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Five analysts say Buy. The stock is ten days old.

Honeywell Aerospace is now a standalone stock. We break down the aftermarket moat, the defense tailwind, and the debt.

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Five weeks ago, we covered the Honeywell three-way split as The Deal. Today I want to cover what came out of it.

Honeywell Aerospace started trading on the Nasdaq on June 29 under the ticker HONA. It entered the S&P 500 on the same day. Within its first week it surged 8%, won a multi-year defense contract, and drew five Buy ratings from Wall Street. It is ten days old and already a $78 billion company.

This is the stock teardown we promised when we mapped the breakup. Here’s what HONA looks like on its own.

HONA is a tier-1 aerospace and defense supplier. Its products fly on virtually every commercial and defense aircraft in service. Avionics, engines for business jets, auxiliary power units, flight controls, cockpit systems, and navigation. Thirty-six thousand employees. Over 10,000 customers worldwide. Heritage dating to 1914, when it built the first autopilot.

The business has three pillars. Commercial aerospace — original equipment and aftermarket for airlines and business jets. Defense and space — military avionics, munitions guidance, and space systems. Services — aftermarket parts, maintenance plans, and GoDirect Trade, an e-commerce platform for aircraft components.

Q2 revenue ran at about $4.35 billion, annualizing to roughly $17.4 billion. EBIT margins are in the mid-teens. Pretax margin is 18.4%. Management is projecting high single-digit growth for 2026, driven by robust defense demand and commercial aftermarket strength.

Here’s why the spin-off matters for investors. Inside old Honeywell, aerospace was one of four divisions competing for capital. Now HONA controls its own balance sheet and makes its own investment decisions. CEO Jim Currier said the top priority is investing in supply chain capacity — the bottleneck that has limited aerospace production across the industry.

That focus is what analysts are buying. Aerospace is in a decade-long upcycle. Airlines are ordering more planes than Boeing and Airbus can build. Defense spending is bipartisan and rising. And every new aircraft needs Honeywell components for the next 30 years of service — the aftermarket revenue stream is the real prize.

When Honeywell sells a system on a new aircraft, it earns revenue for decades. Replacement parts, maintenance contracts, software upgrades, and certifications create a recurring revenue stream that runs for the life of the plane. With a global fleet of tens of thousands of aircraft flying Honeywell systems, the aftermarket is the highest-margin, most predictable part of the business.

This is the same dynamic we saw in Parker Hannifin — sell the seal, then sell the replacement seal every year. In aerospace, the cycle is measured in decades, not quarters.

The bull case is the upcycle plus the unlock. HONA is a pure-play on aerospace at the start of a multi-year production ramp. The $19 billion backlog provides years of visibility. The aftermarket generates high-margin recurring revenue. And the spin-off lets management invest without competing against Honeywell’s automation and materials divisions for capital.

The bear case is the balance sheet. HONA carries $15.8 billion in long-term debt and negative common equity — a product of how the spin was structured. That’s a lot of debt for a newly independent company. First earnings don’t arrive until September 2. And supply chain constraints — the same ones plaguing Boeing and Airbus — could limit how fast HONA converts backlog to revenue.

But here’s the way I see it. We covered General Dynamics building the submarines. We covered BWXT building the reactors. HONA builds the systems that fly. Avionics, engines, APUs — installed on every major platform for decades to come. If you believe the defense and commercial aerospace upcycle is real, HONA is one of the cleanest ways to own it.

This issue is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research before you invest.

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