Company: AOS
Filing Date: 2025-02-11
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000091142-25-000036
Chunk: 2

Company: SMITH A O CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-11
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 2
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 Atlantic Filter, Impact, and Water Tec brands, are sold through water quality dealers and contractors. Our water softener products are also sold through home center retail chains.

Our energy-efficient product offerings continue to be a sales driver for our business. Our condensing commercial water heaters and boilers continue to be an option for commercial customers looking for high-efficiency water and space heating with a short payback period through energy savings. We offer residential heat pumps, condensing tank-type and tankless water heaters in North America, as well as other higher efficiency water heating solutions to round out our energy-efficient product offerings. We recently launched our newly designed ADAPT condensing gas tankless water heater and VERITUS air source commercial heat pump water heater to align with greenhouse gas emission reduction trends across the U.S.

We sell our products in highly competitive markets. We compete in each of our targeted market segments based on product design, reliability, quality of products and services, advanced technologies, energy efficiency, maintenance costs and price. Our principal water heating and boiler competitors in North America include Rheem, Bradford White, Rinnai, Aerco and Navien. Numerous other manufacturing companies also compete. Our principal water treatment competitors in the U.S. are Culligan, Kinetico, Pentair, Franklin Electric and Ecowater as well as numerous regional assemblers. 

REST OF WORLD 

Sales in our Rest of World segment accounted for approximately 23 percent of our total sales in 2024, a majority of which were in China. We have operated in China for nearly 30 years. In that time, we have established A. O. Smith brand recognition in the residential and commercial markets. We manufacture and market residential water heater and water treatment products, primarily incorporating reverse osmosis technology, and commercial dispensing water treatment products. The Chinese water heater market is predominantly comprised of electric wall-hung, gas tankless, combi-boiler, heat pump and solar water heaters. We believe we are one of the market leaders of water heaters and reverse osmosis water treatment products to the residential market in China in dollar terms. We also design and market kitchen products (range hoods, cooktops, steam ovens, and dishwashers) and connected product technology in China. 

We sell our products in approximately 9,400 points of sale in China, of which approximately 4,400 are retail outlets in tier one through tier three cities and approximately 1,600 exclusively sell our products. We also sell our products through e-commerce