Dave Regnery
Chief Executive Officer at Trane Technologies
Thanks, Mike, and thanks to everyone for joining us on today's call. I've played an active role on these calls in the past several quarters, but this is my first official call as CEO. I'd also like to thank the long list of shareholders and analysts who I've had the pleasure of speaking with right after the announcement. As Mike and I highlighted on those calls, this transition in leadership is an evolution, not a revolution. We co-created the Trane Technologies strategy and have worked closely together for many years. Please turn to slide three. While the world has contended with unprecedented change over the past 18 months and continues to face significant challenges, our purpose-driven sustainability strategy remains steadfast. The long-term sustainability megatrends that underpin our strategy have only intensified, and our innovation leadership is transforming the climate industry as the world decarbonizes. This is more critical every day as the clock is ticking on climate change.
Our aggressive goals and bold actions can dramatically reduce carbon emissions and accelerate the world's progress. In addition, we are proactively addressing emerging trends as we see heightened focus on indoor air quality, energy efficiency, cold chain and the need to upgrade aging infrastructure in our schools. We are committed to making a difference consistently, relentlessly and over the long term. This unyielding approach drives market outgrowth over the long term, which in turn, helps us drive strong margin and powerful free cash flow to deploy through our balanced capital allocation strategy. The end result is more value across the board for our customers, for our team, for our shareholders and for the planet. Moving to slide number four.
After posting a very strong first quarter, we have significantly raised our 2021 guidance range to reflect top quartile EPS growth for full year 2021. The raise reflected both a positive demand outlook and expected acceleration in global vaccination rates. Through the first half of the year, demand is shaping up consistent with our high expectations. While the delta and other coronavirus variants continue to pose considerable risk, large portions of the global economy are rebounding and continue to gradually improve. Our global teams delivered a strong second quarter, with robust organic bookings growth of 30%, driving backlog to a record high. Backlog is up 15% from record Q1 levels and up more than 50% from the end of 2020. It's also up more than 50% versus any quarter in 2019.
Net, our backlog is extremely strong, not only in the context of a modestly down 2020, but also in the context of strong financial performance in 2019. Demand for our innovative products and services is high and our record bookings and backlog provide good visibility into 2021 and 2022. Performance was strong throughout the P&L, with organic revenue up 18%. Adjusted EBITDA margins were up 180 basis points on 30% organic leverage and adjusted EPS growth was up more than 50%. In many ways, 2021 is shaping up largely as we anticipated on our Q1 earnings call. So I thought it would be constructive to take a few minutes and talk about what has changed and how that's affecting our approach to the second half of 2021. There are two areas that are making operating environments substantially more challenging. The first is the speed and slope of material and other inflation that has risen dramatically.
You'll recall that we saw unprecedented inflation and tariffs impact in the 2017 to 2018 time frame. However, if 2021 plays out as we currently expect, we'll far exceed the peak inflation and tariff numbers we faced during that time frame. In 2021, not only are we seeing higher material cost inflation. Trane Technologies, and from what we're seeing in the market, the entire industry, are implementing price changes faster and with far less lag time than in 2017 to 2018. The net result for us is we are implementing about $150 million of incremental pricing in the second half of 2021 to offset about $150 million in incremental inflation. To be clear, this is $150 million above and beyond what was already baked into our guidance at the end of Q1 in both cost and price. Successfully executing the price action offsets otherwise negative EBITDA impacts, but also drives organic leverage on our incremental revenues lower in the second half of the year.
However, our industry typically holds on to price. So long term, we expect these actions to be a solid tailwind for our business. The second thing that has changed is the strong economic environment, combined with other factors such as strained logistics systems and tight labor markets, have further stressed already tight supply chains. This is resulting in higher cost and greater inefficiency throughout the value chain. We are fully leveraging our high-performance business operating system and transformation initiatives to manage and mitigate these impacts and meet the needs of our customers, but there is no silver bullet. We believe we can limit the impact of these inefficiencies to a few points of leverage in the back half of the year as we work to meet our customers' expectations and strong demands. Our multiyear track record of delivering high-quality earnings and free cash flow fuels our balanced capital allocation strategy. Year-to-date, we've deployed about half the cash we expect to deploy in 2021.
We have a solid pipeline of M&A prospects and continue to see value in our shares. Longer term, our purpose-driven sustainability strategy continues to be focused on secular megatrends that are powerful tailwinds for our business and support continued top-tier performance and differentiated returns for shareholders. Please turn to slide number five. We delivered robust organic bookings and revenue growth in the quarter, up 30% and 18%, respectively, with growth across all segments and business units. Our Americas commercial HVAC business delivered robust growth in the quarter. Unlike many other peers in industrials who entered the quarter with easy growth comps after being down significantly in 2020, Americas commercial HVAC organic bookings were up mid-20s, and revenues were up low teens in Q2 of 2021, building on mid-single-digit declines in the prior year. The residential HVAC markets continue to be extremely strong, and our residential HVAC team delivered high 30s bookings growth, with independent distributor sell-through up high 20s.
We entered the second half of the year with record backlog, up significantly from record backlog at the end of the first quarter. Our Americas transport refrigeration business continues to outperform the North American transport markets, delivering more than 30% revenue growth this quarter. Transport bookings were up low single digits, which may look like a misprint but actually, it's a positive story and simply reflects a natural pause in orders from substantial bookings growth in Q1 as industry trailer production has largely maxed out capacity for 2021 and the focus has turned to booking slots for 2022. We only recently opened up the order book for our first quarter of 2022, prudently keeping an eye on inflation looking several months out. It's also worth noting that this quarter's bookings build upon very strong prior year truck and trailers, where bookings were up nearly 50%.
Turning to EMEA, our teams delivered 53% bookings growth in the quarter, with strong growth in both commercial HVAC and transport refrigeration. Revenues were also strong, up 28%. We continue to see strong demand for our innovative products and services that helped reduce the energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions for our customers. Our Asia Pacific team delivered bookings growth of 12% and revenue growth of 2% in the quarter, with growth in both commercial HVAC and transport. The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic continue to be challenged in the region, with low vaccination rates and partial lockdowns in some countries.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Chris. Chris?
