The company completed the sales of Access Solutions, Industrial Fire, Commercial Refrigeration (CCR), and Commercial and Residential Fire (CRF) businesses in 2024. These divestitures are part of a strategy to simplify the company and focus on intelligent climate and energy solutions.

The acquisition of VCS was completed on January 2, 2024, and is expected to enhance the company's position in intelligent climate and energy solutions, particularly in Europe. The VCS Business develops intelligent, integrated and sustainable technologies, including heat pumps, boilers, photovoltaic systems, home battery storage and digital solutions, primarily for residential customers in Europe.

The company prioritizes funding organic growth, pursuing acquisitions to complement existing products and services, and returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. This indicates a balanced approach to capital deployment.

The company plans to foster operational, financial, and commercial excellence through the Carrier Excellence program. This program is a continuous improvement framework expected to drive operational efficiency, digitalization, automation, and supply chain productivity.

The company has set ambitious sustainability goals to be reached by 2030, including investing over $4 billion to develop intelligent climate and energy solutions that reduce environmental impacts, avoiding more than 1 gigaton of customer greenhouse gas emissions, achieving carbon neutral operations and reducing energy intensity by 10% across operations.

The Audit Committee maintains primary responsibility for oversight of cybersecurity risks through the ERM program, and the Technology and Innovation and Governance Committees assist with the cybersecurity programs through their oversight of our technology, digital, and innovation strategies and product integrity program, respectively.

Approximately 50% of net sales are derived from international operations, including U.S. export sales. These operations are subject to risks associated with changes in local government regulations, trade policies, economic conditions, and political instability.

The effects of climate events, including increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather conditions and water scarcity, create financial risks to the business. These risks include disruption of operations, increased costs, and the need to meet new regulations and standards.

Cybersecurity incidents could disrupt business operations, result in the loss of critical and confidential information, and adversely impact our reputation and results of operations.

Each of our businesses is subject to significant competition from a number of companies throughout the world. Due to the nature of our products and services and the markets we serve, our competition can vary from regional or specialized companies to larger public or private companies.

The most significant competitive factors we face are technology differentiation, product performance, service, delivery schedule and price. Brand reputation, service to customers and quality are also important competitive factors for our products and services.

From time to time customers and others may seek to become suppliers of products and services that compete with our own or pursue other strategies to disrupt our business model.

The company continues to invest in its supply chain to improve its resilience with a focus on automation, dual sourcing of critical components and localized manufacturing when feasible.

Our reliance on suppliers and commodity markets to secure components (such as motors and valves) and raw materials (such as copper, aluminum and steel), and on service providers to deliver our products, exposes us to volatility in the prices and availability of these materials and services.

A significant portion of our employees are represented by labor unions or works councils in a number of countries under various collective bargaining agreements with varying durations and expiration dates.

The company is focused on offering a comprehensive and differentiated suite of sustainable technologies and services, including digitally-enabled solutions that connect the company to customers throughout the product lifecycle.

Research and development costs relate to new product development and new technology innovation. Due to the variable nature of program development schedules, year-over-year spending levels can fluctuate.

Our future success depends on designing, developing, producing, selling and supporting innovative products that incorporate advanced technologies. The regulations and policies applicable to our products, as well as our customers' product and service needs, change from time to time.

The company may purchase its outstanding common stock from time to time subject to market conditions and at its discretion. Since the initial authorization in February 2021, the Company's Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of up to $7.1 billion of the Company's outstanding common stock.

However, we are not required to declare dividends. Dividends may be discontinued, accelerated, suspended or delayed at any time without prior notice.

Our debt obligations could potentially have important consequences to us and our debt and equity investors, including: (1) requiring a substantial portion of our cash flows from operations to make debt service payments or to refinance our indebtedness as it becomes due, making it more difficult for us to satisfy our other priorities and obligations.

As a global leader in intelligent climate and energy solutions, we are committed to making the world safer, sustainable and more comfortable. We have set ambitious sustainability goals to be reached by 2030, which include the following: Invest over $4 billion to develop intelligent climate and energy solutions that reduce environmental impacts.

Global chemical use restrictions related to protection of human health and the environment as well as climate event directives may require additional investments in product designs, resulting in increased manufacturing, production and sourcing costs as well as updates to product safety assessments.

Differing views of environmental, social and governance issues may also increase the risk that our goals or actions taken to meet our goals would be viewed unfavorably by investors, activist groups, current and potential customers, employees and other stakeholders.

Our business, operating results, cash flows and financial condition have in the past been and in the future may be adversely affected by changes in global economic conditions and geopolitical risks and conditions, including climate and energy policies, regulatory changes, credit market conditions, levels of consumer and business confidence, fluctuations in residential, commercial and industrial construction activity, pandemic health issues, natural disasters, commodity prices, energy costs, interest rate fluctuations, inflation, recession, foreign exchange rates, levels of government spending and deficits, trade policies (including tariffs, boycotts and sanctions), military conflicts, acts of terrorism, government instability, actual or anticipated defaults on sovereign debt and other challenges that could affect the global economy.

Uncertainty in U.S. trade policy, including uncertainty surrounding changes in tariffs, trade agreements or other trade restrictions imposed by the U.S. or other governments, as well as political conditions in and between the U.S. and foreign countries in which we operate, could significantly and adversely affect our business and financial results.

Demand for our HVAC products and services, representing our largest segment by sales, is seasonal and affected by the weather.