Dave Regnery
Chair and Chief Executive Officer at Trane Technologies
Thanks, Zach and everyone, for joining us on today's call. Let's turn to slide number three. I'd like to open with a few comments on our purpose-driven strategy, the engine that enables us to deliver differentiated shareholder returns over time. Our strategy is firmly rooted in our purpose to challenge what's possible for a sustainable world and aligned to the mega trends that are only getting stronger. We are seeing the impact of climate change on the world every day, including more extreme weather events and far-reaching effects on air quality, water quality, food production and human health. The science is clear. There is no time to wait. The world must take action now to limit global warming and mitigate the effects of climate change. That's where our purpose meets our strategy. Trane Technologies is already taking action to dramatically reduce emissions through innovative solutions that drive electrification, energy efficiency and emissions reductions for commercial buildings, homes and transport. We have set aggressive science-based emission reduction targets that continue to push our innovation further and faster. Customers continue to choose us as their partner in achieving their sustainability goals while improving performance and efficiency. Our relentless approach to innovate, strong customer focus and purpose-driven culture enable us to consistently outgrow our end markets. This in turn helps us drive strong margin and powerful free cash flow to deploy through our balanced capital allocation strategy.
The end result is strong value creation across the board, for our customers, for our team, for our shareholders and for the planet. Moving to slide number four. While we'll cover the details of the quarter and our outlook throughout our discussion today, the primary message I'd like investors to take away from today's call is that the company has never been in a stronger position to deliver highly differentiated financial performance and shareholder returns over the long term. Our end markets are strong. And our innovation leadership is at the apex of powerful secular megatrends of energy efficiency and decarbonization, which is enabling us to win customers at an unprecedented pace. Our business operating system remains at the core of everything we do and is delivering strong price realization to offset the impact of inflation, which is running at multiples of even the highest historical levels. And our balance sheet, liquidity position and ability to deliver strong free cash flow provides a solid financial foundation.
We have exceptional firepower and optionality to not only navigate near-term macro challenges, but to flourish as they abate. Our strong performance in the first quarter is ahead of our initial guidance expectations on both incremental price to offset higher inflation and on volume growth. While it's still early in the year and the macro environments remain very dynamic, our performance in Q1 serves to increase our confidence that we're on pace to meet or exceed our full year guidance. Our booking levels remain extremely high, reflecting strong share gains in virtually every area of our business, with supply chain challenges impacting throughput in the near term. The absolute booking levels we've delivered over the past year have been extraordinary. There was a tendency to focus on bookings growth trends, but growth trends may be misleading when absolute numbers move step functions higher than any historical reference period. We encourage investors and analysts to consider both absolute bookings and bookings growth to get a fuller picture. Our first quarter provides a prime example. Organic sales were up 12%, while organic bookings were up about half that amount, up 6%.
A fairly normal reaction to bookings growth being half the level of revenue growth might be to assume that the book-to-bill ratio would be negative and that backlog would be lower as a result. However, given our tremendous bookings growth in Q1 of 2021 of over 30%, absolute bookings in the first quarter of 2022 were still extremely high at $4.3 billion. Even with strong revenue growth of 12%, absolute revenues in the first quarter of 2022 were $3.4 billion. It may be counterintuitive, but bookings exceeded revenues by more than $800 million. Our book-to-bill was extremely strong at 129% and our backlog grew more than 50% year-over-year. Backlog also grew $800 million or 15% sequentially from Q4 to Q1. Given extremely high levels of bookings throughout 2021, we believe this is an important area to watch to gauge strength as we move forward. With $16.8 billion in bookings and $14.1 billion in revenues in fiscal 2021, the dynamic I referenced as an example from Q1 will be present throughout the year.
As I look at our business, the strong secular trends, our leading innovation, unprecedented customer demand, and record backlogs and the financial health of our company, I'm very bullish about the future. We have all the fundamental ingredients to deliver differentiated financial performance and strong shareholder returns over the long term. Please turn to slide number five. On Earth Day, we released our 2021 environmental, social and governance report. The report highlights our notable progress towards our science-based greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, diversity and inclusion commitments and other sustainability goals. I am proud of the progress we made last year. We exceeded or met nearly all of our annual targets on our glide path towards our 2030 sustainability commitments. We reduced carbon emissions, energy use, waste and water. In addition, we increased the representation of women in leadership and workforce diversity reflective of our communities. I encourage you to read the full report.
It's available on our website. Building on the momentum captured in our 2021 report, I'm happy to announce that we recently learned that our 2050 net 0 targets were validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. At this time, we are the first company in our industry and one of only 11 companies globally to have 2050 net 0 targets validated. This is another example of how we are leading and challenging what is possible for a sustainable world, and we encourage like-minded companies to join us. Looking forward, I am confident we will continue to innovate, take bold actions and transform the world for a better tomorrow today. Please turn to slide number six. Customer demand for our climate-focused innovation continues to grow. We delivered another quarter of robust organic bookings, up 6% in the first quarter. Organic revenues were also strong, up 12%. Supply constraints are impacting each of our segments, with particular tight supply as we move up the food chain on product complexity. Generally speaking, the more intelligent and complex the product, the more chipsets they require and the more constrained the supply in the near term.
Given extremely high levels of demand and backlog more than double historical norms, unconstrained revenues would be significantly higher in every segment. As mentioned previously, our bookings in the quarter totaled $4.3 billion, far exceeding our revenue of $3.4 billion, which were in part constrained by global supply chain and other macro challenges. With these robust bookings, our backlog grew to a record $6.2 billion. Our Americas commercial HVAC business continues to deliver extremely strong bookings. Over the past four quarters, bookings growth has averaged nearly 30%, and Q1 bookings were up approximately 35%. Strength was broad-based, with applied and unitary each up more than 50%. Service bookings were also strong, up mid-teens. Demand for our comprehensive solutions remained strong and contributed to our low-teens organic revenue growth in commercial HVAC Americas. The residential HVAC markets also remained strong.
Our residential HVAC team delivered mid-single-digits bookings growth and low-teens revenue growth in the quarter. As expected, Transport Americas bookings were down in the quarter on tough prior year compare and because we intentionally constrained demand in order to manage inflationary risks. Unconstrained demand would be much stronger, but customers understand the dynamics and are working closely with us on slots. Bookings remained at healthy levels, with bookings in excess of revenues in the quarter and adding to backlog sequentially from Q4. Revenues were strong, up mid-teens. Turning to EMEA. We continue to see strong demand for our innovative products and services that help reduce energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions for our customers. EMEA commercial HVAC bookings were up low teens and revenues were up low single-digits. As expected, transport bookings were down on tough prior year compares. Similar to our America Transport business, we are intentionally constraining demand in order to manage inflationary risks. Absolute bookings remained at healthy levels, with bookings in excess of revenues and backlog up sequentially from Q4. Revenues were strong, up high single-digits. Our Asia Pacific team delivered strong bookings and revenue growth of 14%, supported by broad-based growth in China and across the region.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Chris. Chris?