Davos 2026 LIVE | Shereen Bhan In Conversation with Morten Wierod, President & CEO, ABB | WEF | N18L

Good morning. Great to be here.

Yeah. I like music and I think one of being asked how does the world look like, I used the remind me of the REM song. It's the end of the world as we know it. But I feel fine and I do feel fine.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a bit strange to think about it. It's 6 years ago since COVID but we still talk about it. It's 2020 today 2026 and we have so many things every year when we look back we say oh that was a strange year. But I don't think 2026 will be any different and we get used to it so this is kind of the new normal. We are good at crisis management at ABB, the company I run, but I think in general everybody, governments, our customers, at our place as well, we get on with what we control. I think that's the main part. You cannot sit and wait till things get calm, then you never get anything done. You just need to get on with it.

First of all, we're going into the year with the largest order book we ever had in the company because the trend of electrification and automation is really gaining momentum and I think it will continue gaining that momentum in the coming years. So this electrification of everything is not like a little glimpse. It will take and it will take even up till 2050 at least because as grids are underinvested and customers want to go with more automation and more electrification because it's not only because it's more sustainable but it's also a much more productive and competitive way to do it. I think there's some great examples for instance in India where we are helping some of our large customers in the steel production. It is how do they get more competitive? Go from a coal base to an electric furnace in their production process. That's how you can also remain competitive in the Indian market.

So this is one way of dealing with competitiveness. At the same time, a byproduct is that it also reduces emission which is in my book a very positive thing. So it's a win-win and that is why our business is really booming these days because we help our customer to become leaner, more productive, and cleaner, reduce their emission. And when that goes hand in hand, it's an easy equation. Yeah, you don't need to choose one or the other. You get both.

If you look into the market of electrification especially, it is booming and it's going to continue to do so because we need more energy. That's the energy transition, right? And I think India as one example has been really driving that energy transition where a lot of the new energy coming online is renewable, solar and wind, especially on the solar side India has done an amazing job. But it is not really an energy transition if you look at the global scale. Since 2019, we are using the same amount of electricity being generated from coal, gas, and oil as we did in 2019. So the energy transition hasn't even started. It has all gone into energy expansion. That means we need more energy. People are getting out of poverty, getting better quality of life. What do you do? You get your own air conditioning unit. All of this takes more energy. And this is the same all over the globe. In addition, you have more consumption, especially all the data centers being built also take up a few percent more of electricity consumption. And that all puts more stress and pressure on the grid. For us, a good thing because that's our business. We are helping utilities get more power online and get that grid reliability because we see also today especially here in Europe that grid reliability and grid security has been also a bit of a security topic. Therefore, having a very strong and resilient grid is kind of a backbone of every society. You can ask people from Spain who had 8 hours, the whole country 60 million people without electricity for 8 hours. It was not a pleasant experience to have that. So these are some of the trends where you see importance of electricity, importance of the grid. That's why investments are coming. So I'm very optimistic for 2026 from an ABB point of view. And similar story as far as the automation side of the business is concerned because you said on the energy side it's more energy expansion yet to actually move fully into the energy transition phase. On the automation side with things like physical AI and so on, what are the trends that will shape that business? We can also use automation, and I talk about also the electricity grid, what we call grid automation, which is also how we use energy. It's not just getting more and more, it's to use it at the right time. This is like thinking about traffic. There are not really enough cars in the world that we should have traffic jams, but it's because we all want to go at the same time. That's the same with electricity. So we can use automation in our grids and in our buildings. Energy management and grid automation is about how to balance loads so that we don't need to heat the hot water at the same time we prepare our dinner and wash the clothes. That goes also for industries. We can balance it out, and this is where automation is needed to use electricity smarter, both saving energy but also balancing it so that we don't put more stress on the grid and our networks than needed. So automation plays a key role to be able to reduce some of that stress that so many countries experience today where grid stability leads to big losses in production. That's again one thing that we help our customers to avoid those problems.

Yes, it will. We are more looking into now with ABB, as you say, very focused on electrification and automation. Those things also very often go hand in hand and therefore we look at what are adjacencies that can make that offering even stronger. That's where acquisition comes in, especially bolt-ons which are kind of nice adjacency to what we do already or can strengthen our technology or market access in some places. So we are actively looking into new M&A opportunities, both small, midsize, but also some larger ones. And it's really all over the world where growth is happening.

India as well is where growth is happening, of course where we want to invest, and that drives both the organic, that means what we're doing in our own capacity. So right now I feel that India for our operations is a bit of a building site because it seems like every factory, every campus that we have is having expansion, building new facilities because we have been through such a great story in India over the last years. And also we look ahead of 2030 and even past that, we are very optimistic about the Indian economy and we have a strong team there who is also able to serve our customers well. So we need more capacity. In addition, we think that can also be used as an export hub out of India to serve many of the neighboring but also markets outside the region. And that's why we are expanding and doubling down on India both with our own organic investment, more technology, more R&D, more manufacturing, but also we're looking at could there be companies that would be a good fit with ABB offering but also the ABB culture. So that's where we are working on also in India, but also everywhere where there is growth, we are open to do that.

I think the main part which I always stress in every market where we operate, we need to be strong at home before you're also strong because if you win at home you can win outside. It's a bit Frank Sinatra, we were talking about the song: if you can make it here, you can make it everywhere. And that's what I also tell our team in India. And we are doing very well in the domestic market. That has to be the backbone of what we do. But then when you get that scale, you can even do more outside India. And we are doing already today exports into the Middle East, into Africa, into Latin America using our Indian facilities. And we're looking into how we can do more of that. We have a very competitive cost base in India and that is of course an opportunity for us as a global company.

Today it is market number four. My prediction is, and I've said already, you need to aim at the third spot. And that is a bit of a challenge to the team. I said you should be there at least before 2030. I hope it will be earlier and the commitment from the team is that it will, it should happen before.

I think again I will take my Frank Sinatra to say: if you can make it here, you make it everywhere. And that has to be a strong presence in the local market which also makes you a very attractive player to also play outside India.

Thank you very much.