Ingersoll Rand CFO: Customers Still Moving Forward With Longer-Term Plans
Most industrial companies aren’t tightening the reins on their longer-term investment plans, Ingersoll Rand Inc.’s chief financial officer told an investment bank conference last week. That strategy suggests that many executive teams expect the tariff and trade battles U.S. President Donald Trump launched this spring to settle down in coming quarters.
Speaking at the Wolfe Research 18th Annual Global Transportation & Industrials Conference, CFO Vik Kini said Ingersoll Rand teams saw “some healthy project momentum” in the first quarter that he expects will persist through the reminder of 2025. Those projects, he said, are teeing up spending on Ingersoll Rand’s pumps, compressors and precision and life sciences technologies products in six to 18 months from now.
“You still are seeing those projects come to fruition,” Kini told the Wolfe audience. “We had seen, definitely, an elongation in that funnel in terms of some of the decision-making processes—really, through a lot of last year. Has that funnel completely […] declogged? No, it has not. But have you seen some of them start to get to the finish line? Yes.”
With more than 60 manufacturing plants and some 21,000 employees around the globe, Ingersoll Rand has a close-up perspective on the capital spending plans of many key players in the industrial; food and beverage; energy; and water and wastewater treatment sectors, among others. The company last year rang up net profits of $839 million on sales of more than $7.2 billion.
Kini noted that there is still lingering shorter-term uncertainty among some of Ingersoll Rand’s customers as they evaluate the impacts of tariffs that have gone into effect or have been revised since being instated. To account for that, he and Ingersoll Rand Chairman and CEO Vicente Reynal recently tweaked their 2025 outlooks for organic volume growth as well as adjusted EBITDA. Still, Kini noted, that forecast incorporates both a pickup in sales starting this summer as well as recent order momentum and solid sales trends.
Two recent Federal Reserve surveys that track manufacturing capex plans appear to reflect attitudes and 2026 expectations similar to those Kini is seeing among Ingersoll Rand’s customers. The May polls of industrial leaders conducted by the Fed’s branches in Philadelphia and Dallas both showed sharp jumps in future capex intentions: In the case of the Philly Fed, that net reading jumped to 27 from 2; in the Dallas Fed, that reading climbed to 24 from less than 8. Those moves put them back in the range where they spent much of last fall and winter before Trump kicked off his tariff push.
The Dallas Fed’s report—you can read it here—showed that 32% of respondents said they expect capex to climb between now and November while only 8% are planning to cut longer-term spending. That’s despite executives’ headline reading of current business conditions remaining firmly negative, although May’s reading was significantly better than April’s.
“It’s a battle! We thought and anticipated things would be more stable, heading in the right direction, and far more productive by now,” a machinery manufacturing leader told the Fed’s researchers. “One-third into the new year and now we’re thinking surely things will improve by year-end. It’s admittedly frustrating and disconcerting not to have a better plan with greater confidence than what we have presently.”
