Construction and mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) provided upbeat outlook for the year 2012 on the back of strong fourth quarter results driven by improved product quality and market position besides product development. The company's fourth quarter earnings and revenues swept past analysts' expectations.
Interestingly, the company strongly believes that European Union debt crisis will not trigger a global recession. Caterpillar is also confident that Euro Zone will start to improve during the second half of 2012. However, the company's perspective of Euro economic growth is near zero to growth of about 50 basis points in all.
Q4 Results
Caterpillar reported that its net income surged 60 percent to $1.55 billion from $968 million and the earnings increased 58 percent to $2.32 a share from $1.47 a share in the year-ago quarter.
Sales and revenues jumped 35 percent to $17.24 billion from $12.81 billion in the previous year quarter. Street analysts expected the company to deliver earnings of $1.73 a share on revenues of $16.05 billion. There is a significant difference between analysts' estimation and the actual numbers. The company beat analyst expectations by 85cents and expectations by $1.19 billion, indicating the stronger demand it witnessed.
While machinery and power systems sales increased 36 percent to $16.56 billion from $12.14 billion, financial products revenues rose 3 percent to $686 million from $666 million in the year earlier quarter. At the end of the year 2011, the company's order backlog was $29.8 billion.
Outlook
Moving ahead, Caterpillar expects the industry uptick to continue in 2012 too and wants to make good growth with continued concentration on executing its strategy effectively. The company indicated four areas of focus for 2012, i.e. investment in product development, improve quality continuance, addition of production capacity and integrate its acquisitions.
The company is projecting earnings of $9.25 a share on revenues of $68 - $72 billion for the year 2012. The outlook is ahead of Street consensus earnings of $9.06 a share on revenues of $67.33 billion.
Our Take
Caterpillar seems to be enjoying the benefits of strong demand driven by product development and market position. The outlook provided is also robust. The company is also having comfortable margins. It appears everything is in place for Caterpillar in the current scenario for delivering yet another strong quarter. The stock looks attractive at this level.
Among others in the industry, CNH Global (CNH) will report its fourth quarter earnings results on January 31. Street analysts are predicting the company to report earnings of 72 cents a share on revenues of $4.41 billion.