything you saw in June, July to give you more confidence, just any color in terms of how we exited 2Q into 3Q on the end markets. Then within that discussion, maybe just touch on IA. It sounds like the upside came outside the U.S. I'd be curious if you're seeing any momentum in the U.S.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Sure. Look, I would say as just launching the new company here today, what we saw in the second quarter, we feel extremely, I would say, confident in the second half. As you saw, orders across the board were strong. Every business printed double-digit short-cycle orders in the second quarter, which gives us a lot of confidence in the third quarter and the fourth quarter. For IA, I would say the growth and the strength is broad-based, including in China and Europe. U.S. is recovering nicely as well, and the business benefiting from onshoring. I would say across the board, we see a really good outlook for the second half. We raised the guidance, as you saw, I also think there is more room as we're going to go into the third quarter and fourth quarter to beat even the raised guidance.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Only thing I'll add, Nigel, is that I think Pete and his team are executing quicker than we anticipated how the business recovery will occur. As we reported, the orders growth for Industrial Automation business is about 10%, which just signals our performance in the second half. We have the right momentum, and that was the reason behind raising the guide of the business to low single digit in the second half.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

I'm confident that Pete will deliver a 22% margin rate in the fourth quarter. The team's worked on it for a long time, and we have a really good line of sight here.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Mike, that's a great segue to my follow-up, which is the two points of sequential acceleration or sorry, two points of expansion in segment margin from 3Q to 4Q. There's a lot going on here with portfolio, the sale of the warehouse PSS businesses, and then sort of costs tapering off in the back half of the year. I'm just wondering if you may just unpack that two points of expansion from 3Q to 4Q for us.

Mark Macaluso
Mark Macaluso
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Honeywell

Yeah, sure. Nigel, it's Mark, how are you? Just a couple of things. I think it's pretty broad-based. I mean, BA continues to drive strong volume leverage and productivity. They'll reach their forecast, they'll be up. As Mike mentioned, IA continues to take a considerable step up, including in four Q. PA&T will continue to get better, particularly as the growth resumes, and then also we start to see a little bit more mix towards catalyst. I would say, broadly speaking, it's really in all segments, but just quarter to quarter, probably the largest increase in IA.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

I would just add that, we talked about it, I think at the initial of the year and then the investor day, about half of the margin expansion is operational and half of it is, I would say, structural given the portfolio actions. As we stand today, I see the team is driving operationally 100, 120 basis points of margin expansion.

Nigel Coe
Nigel Coe
Analyst at Wolfe Research

That's great. Thank you.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you, Nigel.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Davis with Melius Research. Please proceed with your question. Mr. Davis, your line is live.

Scott Davis
Scott Davis
Analyst at Melius Research

Oh, I was on mute. My apologies. Anyways, I'll start over again. Good morning.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Good morning, Scott.

Scott Davis
Scott Davis
Analyst at Melius Research

Over the goal line, I will also echo congrats to Deane. We'll miss having Deane around. He's been a great colleague for a lot of years, so we'll miss him, too. Guys, a couple just smaller things here. One, when you look at your M&A pipeline, is it kind of evenly split between your segments? Are there particular segments where you think you're more likely to over-index? Just a little bit color there, please.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Scott, I would say think of M&A in three distinct categories, how we are looking at it. The highest priority is strengthening our Industrial Automation sensing and measurement portfolio. Ian and Pete are looking at variety of options. That remains our first priority or our priority number 1. Second bucket is, as we are thinking about accelerating our business in some of the higher growth verticals, whose impact we are can clearly see in our orders growth rate. We are getting more and more convicted that's the right strategy for Honeywell. How can we add some portfolio additions in some of these end markets to further accelerate our growth? We have identified those eight high growth markets. Looking at M&A opportunity. In the end, we like acquire a product line only, like we acquired two businesses in LNG, for example.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

What can we do more on same lines in verticals like hospitality and semiconductor, microgrid, et cetera, so they're broad-based. Finally, tuck-in acquisition on the tech side, we always have looked at the frontier technologies, few in fire detection, few on cybersecurity. We'll keep looking at, keep an eye on those. Those are much smaller, of course. They do propel our organic growth.

