What is the new story you have to tell about this company? How different is it from the one that you had to tell when it was still one single conglomerate?

So I, I would say that, uh, uh, focus really matters.

Uh, so automation at scale, creating an automation business at scale with so multiple mission critical segments is different from being part of a company which did multiple businesses.

So Honeywell, uh, pre 2023 was a, was a big player and is still a big player in aerospace, uh, you know, big player in specialty chemicals, also big player in automation, and bunch of smaller businesses.

So the company created value by having management system to run these businesses well globally, individually, but there was no common strategy you can build when your businesses and end markets are so diverse.

You cannot have one common set of goals.

Uh, so you really drive shareholder value by process excellence.

... personal charge of, and what you should delegate?

Right.

It means you need LNG plants, and then you also need to think about utilities.

Because our automation is all pervasive, we are basically thinking, how do we serve all these end markets? But things are changing fast.

Two things changed in the last six months.

Number one, on-site power generation.

So it's becoming a recent trend as people are not getting interconnections.

Many people are moving into generating their own power.

How will acquisitions play into building that portfolio? And maybe just broadly, how do you think about capital allocation?

What was wrong with the Honeywell of before?

Honeywell did extremely well in the last 20 years' period from 2005 to, you know, 2022, 2023 timeframe.

It created a massive shareholder value.

We are a company which did a great job of running businesses efficiently, globalizing ourself, so it was clear to me that our next 50 years, the earnings growth will come from top-line growth.

And top-line growth is hard to accomplish if you are a complex structure with addressing multiple segments.

Uh, that was my incoming thesis when I started, but two things happening simultaneously when I started as a CEO.

The first was aerospace industry started growing, and at the same time, ChatGPT came in, and AI started becoming an important conversation.

... or someone who inspires or has a vision, but you're more a programmer?

What was wrong with the Honeywell of before?

Honeywell did extremely well in the last twenty years period from 2005 to, you know, 2022, 2023 timeframe.

It created a massive shareholder value, and the most of the shareholder value came from margin expansion.

We are a company which did a great job of running businesses efficiently, globalizing ourselves, so it was clear to me that our next fifty years, the earnings growth will come from top-line growth.

And top-line growth is hard to accomplish if you are a complex structure with addressing multiple segments.

That was my incoming thesis when I started, but two things happening simultaneously when I started as a CEO.

The first was aerospace industry started growing in the middle of 2023-

Did that focus the mind? Was that a catalyst for splitting up?

Just talk about the automation opportunity, if you

would.

So automation, first we have to really understand what really automation business mean.

Because one of our, I think, both challenge and opportunity is we're creating a new category of stock called pure play automation.

I think automation fundamentally drives when you, the word still is creating more infrastructure.

We are still building more hospitals, data center, pharmaceutical plants.

We are still building more LNG plants, utilities, semiconductor fabs.

You talk about physical AI, which Again, I think it's back to our prior conversation, a little bit about data, but describe what you mean by

... that you control and climate control.

But the, the buildings which are, where we are putting much more focus to grow our, uh, install base is, of course, data center, but also, uh, hotels.

Why hotels we are focused on? As what we have learned is as society progresses, everybody wants to consume and have better quality of life.

They, they spend money in hotels and restaurant and stadiums, so hotels is a big vertical for us, controlling the room temperature there and driving energy efficiency.

Guest experience in terms of the digital app by which we manage the lo- lock systems there, the overall safety and security of the hotel.

So it's a big market, and people like Hilton and Marriott, they are all our big customers.

But if you switch to hospitals, the world also need more healthcare with the aging population all over the world, and hospital is a complex system.

... and climate control.

Mm-hmm.

Which doesn't happen.

The acquirer keeps name because they figured Honeywell brand was so powerful and was more impactful, so they changed their own name.

So that was a big moment to your question on cultural assimilation of two large companies.

It was kind of merger of equals.

And it did go through its own motion of, uh, ups and downs, and that's when Dave Cote came in as chairman and CEO of Honeywell.

And Dave did a great job to rebuild the Honey- Honeywell culture, which was much more one company mindset.

Is it cheaper labor or a substitute for labor? What, what is the key selling point for your customers?

So what does industrial automation entail, and especially in this age of emerging physical AI?

So, uh, automation is so central to our life, and it's something like oxygen.

We breathe and we don't feel it.

It's like all around us.

Automation systems automate the, the segment we serve, buildings, offices, uh, airports, refineries, pharmaceutical plants, semiconductor facilities.

So it's the heart and center of everything.

So it naturally is a high growth vector, a, a, a, you know, segment.

... on Honey- Honeywell, and how does it, I guess, factor into this bigger conversation, this bigger dynamic around sup- supply chain resilience?

So what do you do?

So, Jim, if you look at AI in context of industrial company like us, it presents a great opportunity for us to compound our growth.

The uniqueness in our business is that the data is not available in public domain.

You can't train the data which is for a refinery or for a life sciences facility or for a hospital, go to internet and train it.

The data is in one of our systems.

And we have to train the data using our domain knowledge to build more purpose-built solution for our customers.

So that's becoming an important feature which is going to enable our growth.

I'm curious how much of your margin story this year depends on pricing versus productivity gains.

What is the possibility then when that becomes so-called laser focused because it goes out on its own, that we'll start seeing some genuine earnings improvement?

Yeah, so look, you know, if you look at our Q4 performance, just as an immediate gauge, what we delivered, Honeywell grew 6%, and most segments did well.

Aerospace grew double digit, building automation grew high single digit, et cetera.

That 2025 guide, Jim, is based upon what we have conviction in and what we see.

We are not making any estimates.

We are not making any judgments on how things will get better.

If they do, there should be an upside to our current guide.

But I'm curious, what is different about now versus a number of years ago in terms of why the board chose this as the proper route?