I have posted in the past that expanding the gross profit margin was a key point in driving layoffs, etc. But review of the Zacks analysis posted at Yahoo Finance https://finance.yahoo.com/news/honeywell-hon-report-q2-earnings-122712875.html reveals something even more telling. Positive Earnings per Share (EPS) surprises appear to be Mandatory.
If you aren't familiar with the term, Wall Street analysts try to estimate what the EPS will be for each quarter and the year. Companies like Zacks collect many of these and try to create a consensus EPS number. Executives who are overly concerned about the stock price will try many things to beat the consensus number supposedly demonstrating that company is even better than the outside observers think it is.
According to Zacks, Honeywell has beat the consensus EPS every quarter starting with the 2nd one of 2016. I'm afraid that this has become the touchstone that Honeywell will try for indefinitely since it is a well known fact that companies that do not have positive surprises suffer significant drops in their stock price. (The company must be worse off than we think, say the outsiders.)
Since Honeywell can't control Sales/Revenue very much - "Honeywell is expected to have gained from its efforts to maximize productivity and operational excellence in the second quarter. Also, some of its actions during the second quarter, including the reduction of discretionary expenses, a hiring freeze and repositioning actions, are anticipated to have helped it maintain a healthy margin performance."