Moments ago, Caterpillar was added to the great and growing list of bellwether companies that have reported disastrous Q4 earnings misses, when it announced that not only did it wildly miss its EPS estimate of $1.55, reporting only $1.35 in Q4 Adjusted EPS (and $1.23 on a GAAP basis), but worse, slashed its 2015 sales and profit outlook as follows:
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.
And they didn’t even blame the strong dollar. So what was the Street expecting: revenues of $55 billion and EPS of $6.00. Oops, and also the reason why the stock is crashing to the low $80s, down $30 from its recent highs, despite management repurchasing a whopping $4.2 billion in CAT stock in the past year.