Scott Davis
Scott Davis
Analyst at Melius Research

Okay. That's helpful. Guys, could you just help us kind of size or at least help us understand the opportunity within the data center? I mean, it's pretty easy to picture the fire and security stuff, can you walk us through kind of the longer list of SKUs and opportunity that you have there?

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah. I would say we are looking at data center in two dimensions. One is the growth beyond U.S. That we can clearly observe the build out of data center has now grown beyond U.S., across Europe, across Asia, and we have a better position as a company globally given Honeywell's brand and participation globally. That certainly is a tailwind for us. Certainly that's benefiting us. We are also observing now more data centers putting on-site power generation, which allows our Process Automation business to participate in data centers to automate the utilities and energy storage on location, the gas coming in there for pipeline for those power plants. We can clearly see that as a new business opportunity.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

None of that is into our orders even yet, we have multiple proposals by Process Automation team, apart from the Building Automation, which you mentioned very correctly, has benefited a lot from fire detection, security, and building management system, which goes into data center. Finally, I would also say the third leg for the stool for Honeywell emerging longer term is liquid cooling. Sensing required in liquid cooling is a good play for us. Our sensors are required as a critical input for liquid cooling. All those OEs are actively working with us to develop new strategies on how they're going to execute the liquid cooling.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

All things being equal, we will continue to expand our play in data center from almost, I think three, four years back to that's 5% of the Building Automation business, I expect that we'll be at a higher number across Honeywell as the time progresses.

Scott Davis
Scott Davis
Analyst at Melius Research

That's great. Thank you. Best of luck, guys.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Mark Macaluso
Mark Macaluso
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Honeywell

Thank you, Scott.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Obin with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Andrew Obin
Andrew Obin
Analyst at Bank of America

Yes, good morning. Congratulations.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Morning.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Morning.

Andrew Obin
Andrew Obin
Analyst at Bank of America

Just a question. Did I hear right? I apologize, you mentioned 40% order growth. What was that number related to? Was that on Process Automation in the second half, or was it a refer? I apologize.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

No. I think what I said on the catalyst, the second half versus first half should be up 25%-30% on that framework. Our orders for the quarter were up 16%.

Andrew Obin
Andrew Obin
Analyst at Bank of America

Okay. Apologies.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

And the-

Andrew Obin
Andrew Obin
Analyst at Bank of America

Can you talk about Yep, sorry.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

No, I was just going to the orders in Process Automation and Technology were up 24% for the quarter.

Andrew Obin
Andrew Obin
Analyst at Bank of America

Okay. Thanks so much. You sort of alluded to seeing orders in Process Automation related to the Middle East, outside of the Middle East. Can you just talk about this trend? What exactly are you seeing? Are people trying to de-risk the exposure to the Middle East, and how soon can you see that show up, A, in orders and, B, in your actual work? Thank you.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah. Andrew, the strength in orders for second quarter in Process Automation and Technology, the biggest enabler was LNG demand globally, U.S., of course, being the big one, but also outside U.S. Some of the big deals in LNG is a big driver for orders growth in the process segment. To your question, where do we see diversification of investment beyond Middle East due to the conflict? Answer is yes. We absolutely are seeing projects coming in. We have large project in Africa we are actively working. Some of it has been booked. Some booking will occur in the technology side of the process business. We see investments there. We also see investments happening in Asia for the downstream refining petrochemical side because, I think as we all observed, there was a very high price for fuels, 200%, 300% cost up for diesel and jet fuel.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

There are customers and countries looking at more domestic production for fuels as well as downstream petrochemical products there. Overall, the process market will see more capital investment to de-risk the Middle East conflict situation. That's our forecast.

