This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser from Bloomberg Radio. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week Carol Masser along with Kaylee Lines on this Tuesday and Kayley. We continue this hour with looking at some of the stresses and situations facing leaders around the globe. Man, there's a lot coming at them, of course because of the virus and and also because you know, I think a lot of leaders
are trying to create a much more equitable environment. And joining us to talk about that is Judy Marks, president CEO at Connecticut based Otis Worldwide, which you might recall was spun off from United Technologies back in April. They became another public company again, uh an SMP five company, and the stock has been on quite a ride since spring, and the company also reported earnings yesterday. Juddy joins us on the phone from Florida. Judy, it is so nice
to have you here with Kaylee and myself. How are you, um, and talk to us about what your world has been like in the last six or seven months. There's been a lot going on for you guys. Yeah, it has been fascinating. Carol. Great to be with you and Kayley today and I we could have never imagined starting this
journey in the middle of a global pandemic. But I've got to tell you, we are so excited to return to our roots as an independent, publicly traded company and our sixty nine colleagues, who are mainly essential workers keeping the world moving, maintaining obviously elevators and hospitals and infrastructures, and just as importantly in many residential buildings where people have been locked down but still need the use of
their their elevators. Couldn't be more proud. A hundred years to the month we first listed on the New York Stock Exchange, we liveding in on April three. It's unbelievable, such an incredible historic company and we are we're moving into the future. We're excited. Well, you talk about how all of these places that needs your elevators, hospitals in the lake here where I am at Bloomberg World Headquarters
in New York. When I come in in the morning, when I leave in the afternoon, I just get an elevator. I don't have to touch anything. They're running automatically so that they can reduce touch points. Can you give me some insight into what kind of touchless technology or procedures you've had to implement in your in your elevator systems because of this. Sure, let me answer that, and then let me take a step back and share with you
a little bit about just our business model. But but innovation is core to who we are at Otis, and we had a lot of touchless um innovations and products available, but they have absolutely come to the forefront now because of COVID, and I'm really pleased with how agile and fast our team has been able to bring these to market throughout the globe. We have gesturing technology. We have the ability for for voice interaction where you say, hey, Otis,
take me to floor five. We have the ability through an app on the iPhone are e Call app to be able to before you ever leave your office, call the elevator and so it will be there for you. We have traffic management and a dispatching system that's intelligent traffic flow that allows us only to put four people
in an elevator to have them safely space. You know, our customers, these building managers are telling us that they want help, they want our guidance, they want our partnership, and it's just been an amazing uh seven months as we're all trying to return to what we believe will be the new normal. I don't think we're there yet, but we're a big part of becoming part of that. I mean, so that's really interesting, Judy. So the things that maybe are changing right now and you talk about
the new normal, they're here to stay. In your view, No, I consider we're in an interim normal stage or in the centerim Um, I really do. I believe, and we see it even within our own company. So again, sixty colleagues, um, almost seventy of them didn't have the opportunity to work from home from the day that started in Wuhan. Our service our field professionals are service mechanics, were in the hospital first and foremost protected by PPE because their health
and safety is critical to us. But we have been out working around the lock really to keep keep the world moving. And so you know, we have a work from home for some of our organization, and it's amazing that we've been able to start the company this way, really to do our board meetings remote, to close the books, to do our earnings, to to really get to know our investors, um. But most importantly we've been out there
to serve the rioting public. And what most people don't know is that, you know, over half of our two million unit portfolio, we maintain over two million units, larger than the next closest competitor globally, and over half of those are in residential buildings, condominiums, apartments. People need to go down to get their food, even if they're not leaving the building to pick up things right. So you know, again, for us, our passengers are so critical and we want
to keep them flowing safely and and in a healthy way. Judy, we've talked about your business, but at the end of the day, it is a business that has people. And we know that the way companies have been approaching their diversity and inclusion efforts has has really been put into focus in and you are just launched a social justice initiative. It's called our Commitment to Change. You've joined the Paradigm for Parody coalition, committing to achieve gender parity in your
executive leadership bytes ten years from now. Does that feel like it's too long? No, it's it's not too long. And I would be delighted if we could beat the goal and and that's what we try to do with all expectations. Duty why does it take so long? Take so long? Well, we're already at just over thirty third
right now. And when you think about it, you want to create an opportunity and and um really opportunities for everyone to excel from all backgrounds, including gender, but really create an opportunity as we grow the company for everyone to excel. Our vision is to give people freedom to connect and thrive in a taller, faster, smarter world, and that means all people. But we know we need to change,
We know we need to increase the pace of this. Again, women currently represent over a third of our executives globally, and we are listening to our employees. We're bringing in outside candidates, were developing internal candidates, and we're giving people opportunities to make a difference and listen, I'm not looking to point fingers. I think I'm just trying to understand.
