Honeywell Technologies (NASDAQ:HON) used to be one giant company that made everything from thermostats to jet engines. Not anymore. Over the past year, it split into three separate public companies: Solstice Advanced Materials, spun off last October; Honeywell Aerospace, spun off just last month; and Honeywell Technologies, the automation business that’s left, which is what CEO Vimal Kapur now runs. This week’s earnings report was the first one for Honeywell Technologies as its own standalone firm, and the stock jumped more than 5% on the news.

What Happened and Why the Numbers Are a Bit Messy?

Since the aerospace spinoff only finished right at the end of the quarter, this report still includes some of Honeywell Aerospace’s results mixed in, which makes straight comparisons tricky. Total revenue, including that leftover aerospace piece, came in at $9.72 billion, up 4% from a year ago and beating the roughly $9.5 billion analysts expected. Strip aerospace back out, and revenue for just the automation business was $5.19 billion, up 3%, beating the $5.02 billion Wall Street had modeled specifically for the smaller, standalone company.

On profit, adjusted earnings per share, including the leftover aerospace results came in at $4.52, actually down 4% from $4.72 a year earlier. On a standalone basis without aerospace, adjusted earnings were $1.95 a share, up 10% from $1.77 a year ago and beating the $1.82 analysts expected for the new, smaller Honeywell Technologies. There was also a one-time boost: net profit under standard accounting rules hit $5.68 billion, largely because of a $6.63 billion one-time accounting gain tied to deconsolidating Quantinuum, Honeywell’s quantum computing venture, a separate transaction from the aerospace spin-off, not from the actual operating business doing better.

That raises a real question. Is this a genuinely strong first quarter as a standalone firm, or does the messy, one-time nature of a spinoff quarter make it hard to tell what Honeywell Technologies (NASDAQ:HON) actually looks like going forward?

The Bull Case

All three of Honeywell’s remaining automation segments grew organically, and orders for the standalone business overall grew 16%, with backlog reaching about $20 billion. Building Automation was the standout, with organic sales up 9% and orders up 13%, driven by strong demand from data centers and hotels. Industrial Automation grew sales 4% organically on strong demand for sensing and measurement equipment. Process Automation, the one segment with sales down slightly this quarter, actually saw orders surge 24%, with Middle East orders alone up more than 50% on refurbishment projects, and management expects a “sharp inflection” in that segment’s growth starting in the third quarter. Kapur said the results reflect a “year-plus long process to simplify our business,” and that the benefits are already showing up.

On the strength of the quarter, management raised its full-year guidance across the board: organic growth guidance moved from 2-3% to 3-4%, segment margin guidance from 19.8-20.3% to 20.1-20.5%, and adjusted earnings growth from 22-28% to 25-29%. Full-year sales guidance in dollar terms actually came down slightly, from $19.9-20.2 billion to $19.8-20.0 billion, which the company said shows selling off two smaller businesses faster than originally planned, not weaker demand, and those two divestitures are expected to close by early August. The new guidance also shows Honeywell Technologies (NASDAQ:HONA)’s acquisition of Johnson Matthey’s Catalyst Technologies business, which closed July 17. CNBC’s Jim Cramer Investing Club, which owns the stock, raised its price target to $275 from $250 after the report.

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The Bear Case

Some of the good news comes with a real concern. The consolidated adjusted earnings figure, $4.52 a share, was actually down 4% from a year ago. This shows that the older parts of the business being sold off are still dragging down its total earnings during this transition. Full-year sales guidance in dollar terms also did go down, and while the explanation is faster divestitures rather than weaker demand, investors won’t get full clarity on that until those business sales actually close in early August. Process Automation’s sales still fell this quarter, and the promised turnaround is a forecast for the third quarter, not something that’s happened yet. Kapur was also direct that the firm’s full-year outlook assumes the Iran war doesn’t get worse and doesn’t disrupt supply chains any further, a real risk given how unpredictable that conflict has been. Also, Honeywell Aerospace, the newly spun-off sister company whose results still partly bled into this report, missed estimates and fell about 6% the same day. It is a reminder that not every piece of the old Honeywell empire is performing well right now. As a brand-new standalone stock, Honeywell Technologies (NASDAQ:HON) also doesn’t have much of its own independent trading history yet, which adds a layer of uncertainty to any valuation.

Insider Monkey’s Hedge Fund Data Analysis 

Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database still lists the older, pre-split “Honeywell International” entity, since the Honeywell Aerospace spinoff only completed after the most recent filing period. That data shows 75 hedge funds holding the stock at the end of Q1 2026, down from 79 the quarter before, with the dollar value held falling from $3.85 billion to $3.55 billion. Because that reflects the old, larger conglomerate rather than the new, smaller automation-only business, it’s a useful signal of general sentiment heading into the split, but not a clean read on how funds view Honeywell Technologies specifically. That data won’t exist until funds file positions in the new, standalone stock. We also haven’t seen any insider purchases since 2019.

Conclusion

Honeywell Technologies (NASDAQ:HON)’s first quarter as a standalone company beat what Wall Street expected for the new, smaller business, and orders and backlog both point to real demand ahead, not just a one-time accounting boost. But this is also a transition quarter, with leftover aerospace results, a one-time spinoff gain, and lowered dollar sales guidance all making it harder than usual to judge the underlying business cleanly. The clearest test comes next quarter, the first one with no aerospace numbers mixed in at all, when investors finally get to see what Honeywell Technologies looks like entirely on its own.

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Disclosure: None.