Andrew Obin
Andrew Obin
Analyst at Bank of America

Thank you so much. Maybe, can you talk about Industrial Automation? Just maybe you can give some KPIs on improving performance, I don't know, sort of on time delivery. Anything you want to share, how you're moving along in improving execution in this segment, driving this improvement. Thank you.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yes. I would say that, the KPIs we are looking at it is, first of course, how our delivery performance is improving. It's very channel-driven business. The sensitivity to the delivery performance is high. We're working towards high 80% performance as we progress through the course of the year, and that's our trend line. Pete mentioning the call at start of the year, we were in mid-40s, and we are trending from 40 towards 80, as we speak at this point of time. The other critical KPI for us is performance on new products. We have launched several new products end of last year, early this year, and they are becoming enabler for our growth as evidenced by our orders growth rate of 10% in Q2. We do expect continued strength in our orders rate in the segment for the second half of the year.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

The actions we are taking on innovation, on operational performance is the foundation of how this business is going to turn around. We expect the improvement trend will continue from no growth to low single-digit growth to, at some point, we'll turn the business into a mid-single digit growth.

Andrew Obin
Andrew Obin
Analyst at Bank of America

Thanks so much. This is great.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Thanks, Andrew.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Nicole DeBlase with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Nicole DeBlase
Nicole DeBlase
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Morning.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Morning.

Nicole DeBlase
Nicole DeBlase
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Just wanted to ask on BA continues to show really nice high single-digit growth and orders up 13% in 2Q. It just feels to me that that high single digits should be sustainable into the second half, keeping all of that in mind. Would you disagree with that for any reason? Why wouldn't this, if orders continue to hold up, why couldn't we see high single-digit growth proceed into 2027?

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah, Nicole, the evidence suggests you're right. Seven quarters in a row, high single, why it should become more single? There is no real logic. As being a new company, we are printing our new forecast. Obviously our aspiration is meet or beat it, so there's a level of prudence which we have used in our guide. Fundamentally, the strategy of the business is pivot towards high-growth verticals. We clearly see tailwinds in data center, hospitality and healthcare. They are certainly driving a lot more orders growth and pivoting towards more and more acceleration of base business on the strength of new products. In fact, we're going to launch even more new products as we progress in the second half.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah, fundamentally, there is no logic, but we are always cautious given competition can respond to some of our actions over the last two years, and we need to be cautious. I remain optimistic to surprise everybody on the performance of the business in the second half.

Nicole DeBlase
Nicole DeBlase
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Awesome. Thanks, Vimal. We all love beats and raises. Okay. I guess maybe on stranded costs. You guys referred to making more progress than expected. Can you just put a finer point on that with respect to any changes in the stranded cost reduction timeline versus what we got at the investor day or in the periods before? Thank you.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Stranded cost is progressing extremely well. At the investor day, I think we said something around $85 million of stranded cost at the year-end. This is about $20 million better right now. We should enter 2027 with about $60 million-$65 million of stranded cost that we'll proceed to eliminate early next year. It's a good story. It's incrementally better, about $20 million to what we talked about.

Nicole DeBlase
Nicole DeBlase
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Thanks, Mike. I'll pass it on.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Sprague with Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Jeff Sprague
Analyst at Vertical Research Partners

Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Hey, just coming back to Johnson Matthey, Vimal, maybe two questions. One, as you've looked at that business over time, has its sales been relatively synchronous with what goes on at UOP? In other words, I'm wondering if this is more of the same kind of quarter-to-quarter volatility or, there's sort of differences in timing in what they do versus what you do that possibly takes some of this quarterly volatility out of your catalyst sales.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah, I would say that their licensing technologies are different from UOP. That's the reason we acquired the business, because of the complementarity of the technology. Given the differences they have, they are more into spaces like hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, where we don't have capability. It's not one-to-one comparison, because the end market they serve are different from the end markets UOP serve, which is more refining petrochemicals and oil and LNG. Those comps are not comparable. There's a variation between that. On the catalyst side, I would say trends are very convergent. Each one of us have product lines and customer base. They're not wide differences in the catalyst performance, but the technology licensing, there are differences.

