Work sample, with no company data. This is the second piece in an FP&A series, one industry at a time; the first, on short-term rental property management, is on the Stakeholders VR page. The calculator below starts empty. The “worked example” button fills it with numbers invented for the arithmetic; they describe no real firm. Nothing you type leaves this page: the page makes no network call and stores nothing.
The framework below (three operating engines, five numbers) came from an AI-generated overview supplied by the author. That overview cited a job posting, an advisory firm’s marketing page, two videos and a LinkedIn profile; none was read for this page, and the advisory page could not be fetched. So the framework is given as definitions that a reader can check by arithmetic, not as findings. The only facts about the industry on this page come from sources that were read: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a trade survey reported by ACHR News, and four companies’ own results filings on SEC.gov. All were read through a fetch tool’s summary of the page and are not independently checked. Claims in the overview about private-equity multiples, quality of earnings and software were left out because nothing read supports them.
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Median pay, heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers | $61,010 a year ($29.33 an hour), May 2025 | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, page last modified August 27, 2026 |
| Jobs | about 440,900 in 2025 | same |
| Projected growth | 11% from 2025 to 2035, “much faster than the average” | same |
| Seasonality of the work | workers “sometimes work overtime or irregular schedules during peak heating and cooling seasons” | same |
| Net profit, all firms in the survey | 6% average; the survey’s recommended target is 10% | ACHR News, posted January 28, 2026: the Contractor of the Future survey by Farmington Consulting Group with ACCA, “over 1,000” contractors |
| By segment | residential 5%, commercial 9%; small 5%, mid-sized 5%, large 8%; urban 6%, suburban 6%, rural 5% | |
| By marketing spend | 9% for firms spending at least 12% of revenue on marketing; 5% for those spending less | |
| Extended labor warranties and pricing | average margin 27% on extended labor agreements; 19% of respondents adjust pricing by season |
Size is by service vehicles: small is fewer than five trucks or vans, mid-sized five to nine, large ten or more. The article gives no fielding dates, does not define net profit, and reports no gross margin and no maintenance-agreement figures. So this page has no benchmark for gross margin or for agreement churn, and it does not make one up.
Four publicly traded companies that sell or install HVAC equipment, with revenue for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, taken from each company’s own results filing on SEC.gov. Be careful, because not all of it is HVAC: Carrier’s total includes a transportation segment, Trane’s total is all its segments, and EMCOR’s total includes work beyond mechanical. The table gives each company’s total as filed and one line of what the filing breaks out.
| Company | 2025 revenue ($ millions) | 2024 ($ millions) | Change | What the filing shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carrier Global (release February 5, 2026) | 21,747 | 22,486 | down 3%, as stated | net sales; Climate Solutions Americas 10,470, Europe 5,044, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa 3,339, Transportation 2,894 |
| Trane Technologies (January 29, 2026) | 21,321.9 | 19,838.2 | up 7%, as stated | net revenues; Americas 17,168.8, EMEA 2,802.1, Asia Pacific 1,351.0 |
| EMCOR Group (February 26, 2026) | 16,986.4 | 14,566.1 | up 16.6%, as stated | revenues; United States mechanical construction and facilities services 7,050.5, 42% of the total |
| Comfort Systems USA (February 19, 2026) | 9,101.6 | 7,027.5 | up 29.5%, calculated here | revenue; backlog of $11.94 billion at December 31, 2025 |
Carrier’s figure matters: the summary supplied to the author said about $20.4 billion, and the filing says $21,747 million, so that number was wrong or belonged to another year. The summary’s EMCOR (about $17.0 billion) and Comfort Systems (about $9.1 billion) figures match the filings. The summary gave no revenue for Trane. Left out because no primary source was read: Daikin and Gree revenue, Trane’s claimed 21.1% North American share, and the valuations and brand counts for the private-equity platforms (Apex, Champions, Redwood, Wrench Group, Service Logic). The fiscal year is stated beside each number because revenue ranks change from one year to the next.
The author expects the industry to consolidate into a giant. That is an expectation, not a finding. Nothing read here measures consolidation, market concentration or acquisitions; the table shows four companies’ revenue and nothing about who is buying whom.
A framework for splitting an HVAC firm’s plan, from the overview described above. It is a way to organize the model, not a finding.
| Engine | What drives revenue | What the plan watches |
|---|---|---|
| Install and projects | quotes won, weeks of backlog | quoted margin against actual margin; changes in equipment cost |
| Demand service | weather, emergency calls | revenue per truck-day, average ticket, callbacks |
| Maintenance agreements | how many customers sign, how many leave | recurring cash in the slow months |
These are definitions. Each can be checked by hand, and the page’s code is tested against hand-worked cases.
| Number | Result |
|---|
The BLS says peak heating and cooling seasons bring overtime and irregular schedules, and the trade survey says 19% of respondents adjust pricing by season. Beyond that, how deep the spring and autumn dip runs, and how much a maintenance base cushions it, is not in either source. The cash floor above is a break-even identity, so the reader supplies the firm’s own costs and fees.