Caterpillar Dealer Sales Slip 10 Percent Worldwide

Construction- and mining-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Wednesday that dealer machinery sales fell 10 percent worldwide for the three months ending in June.

That was a slightly slower pace of decline than sales in the three months ending in May.

Sales in the Peoria, Ill.-based company’s resource-industry segment, which is mainly mining, sank 38 percent. Caterpillar has said it expects sales of mining trucks, the segment’s bread-and-butter, to fall by 80 percent this year from the peak in 2012. Total unit sales are expected to be down by 20 percent from last year.

Sales in Caterpillar’s construction-industries segment were up 3 percent, mostly driven by sales in North America. However, sales were down by 17 percent in the key Asia/Pacific region.

The construction industry in China has suffered as building has slowed. Demand for equipment is soft and dealers have a lot of extra inventory, noted Mig Dobre, an analyst with Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird & Co.

Caterpillar is expected to release second-quarter earnings on Thursday morning.

Analysts expect earnings of $1.51 a share on revenue of $14.5 billion, according to Bloomberg. In the same quarter last year, Caterpillar earned a profit of $1.45 per share on revenue of $14.62 billion.

This article appeared in print in the July 24th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.