Trane Technologies plc (NYSE:TT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So we’re really excited about thermal management systems and expect to see more around the world.

Andy Kaplowitz: Very hopeful. And then, Dave, I wanted to double click on your comments around Asia and China in particular. As you said, China bookings barely down, I think revenue up. But as you mentioned, one of your peers had a relatively sharp deterioration in bookings in China. You mentioned the strength of your team there. Maybe talk about the durability of growth that you see there and what you’re doing to sustain that growth?

Dave Regnery: Yes. I’m so proud of what our team has been able to do in Asia. In fact, Thursday morning I have my 06:30 a.m. call with the Asia team and they’re super excited about what they see moving forward. I think that sometimes if you look at the headlines coming out of China specific, where you’re going to see GDP down and you see what’s happening in the residential space there. I would tell you that the verticals that we’re really strong in continue to be strong. And it is the pharmaceutical, it is semiconductor, it is data centers. We have great offerings there and we continue to win. So we’re excited about the opportunities that exist in front of us there.

Andy Kaplowitz: Awesome. Keep up the good work.

Dave Regnery: All right. Thanks Andy. Talk to you soon.

Chris Kuehn: Thanks.

Operator: Our next question comes from Jeff Sprague from Vertical Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jeff Sprague: Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone.

Dave Regnery: Hey. Good morning, Jeff.

Jeff Sprague: Hey, good morning. Sorry, I was on a few minutes late. I got kind of the end market kind of organic outlook within the six to seven. How about geographically, did you address that? How the three regions fit within the six to seven guide?

Chris Kuehn: Yes. Hey, Jeff, it’s Chris. What we really talked about was in the Americas and in EMEA for commercial HVAC. We can really see from our guide probably up high-single-digits for the year in the Americas with resi. We’re guiding that around flat plus or minus LSD, but we’re calling it flat. TK Americas markets are down around 10 points on a blended average basis. We’ll outperform that. Think of that around mid-single digits down in the Americas. And then if I go to transport and EMEA markets also down low-single digits and we’ll outperform those markets. And one of the slides we really like putting into the materials is really just the history of market performance versus our performance within the transport businesses and it gives us a lot of confidence with the investments we made over the years and we continue to make that we’ve got the ability to outperform markets again in 2024.

But think of EMEA as if the market is down-low singles, then we’re flat to maybe a little bit better than that. And then Asia, to Dave’s point, with a great team there, we’re seeing somewhere in the mid singles kind of range. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of context. Julian got pretty close to it when he asked the question before, but I’ll just kind of summarize it here.

Dave Regnery: And Jeff, just think about a lot of strength around commercial HVAC globally.

Jeff Sprague: Yes. It sounds, Dave, that commercial HVAC price, I guess is up a little bit more. Enterprise is up 1, resi is up 1 on price. Maybe TK’s got less with the volume pressures. I actually would have thought commercial price would be a little bit better than maybe kind of the 1-plus implied. Can you just maybe kind of talk to that a little bit like the price in the backlog versus new things that you’re trying to do on price just to kind of react to that Tier 2 inflation you were talking about?

Chris Kuehn: Yes. Jeff it’s Chris. I mean, look it’s early in the year, resi on the comment. We’re calling it flat on a full year basis. We’ll see if we get any price growth there. Maybe a little bit and even on our 1% guide for the full year, could it be better than that? Yes, we remain flexible as we move through the year and we’ll look at the dynamics of cost. But right now we’ve got positive spread in the guide like we would target any year. But we’ll be nimble to opportunities, so think of it as just the start of the year. We like putting out guidance that we can meet or exceed on a full year basis, and we’ll update you as we go through.

Jeff Sprague: Hey, maybe one just quick follow-up, Dave, a lot of your earlier comments on the call kind of about making your own luck, right, with the salesforce and everything. You may have heard one of your competitors sort of gave up on the IRA yesterday. Like, be nice if something happens, but we don’t see it. Like, what’s your view on really how some of the stimulus might work its way through the system and are you actually seeing any tangible benefits?