Brutal temps and AI data centers have cooling companies hot as hell

More than 150 million Americans were under heat alerts this month. Last week, Earth broke the all-time heat record on back-to-back days. Suffice to say: it's hot out, in case you hadn't noticed.

While that’s brutal for, you know, living things, the scorching temps have HVAC businesses and other companies that sell cooling tech running on high.

Trane, which beat estimates when it reported earnings today, saw revenue rise 13% from a year earlier. Its shares are up about 40% this year so far. Shares of its rival Lennox International are up 32% in the same time. Larger companies that dabble in cooling have benefited, too: about a quarter of LG Electronics' sales last year came from its HVAC business.

There’s another factor at play: AC units’ typical lifespans are about 15 to 20 years — meaning that thousands of units that were installed during the housing-market recovery after the 2008 recession are starting to go bad. 

Also playing a role in cooling’s hot streak are AI data centers (which saw a 26% expansion last year) and crypto mining farms, both of which run extremely hot.