Honeywell closes Carrier deal, readies market push in cloud access control
Honeywell announced Monday it has completed its acquisition of Carrier Global Corporation's Global Access Solutions business for $4.9 billion as the company prepares an aggressive move to become a leading provider of security solutions.
Some 1,200 employees for GAS are now part of Honeywell, which is preparing to go after major opportunities in cloud-based services and solutions.
The company announced in October an alignment of its portfolio around three megatrends, including automation.
Honeywell added three brands last October to bring differentiated software capabilities to its portfolio: LenelS2, a leader in commercial and enterprise access solutions; Onity, which offers electronic locks, specifically hospitality access and mobile credentials; and Supra, which specializes in cloud-based electronic lockboxes and scheduling software.
Honeywell says adding GAS enhances the company’s Building Automation business model of leading with high-value products that are critical for buildings.
Honeywell expects to benefit from GAS’ “attractive growth and margin profile, valuable software content and accretive mix of recurring revenue,” with forecasted annual sales in excess of $1 billion when combined with Honeywell's existing security portfolio.
“As the world’s security needs evolve from a focus on protecting people to protecting both people and critical assets, we see strong growth prospects for our Access Solutions acquisition," said Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur in a statement.
"By building on our strong track record of delivering high-value building automation products, solutions, and services globally, this acquisition creates an exciting opportunity for us to achieve faster growth and further margin expansion, while generating better outcomes for our building automation customers."
Much of this was echoed recently by Kumar Sokka, President and General Manager of LenelS2, during a State of the Industry panel discussion at PSA TEC 2024.
Sokka says Honeywell has carved out about a $25 billion investment to drive growth in building automation, energy efficiency and aerospace. Speaking of the Carrier deal, Sokka says it’s like “doubling down not only on what our industry can accomplish but also more beyond security…I think it is a good thing for our industry.”
Having the two organizations coming together could create a more complete understanding of the data created by the many systems in buildings, including fire, lighting, HVAC and access control.
“When you look at things like megatrends, sustainability, efficiency, you are trying to leverage more information,” Sokka explained. “The race to this AI concept is a race to how much data and information can you actually get.
“Bringing two organizations together, when you look at buildings across the world – the two organizations have a fair amount of buildings – you get a lot of data. And what you can do with that data is solve a lot of problems.”
