Driving Growth in Solutions Area: Panasonic HVAC & CC’s Corporate Strategy

Panasonic Group announced its Group Growth Strategy on May 12, 2026, outlining a clear commitment to addressing challenges in areas where it can demonstrate strong competitive power such as using energy more efficiently and alleviating frontline labor shortages. By strengthening businesses that support both AI infrastructure and social operations, the Group plans to accelerate its contributions to society as it looks ahead to 2032.

The Group’s Devices business supports AI infrastructure such as data centers for generative AI, and the company expects this area to be a key driving force behind the Group’s growth. Its Solutions business supports social operations with “always-on, energy- and labor-saving” measures. The Group is transforming its business model and strengthening its service and engineering capabilities to grow the Solutions area into a profit growth core from fiscal year 2030^*1. For this article, Panasonic Newsroom Global spoke with Eiichi Katayama, CEO of Panasonic HVAC & CC Co., Ltd. (HVAC & CC) about the company’s business outlook. HVAC & CC focuses on infrastructure that supports the essentials of daily life—air, water, and food in the Solutions area.

*1. In this article, fiscal years (FY) refer to the years ending March 31 of the stated year.

HVAC & CC was formed in April 2026 by merging two companies that had been within the former Panasonic Corporation: the Heating and Ventilation A/C Company and the Cold Chain Solutions Company. With annual sales of approximately 1.3 trillion yen and a global workforce of about 30,000 employees (as of April 2026), the company operates the businesses related to air, water, and food. HVAC & CC is not a typical air conditioning company. It is a comprehensive solutions provider whose work spans air quality, food distribution, and environmental facilities.

In the Air and Water area, the company offers room air conditioners, commercial air conditioners, indoor air quality (IAQ)^*2 products such as ventilation fans and air purifiers, as well as water-related products such as heat pump water heaters and air-to-water heat pumps (A2W)^*3. In the Food area, it runs a cold chain business^*4 that includes refrigerated and frozen food display cases and commercial kitchen equipment. The company also offers environmental engineering services, such as tunnel ventilation and air purification.

*2. IAQ: Abbreviation for Indoor Air Quality. Refers to products and services related to indoor air quality.
*3. A2W: A heat pump system that uses heat from the air to warm water for heating and hot water supply.
*4. Cold Chain: A low-temperature logistics system for storing and distributing food, pharmaceuticals, and other items at appropriate temperatures. This includes refrigerated and frozen food display cases, freezers, and related maintenance services.

One distinctive feature of the company is that B2B sales make up roughly 70% of its total revenue—a high proportion even within the Panasonic Group. Katayama points to HVAC & CC’s distribution channels as one of the reasons for this.

Katayama explains, “The room air conditioner business might generally be thought of as B2C. But these units aren’t only bought by individuals at electronics retailers. In many cases, they are installed as part of the infrastructure of homes and buildings by architectural, construction, or facility management companies. We have a vast network of these kinds of supply channels, and because the decisions about selection and installation rest with the business side, we define this as a B2B business.”

Katayama acknowledges that combining the heating and ventilation A/C business with the cold chain business is rare, even when looking worldwide, and far from easy. The aim of this reorganization and integration is to strengthen competitiveness in the highly competitive heating and ventilation A/C business by using revenue from profitable, non-competitive areas as a source of capital to support growth.

In the markets HVAC & CC serves, there are areas where the company competes directly with other heating and ventilation A/C manufacturers, and there are non-competitive areas where it can more readily show its unique strengths. The competitive areas include room and commercial air conditioners and A2W. The non-competitive areas include IAQ (such as air purifiers), cold chain, and environmental engineering. “In this newly established company, these two areas account for roughly an even split of revenue, with the non-competitive areas making up about 70% of profits. We will use the non-competitive areas as a foundation for growth while working to expand sales in the competitive areas,” says Katayama.

Katayama cites CO₂ refrigeration units for cold chain—part of the non-competitive areas—as a market poised for medium- to long-term growth. It is already expanding at double-digit rates each year, propelled by shifting demand in response to environmental regulations that are being tightened to address global warming.

Katayama also points to A2W and room air conditioners as key products for driving sales growth in the competitive areas. A2W is currently facing headwinds, but its penetration rate in the European market is still only 5%, and the global penetration rate for room air conditioners is only about half that of refrigerators and washing machines. “Both have strong potential for market growth ahead,” he says.

HVAC & CC plays a key role in the Panasonic Group’s growth strategy, which shifts the focus of value creation from hardware to services and expands the Solutions area.

So, what kind of solutions does HVAC & CC provide?

