Johnson Controls CEO says company is ‘more focused’

CORK, Ireland—Just two months into his new role as Johnson Controls CEO, Joakim Weidemanis seized the opportunity during the company’s recent Q2 2025 earnings call to share his vision on how the company will “accelerate value creation,” including by restructuring.  

Reflecting on his first two months as CEO, Weidemanis, who succeeded long-time CEO George Oliver on March 12, outlined Johnson Controls’ “considerable” strengths, including its “impressive” technological capabilities and product domains. However, he pointed out that there’s still “great potential to unlock,” and one way to achieve that potential is the company’s new structure, which features a reorganized operating model into three geographical customer-oriented reporting segments – Products and Solutions, Commercial and Field Operations and Americas/EMEA/APAC.  

“Our goal is to achieve market-leading performance and build a faster-growing and more profitable company by strengthening how we serve our customers, improving our operational performance and accelerating innovation,” Weidemanis told investors. “This organizational model clarifies and delineates roles and responsibilities in a much better way, and it is the right next step for Johnson Controls. We're looking forward to realizing its benefits.”   

While traveling during his first weeks on the job, Weidemanis has also discovered opportunities for Johnson Controls “to focus a lot more on our customers and our competition in all functions and layers in our organization.”  

“I'm encouraging everyone at Johnson Controls, from customer-facing to senior leadership, to prioritize winning with our customers and to act with speed and urgency,” he stressed. “This emphasis, coupled with our new operating model, will allow us to build a more agile, faster-executing, and thereby faster-growing and more predictable execution engine.”  

As for the macroeconomic climate, Marc Vandiepenbeeck, Johnson Controls EVP and CFO, explained that the company is well positioned to navigate the U.S.-imposed 10% tariffs on nearly all American imports, as well as the resulting market uncertainty. Johnson Controls’ tariff exposure represents about 2% of sales, or 3% of cost of goods sold. The company is offering what it calls a “resilient” service mix of pricing pass-throughs, regionalized manufacturing, supply chain resiliency measures and contractual adjustments for change orders to mitigate the impact of tariffs.  

“We believe by leveraging the strategies, coupled with our long-cycle Johnson Controls business and resilient service mix, we have the capability to navigate the complexities of the current geopolitical landscape and continue to deliver strong performance,” Vandiepenbeeck said.  

Internally, Weidemanis highlighted Johnson Controls' “strong” Q2 results, with sales in the quarter of $5.7 billion, an increase of 1% over the prior year and 7% organically. In addition, orders were up 5%, led by “continued strength in our leading applied and resilient service businesses,” he said. The company’s record backlog was up 12% to $14 billion. 

“At a fundamental level, these results show broad-based and sustained demand for our differentiated solutions,” he said. “And now, as a more focused company and with strength and execution, we're driving value for all of our customers and shareholders.”