We've had a lot of discussions with CEOs of publicly held companies and leaders, black leaders, white leaders, you name it. Uh to try and understand that this is not a new conversation, right We've been talking really inequities and racism for four hundred years. So I'm just trying to understand in corporate America, especially when you know that, like everybody knows that the research sets out there that shows that a diverse workforce, a diverse senior executive workforce, means a
better financially performing companies. So I guess I'm just trying to understand why it takes so long to do this. So our and and again, our executive leadership team is overfit of verse, Our board is over verse. What we need to do again is now act. We have been talking about this. I've been an industry for thirty six years. We've been talking about it, and we have to do more than just feed the entry level pipeline. We have to sponsor women so they have the opportunity to make
a difference, to learn and then to move up. And we that's what we're doing, and our commitment to change is all about listening and creating a place where everyone's voices are heard and where people feel included and that
they bring their whole self to work. We're in the life safety business here, um and it's a dangerous business and I need to ensure the health and safety of all of our employees and the way we can do that, and our commitment to change is totally revolves around this is people bringing them whole their whole selves to work in terms of mental health, in terms of opportunity, and in terms of being held and included. Eighty five of
our colleagues work outside the US. We're in two hundred countries and territories, and we have to create this environment in four branch offices across the globe, and so it does take time, but it takes it takes a plan well. And of course, of course the time frame we're talking about is this goal for Gender Party. I'm I'm wondering, have you set any concrete goals in terms of other diversity, in terms of people of color at your leadership? Do
you have numbers you could give us our targets. Our commitment to change is going to not just set those targets and set those goals for ourselves, but also we've created an advisory group inside the company we call Perspective to hold us accountable. Our challenge, as I said, is with only fift of our population in the United States, we need to make sure we also address the other of our colleagues. And that's different in different countries and what it means to be a minority in another country.
We need need to define that. We've brought in an external independent consultant to help us to interview folks to listen, and we're gonna put concrete plans in place. Our board's gonna hold us accountable, and this perspective group is going to hold us accountable. And I'll be happy to share more in the future. Listen. I think that is such a great point though, what it means to be a minority in another country, right, we need to think about it. We have it from the U S perspective, but you
have a global perspective. You know, you mentioned um that you guys have been dealing with COVID nineteen since it started in Wuhan, So you really have a special kind of vantage point, if you will. What are you seeing in the Asian markets when it comes to the virus, What are you seeing in European markets? Uh? And how at all contrasts with US markets? Duty great? Now, really
our great question. Our portfolios balanced really in two dimensions. Regionally, our revenue is about a third or third and a third America's Europe and Asia, So we really do see things just as they're happening, and being in these four branch offices in different cities, we're seeing it real time. In Asia, especially China. China is back at full force. Our third quarter in China was outstanding. We had growth
in orders, sales were up mid single digit. We grew you know, we grew share here to date, UH really pleased, and we're anticipating a very solid twenty one in China. The rest of Asia, the mature Asia is doing well, Japan, Korea, UM, but we are seeing still some slowness in India and in Southeast Asia where even job sites for us to be able to do construction in India haven't quite recovered
there at about the fifty level. As we moved to Europe, Europe is and the rest of the America's were in the high ninety percentile of being able to show up for construction work to install new elevators and escalators across both both Europe and the America's and we haven't seen that slow down even with the rebounding cases. And so you know, we're we're in for our new equipment business as well as our service business, and our service business
is really the jewel in our crown. We we accelerate, we grow, share a new equipment, and then that allows us, with this two million plus unit service portfolio, to have multi decade customer relationships, to be to be there when our customers need us to maintain again, to maintain in a life safety mode elevators and escalators to keep people moving,
and then after about twenty years we modernize those. So we're still maintaining very old elevators, very young ones in the iconic buildings in the world, like the Empire State Building, but also in every school and hospital and and every building that's that's over several stories. I mean, we really are somewhat ubiquitous across the globe and across all segments. All right, Gonna leave it there. Um great uh great relieview around the world. So really appreciate some time with you.
Judy Marks, Thank you so much, President CEO at Otis Worldwide joining us on the phone from Florida. I love that kind of vantage point and it it mirrors what I did a real estate panel for milk in and a real estate developer in China, and they're like they're back in Beijing. It's very no masks, it's they're back well, and that's why we've seen the economic recovery in China to just they're really the only ones that are returning
to normal in any sense at this point. And as we see the virus cases we're surging in the Western world, in Europe and here in the US, we just don't have the handle on it that they seem to get. And I wonder how that is going to change our growth trajectory relative to China's in the coming quarters. Well, and like you can't get into a building in China right unless you're apsays you've got a green and you can go in. I mean, it's a much tougher situation.