Heat Pump Shipments Climbed 16% in February as A/C Volumes Slid Again
Dale Resnick
A 30-year veteran of residential HVAC who's crawled through more attics than he can count.
U.S. heat pump shipments rose 16% in February, the biggest February gain the category has posted since 2021, according to AHRI's monthly tracker. Standalone air conditioners slipped 4.2%, to 328,145 units from 342,542 a year earlier. Combined A/C and heat pump volume came in at 638,841 units, up just 0.4% and effectively flat against February 2025. Gas warm-air furnaces are down 12.9% year-to-date through February, at 462,536 units.
That flat total is the interesting number. Buyers aren't delaying replacement, they're switching category.
What's Really Driving the Shift
Two forces are pulling on the market at once, and they happen to point the same direction. The A2L refrigerant transition pushed a lot of traditional-AC inventory out the door in late 2024 and early 2025 as distributors cleared R-410A stock ahead of the new rules. That left Q1 2026 comparing against an inflated year-ago base for air conditioners. Separately, electrification incentives and federal tax credits keep tilting contractor recommendations toward heat pumps on both new installs and swap-outs.
Gas furnace shipments have been quietly eroding for three years. The 12.9% year-to-date decline through February is consistent with that trend rather than a break from it. Even with that drop, furnaces are finding some support from dual-fuel installs and from homeowners in cold-climate markets who aren't ready to give up backup heat.
For more on the bigger trend, see our full analysis of heat pumps outselling gas furnaces from last month.
What Contractors Should Watch
The practical question for California shops is mix planning for summer. If standalone A/C shipments keep sliding while heat pumps climb in the teens, stocking ratios need to shift accordingly. Shops that built their Q2 orders around a traditional split-system base are going to end up long on condensers and short on heat pump air handlers.
Pricing is the other variable, though it doesn't show up in AHRI's data, which tracks unit shipments rather than prices. On the price side, Watsco — the largest U.S. HVAC/R distributor — reported double-digit pricing gains on new A2L products and a 90-basis-point gross-margin expansion to 26.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025, attributing part of that margin strength to the A2L transition (see Watsco's Q4 2025 earnings release).
March and April data will tell us whether February was a blip or a trend. The cooling season answers a lot of questions about where the installed mix actually goes.
Sources
AHRI. "Monthly Shipments." Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute. https://www.ahrinet.org/analytics/statistics/monthly-shipments
ACHR News. "Heat Pumps Grow by 16% in February 2026 Shipments." https://www.achrnews.com/articles/166066-heat-pumps-grow-by-16-in-february-2026-shipments
Watsco, Inc. "Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2025 Earnings Release" (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000105016/000119312525028152/d928465dex991.htm