Jeff Sprague
Analyst at Vertical Research Partners

As you noted, you don't want to include revenue synergies in your outlook, but maybe just a little color on where you get after those, how quickly you might be able to capture some of those.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah. I think they are driven by the combined offerings of Johnson Matthey and our process technology business solves customer problems better, and that's the chart seven if you see in our deck there. We, for example, can combine our capabilities in area like hydrogen, if you see. There is a capability which Johnson Matthey bring in for on-purpose production of hydrogen. We have capability on CO2 elimination in that produces low carbon hydrogen. That's an example. There are examples in sustainable aviation fuel, complementary technology on what Johnson Matthey brings on table versus what we build. Combining the two technology improves our proposition. There are similar example on the gas processing side in terms of the core technology which JM CT business brings in versus what bring in. That's the whole pieces here, that 1 + 1 here is equal to 4.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Because we are able to build a higher proposition, we will be able to get better win rates in the market, because so far we were not able to do it. They are two different companies. Customers can't buy this combined proposition. They have to sign two agreements, which is complicated. Now with a single umbrella and with our reputation in technology licensing business, we expect that to bring synergies. We also expect synergies through two more clear area, which brings Honeywell value proposition. First is connecting Johnson Matthey very large install base and building services and software portfolio. This is our core. We are an automation company, we know how to do it. The second, our Process Automation business will benefit by install base of Johnson Matthey.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Understanding that customer relationship where may not be present gives us additional door openers by which we can create opportunity for our Process Automation business. Variety of opportunities there. We're extremely excited, and that's why I mentioned, Jeff, that even though right now the headline number is 13x the EBITDA based on 2027 earnings, because that's the first year we'll fully own the business, but that's purely cost synergy based. We haven't acquired the business for cost synergies. We have acquired it to add value through sales synergies. I'm very confident that we are going to print a much better number when we are done with everything in terms of opportunities here.

Jeff Sprague
Analyst at Vertical Research Partners

Great. Thanks for all that additional perspective.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you, Jeff.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Joe Ritchie
Joe Ritchie
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Hey, guys. Good morning.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Good morning.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Good morning.

Joe Ritchie
Joe Ritchie
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Wanted to double-click a little bit on the Middle East. Your orders were up over 50% this quarter. I am just curious, what you are seeing is some of the disruption over there actually helping? Maybe conversely, I know that you guys called out the large catalyst shipment a year ago as a tough comp on the aftermarket business, but aftermarket was down. Are you impacted at all from an aftermarket perspective in the region? Just any color around both would be helpful.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

As I mentioned, Joe, the things are settling. I would say that initial months of the conflict, March, April, was more where we lost revenue. It is like anything new, did not know how to ship, a lot of customer sites were closed, and we were not able to perform our service contracts, et cetera. After losing some revenue in Q1 and Q2, things are normalized, and we don't expect. Our current revenue forecast does assume some modest loss of revenue, but not material in bigger scheme of things. As we are observing today, I think the business activity is more resumed to normal. We do see some big orders. That was the reason one of the big deals we got in process technology business was in Middle East for LNG facilities. Their investment cycle back.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

We also see customers looking at ways and means for improving more resiliency. How can they run their operation in spite of this? What can we do in terms of things like remote operations, more digitization in operations so that they can take countermeasures? Finally, early days, but we clearly see investments in Middle East pivoting towards logistics infrastructure. Pipeline terminals, different way of shipping product as we all read and observe from the media. Clearly there is a direction towards that. All in, I would say, the things have settled. Hopefully no wars happens from where we are today, and we see investment becoming more and more normalized and some large projects coming back into the pipeline.

Joe Ritchie
Joe Ritchie
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Got it. That is helpful, Vimal. I guess just maybe a broader question on the guidance, the 4%-6% baked into the second half of the year. Obviously, the trailing 12-month orders up double-digits is very supportive of that guide. It does sound like there is probably maybe some conservatism into the second half as well. I guess the question I have is how much of what you are seeing from an order perspective today is maybe even longer cycle and is already starting to help support a pretty good outlook for 2027 as well?

