Ultraviolet light is getting its moment in the sun. Companies are adopting the technology to take out the coronavirus and make travel and work safer, and shares of some businesses active in the area are getting a lift.
For starters, Boeing (ticker: BA) announced Monday it is testing UV disinfecting technology inside a 787 jet. The goal is to make aviation “safer and more sustainable,” according to the company’s news release.
“It’s literally a UV wand designed to clean the flight deck,” Kevin Callahan, associate technical fellow at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, explained to Barron’s. On the flight deck, where pilots control the plane, harsh cleaning chemicals aren’t a great idea given the electronics in the area.
Boeing’s wand is designed to clean the cockpit in about 15 minutes. “This [wand] is an industrial strength version of what people see in stores,” Callahan said. Investors—and U.S. consumers—might be familiar with the blue light wands sold at places such as CVS Health (CVS) stores as tools for smartphones or the like.
UV light kills up to 99.9% of seasonal coronaviruses present in airborne droplets, according to a study by Columbia University. (For consumers looking for UV wands, the wavelength of light studied by Columbia is 222 nanometers long. It’s something to look for on UV wand packaging.)
The effectiveness of UV light makes some intuitive sense. UV light gives people sunburn, and in extreme cases, cancer. It can disrupt viruses’ DNA, rendering them effectively dead.
Carrier (CARR) is also expanding its air-quality game. Tuesday, the HVAC—short for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning—company said is selling 1,500 Carrier OptiClean air machines to California schools.
OptiClean are free-standing units that can be plugged into electrical outlets. “The ease-of-use and portability allows them to quickly and efficiently be deployed in a number of spatial configurations as the needs arise,” said Tyler Girtman, a regional manager at the building-solutions company Climatec, said in the Carrier news release.
Climatec worked with the schools buying the units on ways to ensure the health of students and staff as the academic year begins.
OptiClean is a filter and negative pressure device, but the same release outlines other products Carrier is selling, including UV-light disinfecting solutions. Carrier’s peers Johnson Controls (JCI), Lennox (LII), and Trane Technologies (TT) all have talked about UV disinfection as part of the pandemic response over the past few months.
The business opportunity looks real. “We see [UV] potential across the value chain starting with the UV lamp manufacturers, to the [equipment] manufacturers....control/ automation suppliers, and ultimately the service network,” wrote Credit Suisse analyst John Walsh in a recent research report.
The HVAC companies are the equipment suppliers he referred to. Signify (LIGHT.Amsterdam) is one lamp maker. Honeywell (HON) and Schneider Electric (SU.France) control and manage building systems. Acuity Brands (AYI) sells commercial lighting systems as well.
The market appears to be giving credit to the HVAC companies for a new air-quality business opportunity. Even though people aren’t in schools or offices with the frequency they were prepandemic, shares of the HVAC companies are up about 11% year to date on average, better than comparable gains of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Carrier stock, for its part, has done even better. Shares started trading in March after a spinoff from United Technologies. They are up 154% since then.
Schneider stock is up 16% year to date. Signify shares have risen about 4%.
Honeywell and Acuity shares are down 7% and 20% year to date, respectively. Acuity, for the most part, doesn’t do residential lighting and Honeywell, of course, is a large aerospace supplier in addition to being a building-controls company.
Boeing stock isn’t getting any UV benefit yet. Shares are down 46% year to date. Investors aren’t convinced UV alone will get people back on planes, and commercial air travel has been decimated by Covid-19.
Ultimately UV is another tool in the chest for any company in its continuing battle against Covid-19.
Boeing, for its part, is working to keep fliers safe in multiple ways. In addition to HEPA air filters already on planes, the company is testing thermal disinfection, antimicrobial coatings, and air ionization technology along with different cleaning chemicals, Dan Freeman, director of payloads and customer engineering for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, told Barron’s. He is charged, in part, with building back travelers’ confidence.
That’s a tall task. Commercial air travel has dropped roughly 80% due to Covid-19 and the recovery has been painfully slow. But with more time and new technology, the commercial aerospace—and commercial building—recovery might happen faster than investors currently expect.
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August 27, 2020 at 09:43AM
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Ultraviolet Light Can Kill the Virus—and Help These Stocks Rebound - Barron's
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