Caterpillar’s Profit Rises to $999 Million
Heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc.’s second-quarter profit rose to $999 million, or $1.57 a share, from $960 million, or $1.45 a year ago, but sales declined.
Sales fell 3% to $14.15 billion, the company said July 24.
“While we’d like to see improvement in economies around the world, and more specifically the mining industry, the stability that we’ve seen this has helped,” Caterpillar Chairman and CEO Doug Oberhelman said in a statement.
Caterpillar, the largest maker of earth-moving equipment, revised its 2014 profit-per-share outlook to $6.20 from $6.10. Sales will be $54 billion to $56 billion, down from a previous outlook of $53.2 billion to $58.8 billion.
The “mining slump is the No. 1 headwind for Caterpillar,” Matt Arnold, a St. Louis-based analyst with Edward Jones, told Bloomberg News. “It won’t last forever, but the question is, how well can the company harness improvement in its other segments in the meantime?
“There is the slowdown in demand for construction equipment in the emerging markets. So the question is, how much does the pickup in construction really offset the decline in mining?”
Caterpillar produces a line of severe-service trucks in partnership with Navistar International Corp.
