Honeywell post-aerospace identity — Honeywell International’s post-aerospace identity is no longer a hypothetical. Following the June 29, 2026 spinoff of its Aerospace business, the company has spent its first standalone quarters recasting itself as a pure-play automation company — a shift that changes both its growth profile and how investors should read its earnings multiple.
A Different Earnings
On a trailing twelve-month basis, Honeywell trades at roughly 10.1 times earnings, against 22.8 for the S&P 500. That figure is distorted by the spinoff. Of the company’s $7.05 billion in trailing net income, $5.68 billion arrived in the single quarter ended June 30, 2026. Strip that out, and four quarters resembling its first standalone period — $0.664 billion of profit — would put the multiple closer to 27.
The takeaway is that the headline discount is an artifact of the separation. What shareholders own now is a smaller, automation-focused company whose priorities management has explicitly redefined.
From Aerospace to Automation
The pivot was set in motion well before the spinoff. During its fiscal Q4 2024 call in February 2025, management argued that separating aerospace from automation served shareholders’ interests. By the fiscal Q2 2026 call in July 2026, the separation of Honeywell Aerospace was complete. On the fiscal Q3 2026 call on October 22, 2026, management described the transformation into a pure-play automation company as finished.
That call emphasized higher-growth markets, including LNG and data centers, and management said the growth inflection it had anticipated in Process Automation and Technology was materializing.
The Scale Aerospace Left Behind
Aerospace Technologies was Honeywell’s largest segment, with $17.5 billion of fiscal 2025 sales — 46.8% of company revenue — and segment revenue growth of 13.3% that year. The automation businesses that remain are smaller and, in one case, shrinking.
- Building Automation: $7.37 billion in fiscal 2025 sales, up 12.6% year over year.
- Industrial Automation: $9.4 billion in fiscal 2025 sales, down 6.5%.
- Energy and Sustainability Solutions: $3.13 billion in fiscal 2025 sales.
Building Automation and Industrial Automation together generated less revenue than Aerospace did on its own. A Process Automation and Technology segment also featured on the latest call but was not part of that fiscal 2025 list.
What the Latest Quarter Shows
The fiscal Q3 2026 results offer the clearest read on the new Honeywell. Organic sales rose 7% in the quarter, with management citing strength across all segments, and full-year organic growth guidance was raised to 4% to 5% from 3% to 4%.
Process Automation and Technology grew 8% organically. Building Automation also grew 8% organically. Industrial Automation lagged, with organic growth of 4%. Product sales in that unit were roughly flat, and management attributed weakness to industry-wide deferrals in meter deployments by utilities.
CEO Vimal Kapur characterized the delays as more of an upside opportunity, expecting major rollouts from 2027 once utilities complete testing.
The Number to Watch
Industrial Automation’s organic growth stands out as the key metric for Honeywell’s next report, expected in January 2027. It is the segment that contracted in fiscal 2025 and the one trailing its peers in the latest quarter. Until it closes that gap, the pure-play automation story will carry a visible soft spot.