Carrier Global

Overview

Carrier Global is the world's largest HVAC and refrigeration equipment manufacturer by revenue, tracing its lineage to Willis Carrier's invention of modern air conditioning in July 1902. The company makes heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration systems for residential, commercial, and industrial customers under the Carrier brand, and heat pumps and heating systems in Europe under the Viessmann brand. It employs roughly 47,000 people and operates in more than 50 countries.

Carrier spent most of its history inside United Technologies Corporation, which acquired it in 1979. UTC spun Carrier off as a standalone public company in April 2020 alongside Otis Elevator, distributing shares to UTC stockholders. In its first five years as an independent company, Carrier executed a complete portfolio overhaul: it shed its Fire & Security and Commercial Refrigeration businesses for more than $10 billion in proceeds and used that capital to acquire Viessmann Climate Solutions for €12 billion, transforming itself from a diversified industrial conglomerate into a pure-play climate equipment and services company.

Portfolio transformation

In April 2023, Carrier announced the transformation simultaneously: it would acquire Viessmann Climate Solutions from Germany's Viessmann Group and divest its Fire & Security and Commercial Refrigeration segments. The logic was to concentrate the portfolio on the highest-growth climate markets (heat pumps and building electrification in Europe, commercial HVAC in North America and Asia, and data center cooling globally) while exiting businesses where Carrier held weaker competitive positions.

The divestitures closed across 2024. The Commercial & Residential Fire segment went to Lone Star Funds for approximately $3 billion and now operates as Kidde Global Solutions. The Global Access Solutions security business was sold to Honeywell for about $4.95 billion. Commercial Refrigeration went to Haier for $775 million (enterprise value), and the Industrial Fire business was sold to Sentinel Capital Partners for about $1.425 billion. Together these exits generated more than $10 billion in proceeds by the end of 2024.

The Viessmann acquisition closed January 2, 2024. Viessmann Climate Solutions is Germany's leading heat pump, gas boiler, and home energy systems company, with roughly 70% of its revenue coming from heat pumps and related climate and energy services. The acquisition gave Carrier a dominant position in the European residential heat pump market at the moment European governments are mandating the phase-out of fossil fuel heating systems.

Products and segments

Data centers and liquid cooling

AI GPU clusters generate significantly more heat per rack than conventional server infrastructure, and the cooling systems designed for prior generations of data centers are inadequate at the power densities involved. Carrier has invested in high-capacity chillers and liquid cooling infrastructure (direct liquid cooling loops, rear-door heat exchangers, and immersion cooling systems) that can handle the thermal loads of modern GPU-dense racks.

Carrier reached approximately $1 billion in data center revenue in 2025 and guided to roughly 50% growth, to about $1.5 billion, in 2026. Q4 2025 data center orders were described in the earnings call as up more than fivefold year over year, and commercial HVAC orders broadly were up nearly 50% in the quarter. The company's aftermarket business (service contracts, parts, and controls for installed equipment) has grown at double-digit rates for five consecutive years and is a common attachment on data center installations given the criticality of uptime.

Financials

FY2025 net sales were $21.75 billion, down 3% reported and 1% organically from 2024. The reported decline reflects the lapping of the 2024 portfolio divestitures and currency effects; underlying demand in commercial HVAC offset weakness in residential and transportation. Adjusted operating margin was 15.1% and adjusted EPS was $2.59. Free cash flow was $2.12 billion.

Carrier returned approximately $3.7 billion to shareholders in FY2025: roughly $0.8 billion in dividends and $2.9 billion in share repurchases. The company has used divestiture proceeds primarily for buybacks, reducing its share count significantly since 2023. The 2026 guidance calls for approximately $22 billion in sales (flat to low-single-digit organic growth), adjusted operating profit of approximately $3.4 billion, adjusted EPS of approximately $2.80, and free cash flow of approximately $2 billion. An additional $1.5 billion of share repurchases is planned in 2026. A roughly $350 million sales headwind from the Riello divestiture (the European boiler brand was sold to Ariston Group, announced December 2025 and closing in the first half of 2026) is embedded in the 2026 outlook.

Primary competitors are Trane Technologies (formerly Ingersoll Rand's climate business), Johnson Controls, Daikin, and Lennox International. Carrier and Trane are the two largest commercial HVAC companies in North America; Viessmann and Bosch Thermotechnik are the two largest residential heat pump brands in Germany.

Sources