By Chelsey Dulaney
Caterpillar Inc. on Thursday reported a steeper-than-expected
13% drop in sales as it continues to struggle with falling sales of
equipment related to oil and gas exploration and weakness in
mining.
The Peoria, Ill.-based company also dropped its sales outlook
for the year by $1 billion to $49 billion. It backed its profit
forecast of $4.70 a share.
Shares fell 2.2% in premarket trading.
Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of construction and
mining machinery, has been facing a persistent slump in mining
equipment, sluggishness in construction machinery in much of the
world and a more recent slowdown in its most profitable business,
engines used for such things as generating electricity, pushing gas
through pipelines, running industrial machines and powering trains
and ships.
For the quarter ended June, profit fell to $710 million, or
$1.16 a share, from $999 million, or $1.57 a share, a year earlier.
Excluding restructuring charges, per-share profit fell to $1.27 a
share from $1.69 a share a year earlier.
Sales fell to $12.32 billion from $14.15 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings of
$1.27 a share on revenue of $12.62 billion.
Caterpillar's construction-industry sales fell 18% to $4.44
billion in the quarter, while resource industries sales fell 11% to
$1.99 billion. Energy and transportation equipment sales were down
12% to $4.54 billion.
Caterpillar's order backlog at the end of the second quarter was
$14.8 billion, down $1.7 billion from the first quarter of the
year.
Write to Chelsey Dulaney at Chelsey.Dulaney@wsj.com
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