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

I would say it's both. I think versus what we guided at the Investor Day for 2027 and looking where we entering the second half and how things are progressing, given the strength across the board in the short cycle and then the continued orders on the long-cycle, you're right, our 2027 incrementally is looking stronger versus when we talked even last month. We feel really good about the prospects for next year.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

What I will add, Joe, is that orders growth is on the strength of our strategy of pivoting more and more towards high-growth verticals, which we talked about during our Investor Day. Building Automation is seeing 13% orders growth in last quarter. A lot of that growth came from data center hospitality and healthcare. Process got a lot of its growth from LNG and low carbon energy or renewable fuels, which we called out as high-growth verticals. In Industrial Automation, we saw a lot of growth in semiconductor fabs. Exactly it's not only a narrative, that narrative is turning into actual reality, and we expect to maintain this momentum, which then becomes basis for our second half guide, and then of course, continue that in 2027.

Joe Ritchie
Joe Ritchie
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Sounds great. Thanks, guys.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Kaplowitz with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Andrew Kaplowitz
Analyst at Citigroup

Good morning, everyone.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Morning, Andy.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Morning, Andy.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Andrew Kaplowitz
Analyst at Citigroup

Vimal and Mike, can you comment on price versus cost? As you know, commodity inflation is obviously all over the place, but your margin, you said, is trending a little better than expectation. Let me just talk about what you're seeing and what, if any, updated thoughts you have for price versus cost in the second half of 2026.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

Sure. I think We talked about it earlier in the year. We thought that inflation was going to be persistent, and that's what we continue to see going into the second half. Price was about 3.5%, 3.7% for the second quarter. I think looking at the second half, it will be around 4%, that's where we see inflation to be. Essentially, we're able to cover inflation with price, but inflation is stubborn. We see a lot of inflation in electronics, memory, obviously copper, and we also see inflation in labor. I think this is the environment we're in. We'll continue to price at that level and continue to manage things with our customers. Yeah, I would say generally things are very similar to what we assume going into the end of the second quarter.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

I would say a lot of the margin expansion you see here from us is not really driven by price cost, it's really by our productivity stranded cost takeout and teams just being able to get a much better leverage on cost and NPI introductions.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Andrew Kaplowitz
Analyst at Citigroup

That's helpful. Maybe just going back to core Industrial Automation. You mentioned improvement on the product side of the business would lead to growth in the second half, which I think is a bit different from what you recorded in Q2, where solutions led growth. I assume that's just continued recovery in short cycle demand that you're seeing and maybe NPI self-help tailwind kicking in a little bit more, maybe you could elaborate on that dynamic.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah. The solution side of the business is smaller component, but it's growing very nicely for us, and that's basically after-market services on our product install base. Specifically, if you look at our gas detection side of the house of the business in Industrial Automation, we have a large install base, and that's serviced very well through our traditional way of service contracts and others. That's growing extremely well. Certainly on the top-line basis, as Mike mentioned, the pricing has certainly some help given the high inflation prevailing across all segments in Honeywell.

Mark Macaluso
Mark Macaluso
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Honeywell

Yeah. Just add also that part of the growth in solutions 2Q was related to Intelligrated.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah, correct.

Mark Macaluso
Mark Macaluso
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Honeywell

We have a little bit of that, but obviously won't continue post-divestiture. You should think about the core IA business growing sort of in the low single-digit range, call it 2% or so, exiting as a kind of a star path for post-divestiture world.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Andrew Kaplowitz
Analyst at Citigroup

Helpful, guys.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Virgo with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

Alexander Virgo
Alexander Virgo
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning. Good morning, gentlemen.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Morning.