The key term here is Machines In the Field (MIF)—the company’s own equipment and facilities installed and running at customer sites. HVAC & CC places strong emphasis on its MIF as “stock” assets and plans to turn it into a source of recurring revenue. Instead of a “flow” model that earns revenue by selling equipment to new customers, the company is shifting to a recurring-revenue model. Under this approach, the company draws on that “stock” advantage to broaden its range of services and generate steady, long-term revenue. The plan is to make this a core driver of the Panasonic Group’s revenue growth from fiscal year 2030 onward.

HVAC & CC’s hardware is already integrated into the infrastructure of a broad spectrum of corporate clients and public institutions, where it serves as a foundational component supporting critical societal operations.

Beyond that, the company plans to treat room air conditioners that are five or ten years old as valuable assets and to roll out services such as energy-saving proposals around them.

One example of these MIF-based solutions is maintenance and operational support for display cases and freezers in the cold chain area. For equipment already installed in stores, HVAC & CC delivers value by keeping customers’ operations running—through service, maintenance, repair, remote monitoring, and engineering support. The company already offers services such as “StoreConnect” in the cold chain area.

Another example is “Panasonic HVAC CLOUD,” an AI-powered energy-saving service for commercial air conditioning. Built around air-conditioning equipment,  it uses remote management and AI control to deliver energy savings and operational support—turning the equipment’s ongoing operation itself into a continuous point of value for customers.

With its diverse portfolio of MIF, HVAC & CC has a distinctive strength: the ability to manage equipment remotely and offer energy-saving recommendations through software after units are installed—whether those units are network-connected display cases, freezers, heating and ventilation A/C systems, or water heaters. As the scale of MIF expands, there will be more opportunities to contribute to operational and maintenance efficiency, energy savings, and optimization of customers’ cost structures.

HVAC & CC takes three aspects into account when choosing which markets to enter and invest themselves in: “markets with recurring value,” “markets where functionality is emphasized,” and “markets receptive to comprehensive solutions.”

Katayama explains, “We will bring products into the markets featuring our proprietary technologies—such as ‘nanoe’ (hydroxyl radicals contained in water) technology, which helps ensure air quality, and ‘ziaino,’ an air-purification device that uses HOCl (hypochlorous acid) to disinfect and deodorize spaces—into markets where functionality matters most. Beyond that, we’ll draw on our strength in spanning air, water, and food business areas to focus on markets receptive to comprehensive solutions—such as pairing the cold chain with heating and ventilation A/C or pairing IAQ with heating and ventilation A/C.”

Of the 29 trillion yen global market that HVAC & CC addresses, the company is targeting a 4.1 trillion yen segment. Rather than chasing the entire market, the company is concentrating on the segments where it can best demonstrate its value, aiming for steady sales growth in these focus markets by expanding its recurring-revenue Solutions business.

Before HVAC & CC was launched, Katayama led the Sustainable & Climate Tech Group in the former Panasonic Corporation. That group treated fiscal year 2026 as a “year of transition,” and its adjusted operating profit for the year came to just over 33 billion yen. Following that year of transition, HVAC & CC expects its operating profit will nearly double, to 60 billion yen, in fiscal year 2027.

Aiming for further business growth, HVAC & CC will expand its recurring-revenue business—centered on MIF and including service and engineering—and shift toward a revenue model that earns through post hardware sales services and engineering. By maintaining relationships with customers after hardware is sold, the company will strengthen both the stability and the growth potential of its revenue. On using MIF as a driving force for expansion, Katayama notes that this strategy has also been jointly agreed upon with the CEOs of Panasonic Connect Group and Panasonic Electric Works Co., Ltd., other Solutions area companies in the Group. For HVAC & CC, which is positioned within the Solutions area, expanding recurring-revenue businesses will become a key pillar to support the group’s future profit growth.

Under the slogan “HVAC & Cold Chain—Built into Life,” HVAC & CC aims to be the top company in terms of truly understanding its customers. “While different parts of our business have different structures and client bases, our mission is consistent—to stay engaged with customers deeply and broadly and to ensure that their operations never come to a halt,” says Katayama.

The Panasonic Group’s growth strategy lays out its commitment to “Contributing to Society Toward 2032.” The Group is approaching the 100th anniversary of the founder, Konosuke Matsushita, declaring the company’s mission to “achieve an ideal society with affluence both in matter and mind.” The Group is determined to keep supporting “always-on, energy- and labor-saving” social operations by expanding its Solutions area. As one of the driving forces behind this effort, HVAC & CC will contribute to solving social issues and enhancing the Group’s corporate value through continued business growth.