Judy Marks
Chair, Chief Executive Officer and President at Otis Worldwide
Thank you, Rob. Good morning, afternoon and evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We hope that everyone listening is safe and well. We finished 2024 with solid results, both for the 4th-quarter and full-year, and we enter 2025 with momentum and confidence in our service-driven business model. We achieve these results through the dedication of our colleagues around the globe. So I want to express my gratitude for their hard work, execution of our strategy, commitment to our customers and demonstration of our Otis absolutes.
Starting on Slide 3, we achieved organic sales growth of 1.9% in the quarter, driven by continued strong performance in-service, which grew 7.8% with great performance in both maintenance and repair and modernization. We grew our maintenance portfolio by more than 4% for the third consecutive year and our portfolio now stands at approximately 2.4 million units, leading our industry and validating the impact and contribution of our service flywheel. Modernization was a highlight in 2024.
We ended the year with our backlog up 13% at constant-currency, while modernization orders grew 18% in the quarter, which sets us up well for the year ahead. We generated $682 million of adjusted free-cash flow-in the quarter, which is our highest quarterly result since spin. Cash generation was driven by excellent collections and a reduction in our net working capital. Additionally, we continued the strong execution of our customer-centric uplift program, enabling us to now increase the expected annual run-rate savings to $200 million by the second-half of 2025.
In addition, earlier this month, we announced a transformation of our China business to better position ourselves for growth in-service and modernization in the current and evolving China market environment. We are well underway in transitioning our revenue and profit streams in China from our new equipment to our service and mod flywheel. We also made meaningful progress on ESG initiatives that are aligned with our business strategy.
In the 4th-quarter, we received a gold rating for the third year in a row from EcoVadis. Many of our customers around the world take ESG strongly into consideration as they make procurement decisions and this recognition demonstrates that we continue to pursue and execute on sustainable strategies that drive value for our stakeholders. In 2024, we delivered organic sales growth for the fourth consecutive year since spin and 50 basis-points of overall adjusted operating profit margin expansion.
We have expanded company margin by 30 basis-points or more every year since spin. Despite the new equipment macro headwinds our industry faced in 2024, we maintained our new equipment share at 20%. We grew adjusted EPS 8.2% and finished the year strong with approximately $1.6 billion of adjusted free-cash flow-in 2024, allowing us to return $1.6 billion of cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. We believe our shareholder-driven management strategy is sustainable.
Turning to our orders performance on Slide 4. New equipment orders declined 4% in the quarter due to continued challenging market conditions, primarily in China. Excluding China, new equipment orders increased approximately 11%. The Americas delivered a strong second-half of the year, growing orders high-teens in the last six months, including mid-teens growth in Q4 with strong performance in Latin-America. Asia-Pacific delivered greater than 20% growth with solid results across the region.
Orders declined by high-single-digits in EMEA in the quarter, including weakness in Western Europe, but finished the full-year up 3.7%. In China, orders declined more than 20% in the quarter due to continued soft demand. Our new equipment backlog at constant-currency was down 4% versus the prior year, although excluding China, it was up low-single digits. Modernization orders bounced back-in Q4 as expected with, as I noted, 18% growth. Growth was widespread, including China up greater than 20%.
We ended the year with modernization backlog up 13% versus the prior year at constant-currency. New equipment and modernization orders combined grew in the quarter with backlog down 1 point as we continue to drive a shift in mix from new equipment to modernization in China and other mature markets where there's a higher concentration of aged units in need of modernization and refurbishment. Our service portfolio grew 4.2% and now stands as noted at approximately 2.4 million units, strengthening our number-one position globally.
All regions contributed positively with mid-teens growth in China, mid-single-digit growth in Asia-Pacific and low-single digit growth in both the Americas and EMEA. Globally, our recaptures and cancellations were approximately net neutral for the third consecutive year, leaving net churn at zero and driving growth through conversions. As of year-end 2024, we have approximately 1 million connected units globally. We continue to innovate to adapt to changing market demands and to better serve our customers while driving growth and profitability across our business. For example, we continued to roll-out our digitally connected elevator platforms, launching Gen 3 across Asia-Pacific, where smart cities are being increasingly developed in major urban areas.
In addition, we launched the enhanced public Escalator globally, a flagship infrastructure product that provides new features that are critical to our customers' needs. We also rolled-out new global modernization packages to help our customers proactively plan to upgrade their units to the latest safety standards and to provide a more comfortable experience for their passengers. With 8 million of the 22 million global installed units aging and ready to be upgraded, this is a significant opportunity for our modernization business, which is a growth lever for our service portfolio.
Overall, R&D and strategic investments remained relatively stable at about 1.4% of sales for the year, reflecting our ability to invest and innovate efficiently. We continue to win many exciting projects-based on our innovation, ability to deliver and the trust our customers have in us. For example, in Mexico, Otis will install 142 units at the Mexican Social Security Institute's facilities. Our elevators will help support the agency's mission by providing safe and reliable vertical transportation at 41 public clinics and hospitals across the country. And upon completion, we'll be added to our maintenance portfolio, joining the nearly 600 existing IMSS elevators already serviced by Otis.
In Hyderabad, India, Otis will install 21 units in the Towers, a set of luxury high-rise residential apartments. These towers, which stand-up to 60 floors tall, tall will be Otis India's first use of the Otis Compass 360 destination management system in a residential project. In China, Otis will modernize more than 120 units across two infrastructure projects. At the Xian Airport in Northwest China, we will upgrade 22 moving walkways and 58 elevators. And in, we will modernize 46 escalators across eight stations on the city's Metro Line-2.
Finally, in the UK, Otis will install 17 elevators and one platform lift at the Ellison Institute of Technology's Oxford Interdisciplinary Research and Development Campus that will incorporate more than 30,000 square meters of research laboratory space and oncology and preventive care clinic and educational and gathering spaces.
Turning to our 4th-quarter results on Slide 5. Otis delivered net sales of $3.7 billion with organic sales up 1.9%. Adjusted operating profit, excluding a $5 million foreign-exchange headwind was up $22 million, driven by the Service segment. Adjusted EPS grew approximately 7% or $0.06 in the quarter with strong operational performance and the benefit of a lower share count. With that, I'll turn it over to Christina to walk-through our 2024 results in more detail.