Alexander Virgo
Alexander Virgo
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Thanks for taking the call. I wondered if you could just elaborate a little bit more on the 15% growth in software ARR. Is there anything in particular driving that strength? A couple of housekeeping questions, if you could. You've raised the guidance on repositioning costs, they were a little bit higher in the quarter than I'd anticipated. I'm just wondering if you can give us a sense for what's driving that and whether that perhaps brings forward some costs that might otherwise have fallen next year. I wondered if you could just give us a sense of the magnitude of the impact in the quarter from catalyst volumes being down on the margin, the benefit that that would have commensurately in the second half, just to give us a sense. That would be great. Thank you.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Okay. I'll answer the first portion on software and hand over to Mike. We do expect our ARR growth to be about 15% for 2026. Of course, the year has six months to go, I can't really give you a precise number, we are working towards that goal and won't be substantially different towards that. What is driving it is your question. Two things. First is our existing offering is penetrating more. Sell existing offering to more new customers. We're seeing a lot of strength data across the board, both on the Building Automation and Process Automation side, because our offerings are getting more and more market acceptance. The second is launching new offerings. We continue to have new offerings on our Forge platform aligned with the customer needs.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

That continues to create more pipeline so that 2027, we also need to deliver the 15% rubric there. We just need more products towards that. Fundamentally, we remain bullish on performance of our Forge-based strategy, and that becoming an important part of our earnings algorithm moving forward.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

On the repositioning, we decided to consolidate footprint within our process business in the 2Q. That's why you saw the spike in the repositioning. We're estimating repositioning right now for the year around that $100 million-$110 million, I think that's what you should see. That repositioning help us to get some benefits in the 2H and next year as far as depreciation and other things as far as how we absorb the footprint from ISC standpoint. Net-net, I think it will be positive. It will be a pretty fairly quick payback for us on this repositioning.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

On the question of catalyst, I think the second half volume of catalyst is more normalized versus first half. First half, we had said that right at the earnings guide during January time frame, that we will see pressure on the volumes of catalyst, and it occurred that way. Now we see things normalize like a normal year. The second half volumes are way greater than the first half. On the margin side of catalyst, there are basically two types of catalysts we sell. One in which we compete with the rest of our peers, therefore pricing is on a market line basis. The second type of catalyst where we have unique intellectual property, so our ability to get better margins is more superior than that. In a given quarter, the mix of that really drives the net margin of catalyst.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Sometimes you can sell some of the unique IP catalysts a lot more, therefore our margins are very favorable. Sometimes that happens in the front end of the year, and that is not forecastable easily because that's driven by the actual consumption based upon the plant conditions. If you run plant really, very hard, you need more catalyst. If you run at a lower capacity, then the catalyst runs longer. There's a variability on when that occurs, which creates these variations on the margin and process technology on a quarter-on-quarter basis. On a yearly basis, the margins are very predictable. They are more linear on an annualized basis and less linear within a quarter.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Snyder with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Thank you. I also wanted to ask about the Middle East. I think you guys said the full year up high single digits. I presume the back half is even stronger. I appreciate that activity has stabilized, but the outlook for you guys seems a lot more constructive relative to broader U.S. industrials in the region. I guess my question is there something specific about what you guys are doing there to support volumes? Is there something specific about the products or the markets served that is allowing you guys to show that kind of growth, and still which is a tough situation over there? Thank you.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

I think at the heart of it is our portfolio. If you see Honeywell portfolio is big in Building Automation and Process Automation. If you look at Middle East market, that's what the market is all about. It's a big energy market. We have a leading position with our process technology segment and Process Automation segment. Clearly we serve all countries for that. It's a big infrastructure market in which there's a build-out of different type of infrastructure, be it hospitality, be it healthcare systems, airports, et cetera, and Building Automation business does extremely well in those circumstances. I think what sets us out is heavily localized model. We are one of the most localized company in Middle East for decades. We did not evacuate even one person during this conflict, not even a single person.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

All our people are on ground because they're all local. We didn't have to do any big move out. I think combination of our portfolio, and where customers are investing therefore, and our portfolio is favorable towards that, which will make a distinction between us and other industrials, and our heavily localized footprint puts us in a more favorable position probably compared to our peers.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Thank you, Vimal. I really appreciate that. Maybe just following up on M&A, you signaled willingness to do M&A. Is there a balance sheet and maybe bandwidth capacity for deals of material size in the back half of 2026? Or is this more 2027 and beyond, maybe after monetization of Quantinuum just gives you guys even more dry powder? Thank you.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

