Through the relentless focus of our teams around the world, we’ve made tremendous progress. We’ve established a clear mission for the company – to improve the environment and the quality of life for all people. During the journey, we needed to make hard decisions on our areas of focus. So, we streamlined our portfolio, narrowed our set of initiatives and increased investment in our core.

We’ve also strengthened our culture by building a team who measured themselves against the highest performance standards – a team that will never be satisfied with the status quo. And we identified the next generation of leaders who are ready for the challenges ahead. The most visible of these appointments is Paulo Ruiz, who was named president and chief operating officer of Eaton and will succeed me as chief executive officer later this year.     

Our transformation required us to embrace our role and our commitment to accelerating the efficient use of energy by building a more electrified world. We’ve transformed our business portfolio by shedding slow-growth, volatile and low-margin businesses while strengthening our Electrical and Aerospace businesses. These businesses are well positioned to meet the changing needs of society, while delivering higher growth, higher margins and more earnings consistency. And they will do so for years to come. They are positioned at the epicenter of a growth super cycle driven by some of the most powerful megatrends transforming society today: a growing need for energy, electrification, digitalization, infrastructure spending and reindustrialization.

Today, Eaton is a growth company, evolving to continue to meet our commitments to our shareholders and the changing needs of our customers and all our stakeholders. We know who we are and what we need to do to get better. And you have our commitment that we will never lower the bar. We will continue to be our toughest critics, always looking for a higher benchmark, always looking to find a better way. For example, we’re not satisfied with our growth. Our factories can be more effective. And we have not reached our ambitions on free cash flow.  

While some could be overwhelmed by the opportunities to be better, our team at Eaton is energized. 

We’re powering forward by making investments in our capabilities, our people, and our businesses. In 2024, we drove significant transformations within our functions and our operations to facilitate collaboration, functional excellence and the ability to leverage our scale. We invested in strategic growth areas by expanding manufacturing capacity and deepened our participation in growing end markets. And we did it all the right way – keeping our employees safe, upholding the highest ethical standards and protecting the environment we all share.   

All of this has allowed us to deliver on our commitments to our shareholders every quarter, consistently providing stronger returns. The following points highlight additional impacts of our transformation, and how we’re preparing for the next phase of our growth.

We’ve powered growth for our investors.

We delivered strong financial results in 2024, a result of robust demand in our end markets and our team's successful execution. 

• For the full year 2024, sales were a record $24.9 billion, up 7% from 2023, with organic sales up 8% and partially offset by 1% from negative currency translation.
• Earnings per share for 2024 were a record $9.50. Excluding charges of $0.84 per share related to intangible amortization, $0.40 per share related to a multi-year restructuring program, and $0.06 per share related to acquisitions and divestitures, adjusted earnings per share were a record $10.80. Both earnings per share and adjusted earnings per share were up 18% over 2023.
• Segment margins were 24.0% for 2024, a record and above the high end of our latest guidance range.
• Operating cash flow for 2024 was $4.3 billion and free cash flow was $3.5 billion, both records and up 19% and 23%, respectively, over the same period in 2023.¹

In addition, Eaton was identified as a top-performing company for investor relations, earning number-one rankings among electrical equipment and multi-industrial companies in 2024 from Extel. 

We’ve powered growth for our customers.

• We made significant changes to how we run our company, continuing to execute transformations in our IT, Finance, Engineering and Supply Chain functions, and launching Operating for Growth, an initiative aimed at evolving Eaton into a world-class manufacturing company.
• We deepened our focus on AI, expanding our relationship with Palantir Technologies to leverage their AI platform to drive productivity and value creation for our customers and within our operations, and extending the use of Microsoft 365 Copilot to drive efficiency throughout our functions.
• We made significant investments aimed at expanding our capacity and strengthening our participation in growing end markets, including in Chennai to support the growth of our GEIS business; in Puducherry to better serve the data center, industrial and utility markets; in Dubai to meet the increasing demand for power in the Middle East; and with NordicEPOD to supply critical power products to the rapidly expanding European data center market.

We’ve powered growth for our people.

• We kept the safety of our people a top priority, decreasing our total recordable and days-away case rates by 13% and 26%, respectively, and reducing severe injuries by 5% over 2023. 
• We earned independent recognition for the employee experience at Eaton, receiving 28 separate honors for being a great place to work.
• We stayed focused on doing business right, launching our new global ethics ambassador program and celebrating Eaton Ethics Week across the enterprise for the second consecutive year.

We’ve powered growth for society.

• We made good progress towards our 2030 sustainability targets, achieving 83% of our goal to certify 100% of our sites zero waste to landfill and marking the certification of 21% of Eaton sites zero water discharge, far exceeding our 2030 goal of 10%. We added clean energy projects to our operations in the U.S., China and France to further reduce our carbon emissions; from 2018 through 2023, we reduced emissions in our operations by 31% and are on track to hit our 2030 reduction goal of 50%. 
• We showed our commitment to improving our communities, donating more than $12 million to support communities across the world in 2024 and raising nearly $450,000 for our colleagues impacted by natural disasters through our new Employee Disaster Relief Fund. . 

We’re powering growth for the future.

As we look at our outlook for 2025 and beyond, we believe our best days at Eaton are still ahead of us. Our growth will continue to be supported by both the powerful megatrends that have fueled our progress in recent years – electrification, energy investments, digitalization, and reindustrialization – and the actions we’re taking to outgrow our end markets.   

Our strong performance in 2024 was not only driven by robust market demand, but also by our team's successful execution across the enterprise. So, to continue to fully leverage these powerful tailwinds, we’ll stay focused on providing unique solutions to customers, driving excellence in our functions, and delivering world-class performance in our operations.   

In closing

During my time as the leader of Eaton, we’ve seen tremendous success as an organization. We’ve become a growth company, one of our shareholders’ best investments, and a company driven by our mission to improve the environment and the lives of people everywhere.

Yet, the opportunities for us to become better and to accelerate our growth are everywhere. We’re embarking on a new era as we prepare to welcome our next CEO, Paulo Ruiz. As you’ll hear from him, Paulo has the passion and vision needed to lead the next evolution of our business.

It’s a new day in the long history of Eaton, and our future has never looked more promising.