Caterpillar goes hungry as mining busts

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Here’s a story for those prognosticators calling the bottom for mining services firms, from Caterpillar:

We expect world economic growth to only improve modestly in 2015. The relatively slow growth in the world economy and continued weakness in commodity prices—particularly oil, copper, coal and iron ore—are expected to be negative for our sales. We expect sales and revenues in 2015 to be about $50 billion. To provide a better understanding of our expectations for 2015 profit, we are providing our outlook with and without anticipated restructuring costs. Over the past two years, we have undertaken restructuring activities designed to lower our long-term cost structure. Additional restructuring actions are anticipated in our outlook for 2015. In total, we expect the cost of these restructuring actions in 2015 to be about $150 million or about $0.15 per share. Our profit outlook for 2015 is about $4.60 per share, or $4.75 per share excluding restructuring costs.

“The recent dramatic decline in the price of oil is the most significant reason for the year-over-year decline in our sales and revenues outlook. Current oil prices are a significant headwind for Energy & Transportation and negative for our construction business in the oil producing regions of the world. In addition, with lower prices for copper, coal and iron ore, we’ve reduced our expectations for sales of mining equipment. We’ve also lowered our expectations for construction equipment sales in China. While our market position in China has improved, 2015 expectations for the construction industry in China are lower,” Oberhelman said.

CAT Dec 2014 region_0
CAT Dec 2014 world_0

Super cycle = super bust. The note on oil is important as well for iron ore because, as noted previously, collapsing oil investment means less pipes, rigs, plants, trucks, trains and everything else made of steel that booms in the cycle.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.