Carrier Explores Listing Commercial, Home-Fire Units

Carrier Global Corp., looking to slim down to focus on its energy and climate businesses, is exploring listing its commercial and residential fire unit on the stock market as part of a split, according to people familiar with the matter.

(Bloomberg) — Carrier Global Corp., looking to slim down to focus on its energy and climate businesses, is exploring listing its commercial and residential fire unit on the stock market as part of a split, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Palm Beach Gardens, Florida-based company is considering creating a standalone, public company in a tax-efficient way for those assets, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the information is private.

The unit, which makes detectors for smoke and carbon monoxide, generates more than $200 million in annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the people said. The company’s plans aren’t finalized and could still change.

The potential separation would come during a broad strategic review at Carrier, which has said it’s exiting its fire and security units as well as its commercial refrigeration businesses through 2024. Executives have also said the company plans to use divestiture proceeds to pay down debt and buy back shares. The security business could fetch more than $3 billion in a sale, the people said.

Carrier is also exploring a sale of its industrial fire business, which includes brands that help protect against gas and fire damage such as Det-Tronics, Fireye and Autronica, the people said. It’s not clear how much the industrial fire business is worth on its own, although the security and industrial businesses together have annual Ebitda of about $400 million, the people said.

A representative for Carrier declined to comment.

Carrier fell 0.1% to close at $54.39 in New York trading Monday, giving the company a market value of about $46 billion. Carrier spun off in 2020 from United Technologies, which is now part of RTX Corp.

–With assistance from Kamaron Leach.

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