Johnson Controls International plc (NYSE:JCI) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

And I believe we are positioned to see some of these forecasts that projects potentially 50-plus percent growth over the next few years, and we are positioning to be able to serve that. And so I think that is what gives us confidence as we get through the year. We see continued strength in orders. And then as we set up for ‘23, a good visibility into – I mean, ‘25 good visibility in our ability to be able to continue that trend.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Joe O’Dea with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Joseph O’Dea: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Marc, just a couple of clarifications to start. First in terms of the quality issue and confidence that there are not kind of additional reserves going forward. Anything from a time-line to remediate? And then secondly, just related to your answer to Nigel’s question, when you are saying high single-digit implied growth, was that a back half of 2024 comment? Or was that a fourth quarter comment?

Marc Vandiepenbeeck: It was a fourth quarter comment, just to clarify. On the quality we are early in the process. These again are very unusual. At this stage we don’t expect anything additional, but we’re still reviewing how we are going to develop and deploy that firmware fix. And generally, we are able to resolve those issues fairly, quickly within a couple of quarters. So it’s not something that is going to drag along for years on because it is critical for us to fix those pretty quickly.

Joseph O’Dea: Got it. And then I wanted to ask on global products and the applied organic down mid-single digits, the light commercial up mid-teens. And when we look kind of a year ago, both had pretty challenging comps. And so just any additional color on the difference in those organic trends in the quarter, regional or otherwise?

George R. Oliver: What I’d say, across our applied, I mean when you look at I mean both whether it be direct or indirect, and we have a much higher mix as we are differentiating our solutions, our Commercial Solutions business. When you look at the overall applied volume on a two-year stack, we’re up over 20%. And the pipeline right now that we are building is extremely strong because of the secular trends that we are addressing, which is the data center expansion and a lot of the industrial expansion, as well as a focus on sustainability. So we’ve been positioning our technologies globally, regionally to be able to get more than our fair share. And I think we are positioned to continue to see that trend.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Julian Mitchell: Hi, good morning. Sorry to be a [bore] (ph), but just to sort of try and circle back to the second half assumptions for a second. So I think, the segment margin is guided around sort of 17.5% in Q4 and you just did 14.5%. So maybe help us understand that 300 bps uplift is there anything by segment that stands out or they’re all up a healthy amount? And just – there is a bunch of questions on China and APAC. So just to understand for the year as a whole, what is the APAC Building Solutions revenue expected to be down. I think, it was down 22% in the first half. So what’s the full year assumption for that APAC BS revenue change, please?

Marc Vandiepenbeeck: Yes. So first on the second half and your directionally correct on Q4 segments. Again, our expectation there and where that margin comes from is really driven by three things: the improvement in our mix associated with the growth in our service business. As you know, the service business is much, much more profitable than our system business. It is the volume increase we are seeing both in our residential business, as well as our [book-to-bill] (ph) business, where orders have been progressing well throughout the second quarter and as we enter the third quarter. That volume provides a benefit in terms of absorption and productivity within our manufacturing and provides good leverage and allows us to get there.

And then we’ve addressed our base cost earlier in the year, and we set ourselves up for the ability to leverage the P&L a little bit better than we have been able historically, and that’s why we are comfortable at where we are. Now for the full year on Asia Pac, I’d say, if you look at where we have guided, we are assuming a mid-teen negative growth for the full-year and the sequential growth that you can see will therefore be positive in the fourth quarter in order to obtain that weighted average performance for the full fiscal year 2024.

Julian Mitchell: That’s a very clear answer. And then just my second question, just to understand that data center exposure a little bit better. I think George you gave a very clear explanation of the products and the focus points for JCI. But in terms of sort of revenue, the $2 billion of sales you mentioned, George, I think that’s a 2023 number, is it? And just to understand maybe any sense of how those sales split across kind of HVAC, BMS and Fire & Security?

George R. Oliver: So I mean when we look at the $2 billion that was the 2023, as you said. And then we are obviously seeing a significant pickup on that this year. So as we said, for the first half we are already at the level that we were all of last year. Now a significant amount of that is being driven by the cooling technologies across our not only our air cool, water cool but also the application of Silent-Aire. So we’ve got a good pickup there. What we are doing is making sure that as we are working with the hyperscalers and colos, that we’re now going to market in more of an integrated solution that ultimately creates a lot more value in how that solution is put into service. So you can imagine with all of the technology integration that we’ve been having with these providers, it’s really differentiating what we are actually doing.