2026, we are very focused to retire our debt. We have committed that, and we will absolutely execute on it. I would say the M&A activity should be reviewed more in the lens of 2027 onwards. These things take time. We're actively working on pipeline. I would say the Honeywell balance sheet of its own have strength for the deal size what we mentioned during Investor Day, $1 billion-$5 billion enterprise value. The Quantinuum demonetization will give us additional tailwind should we need it, and we'll plan it appropriately. Overall, we will continue to top grade our portfolio should the right opportunity exist. All our earnings forecast of $12 by 2029 is based upon organic growth. There's not even single M&A assumed in that because we all know that's unpredictable, and we'll see what comes on our way.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Thank you, Vimal. Appreciate it.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our final question comes from line of Andrew Buscaglia with BNP Paribas. Please proceed with your question.

Andrew Buscaglia
Andrew Buscaglia
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in here.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Hey, good morning.

Andrew Buscaglia
Andrew Buscaglia
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Just to follow up on some of the process discussion, it's encouraging to see that LNG activity pick up. Could you just reiterate that timeline for conversion of typical LNG projects?

Andrew Buscaglia
Andrew Buscaglia
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Would you say 6-12 months, or is it multi-year?

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Sure. Multi-year, for us to build our proprietary equipment. In LNG, we have little distinction in our business model. Typically, we license our technology and customers will hire an EPC to build their plant. In case of LNG, we don't license technology, we give a proprietary equipment, heat exchanger. Typical delivery times are somewhere from two to three years window, depending upon the design. You're talking about conversion, if we book something in 2024, they're converting today. What we are booking in 2026 will convert 2028. Also don't forget, a lot of the revenue recognition is on POC basis, percentage completion. You will do accrue some revenue. It's not zero, then large revenue accretion happens merely on a two-year window.

Mike Stepniak
Mike Stepniak
Senior Vice President and CFO at Honeywell

I would just maybe add that we're sold out LNG for the next three years.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Three years, yeah. Totally sold out. We have a lot of tailwinds in the business.

Andrew Buscaglia
Andrew Buscaglia
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Yeah. Okay. That's about what I figured.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Yeah.

Andrew Buscaglia
Andrew Buscaglia
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Since AI had not come up in the Q&A yet, and everything's pretty picked over, I want to ask a high level one that's sort of this notion of physical AI driving demand or interest in physical AI. I'm wondering if you're beginning to see that notion of AI driving incremental investments in hardware, to get ahead of customers being able to monetize AI long term. Are you hearing that in your discussions? Are you seeing that, maybe potentially in any of your orders across maybe Industrial Automation? Just maybe if you could talk a little bit high level on what you're seeing there.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

As I mentioned, when we sell software on our Honeywell Forge platform, that's all AI-based offerings. Clearly 15% revenue growth. The base is small, I agree. We are going to inch from about $900 million to a little over $1 billion of ARR in that segment this year, in that offering this year. That does pull in products to a certain degree. That's our core strategy. We continue to launch new offerings, and drive demand to our products. To me, AI is integral part of our offering set. Honeywell believes that it's how the automation industry will move towards autonomy. Today, we have been selling automation since 1975. Our offerings are becoming more and more autonomous, semi-autonomous to autonomous. The best way to measure our progress is to see our ARR growth.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

I cannot give you any other indicator because they're all wrapped up into other products. That's a direct measure. That's the reason we are updating you on our ARR growth on the Honeywell Forge on a periodic basis.

Andrew Buscaglia
Andrew Buscaglia
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Yeah. Very good. Thank you very much, Vimal.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Kapur for any final comments.

Vimal Kapur
Vimal Kapur
Chairman and CEO at Honeywell

Thank you very much, operator. I would like to thank our share owners, our customers, and all the Honeywell Technologies future shapers around the world for the strong second quarter results you delivered. We are confident on our path ahead and look forward to sharing our ongoing progress in the months to come. I hope all of you have a pleasant and restful summer. Thank you very much for joining us today, and we hope you have a great rest of your day.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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