Caterpillar reports profit/share of US$1.54 in Q4, compared with profit/share of US$1.04 in year-ago period; sales and revenues fall 10% to US$14.4B

Nevin Barich

PEORIA, Illinois , January 27, 2014 (press release) – Company Expects $1.7 Billion of Stock Repurchase and Announces Authorization for New $10 Billion Stock Repurchase Program

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) today announced fourth-quarter 2013 sales and revenues were $14.402 billion, down 10 percent from $16.075 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012. Profit per share in the fourth quarter of 2013 was $1.54, compared with profit per share of $1.04 in the fourth quarter of 2012. Fourth-quarter 2012 included two large items—profit was negatively impacted by a goodwill impairment charge of $580 million, or $0.87 per share, but was positively impacted by a $300 million tax settlement, or $0.45 per share. Excluding these two items, profit per share increased $0.08 from the fourth quarter of 2012, reflecting solid operational performance.

Sales and revenues for full-year 2013 were $55.656 billion, down 16 percent from $65.875 billion in 2012. The decline in sales and revenues was primarily driven by a sharp drop in sales of new machines for mining. Profit per share in 2013 was $5.75, down from $8.48 in 2012. Despite this challenging environment, the company reported record Machinery and Power Systems (M&PS) operating cash flow of $9 billion in 2013.

“In such a challenging environment, I am proud of the way our employees came together in 2013. Despite a sales and revenues decline of about $10 billion, we set a record for operating cash flow, strengthened our balance sheet and improved our overall market position for machines. We continued to improve safety in our facilities and the quality of the products we ship each day,” said Caterpillar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Doug Oberhelman.

“Cost flexibility is critical to our strategy and was a significant focus in 2013 as we took substantial actions to help maintain profitability as sales declined. Excluding the impact of cost absorption our manufacturing costs and SG&A and R&D expenses were favorable by $1.2 billion compared with 2012. It wasn’t easy,especially for our employees who endured an incredibly tough year, but the actions we initiated helped us deliver strong operational performance in 2013.”

First-Quarter 2014 Stock Repurchase, Authorization for New $10 Billion Stock Repurchase Program
We are also announcing our intention to repurchase approximately $1.7 billion of Caterpillar common stock during the first quarter of 2014. This repurchase is expected to complete our existing $7.5 billion repurchase authorization that was set to expire on December 31, 2015, which was originally approved by the Board of Directors in 2007. This repurchase is in addition to $2 billion that was repurchased in 2013.

With the expected completion of the current $7.5 billion stock repurchase program, the Board of Directors has approved a new $10 billion stock repurchase program, which will expire on December 31, 2018.

“The completion of our previous program and the decision to announce a new $10 billion program are a result of our record cash flow, the strength of our balance sheet and our confidence in the long-term future of Caterpillar,” Oberhelman said.

2013 In Review
As we look back on 2013, it was a year overshadowed by a substantial decline in sales of relatively high margin mining products. We expected there would be a decline in mining sales in 2013, and it turned out to be worse than we anticipated. As a result, we took substantial actions to reduce costs which helped mitigate the impact on profit.

While mining was significantly negative for sales and profit in our Resource Industries segment, Caterpillar is a diverse company that serves a wide range of industries across the globe. Sales in our Construction Industries and Power Systems segments did not decline nearly as much in 2013. Our largest segment, Power Systems, delivered profit near its 2012 record despite lower sales. We also had a strong year in our Financial Products segment, which delivered a record profit in 2013.

From a financial standpoint, it was a very positive year for cash flow. We set a new record for M&PS operating cash flow of $9 billion. That is about $1 billion more than the previous record from 2011 and was helped by $2.9 billion of inventory reduction during 2013. Strong cash flow enabled us to repurchase $2 billion of Caterpillar stock and increase the dividend by 15 percent in 2013. Our balance sheet ended the year stronger than it began with our debt-to-capital ratio dropping about eight points to 29.7 percent. This was the lowest debt-to-capital ratio in more than 25 years.

We lowered Caterpillar inventory by $2.9 billion in 2013, and dealers lowered their inventories by more than $3 billion. While these inventory reductions were a significant sales and production headwind for Caterpillar in 2013, we believe the significant impact on our sales is largely over.

We had good decremental profit pull through in 2013, despite the sales decline being heavily concentrated in high margin mining products. The negative impact on profit from the change in the mix of our sales from 2012 to 2013 was about $750 million. Our full-year 2013 decremental operating profit pull through was less than 30 percent because we took aggressive actions to reduce costs.

Given that a significant increase in mining sales was unlikely to occur in the short term, we turned our focus to structural cost reduction to help improve our long-term results. We announced the closure of several small facilities and the downsizing of others. We are re-sourcing products to more cost effective locations and have reduced nearly 2,000 management and support positions. These structural actions are not limited to mining. For example, we also announced our intention to make substantial changes to some of our European operations in Construction Industries to reduce costs and improve competitiveness.

We have improved our market position for machines over the past three years and had particularly strong gains with excavators in China. In fact, total sales and revenues in China in 2013 were about $3.5 billion, up more than 20 percent from 2012.

From an operational perspective, we continued to make improvements in safety and quality. While we understand quality improvement is continuous, our dealers and customers have provided feedback indicating that they have experienced better quality from our products.

In summary, 2013 was a very difficult year at Caterpillar, particularly in our Resource Industries segment. However, on many fronts it was a successful year, with strong results from our Power Systems and Financial Products segments, record operating cash flow, solid operational performance, improvement in our market position and improving quality, to name a few.

2014 Outlook
We expect sales and revenues in 2014 to be similar to 2013—about $56 billion in a range of plus or minus 5 percent. To provide a better understanding of our expectations for 2014 profit, we are providing our outlook with and without anticipated restructuring costs. During 2013, we worked on a large number of restructuring activities. Some actions have already occurred, some have been announced and are in process and some are anticipated in our outlook for 2014. In total, we expect the cost of these restructuring actions in 2014 to be about $400 to $500 million and estimate a 2014 after tax impact of about $0.50 to $0.60 per share. With sales and revenues at $56 billion, our profit outlook for 2014 excluding restructuring costs is $5.85 per share, and including restructuring costs of $0.55 per share, our profit outlook for 2014 is $5.30 per share.

“We see some signs of improvement in the world economy, which should be positive for sales in our Construction Industries and Power Systems segments. However, despite our expectation that mine production will continue to increase, we expect mining companies to further reduce their capital expenditures in 2014. As a result, we're expecting sales in Resource Industries to decline modestly. We’ve already taken a number of restructuring actions to help improve our financial results and expect to take additional actions in 2014. We continue to be cautious and are making the tough decisions necessary to better position us down the road when economic conditions improve and our sales rebound,” Oberhelman said.

Global Workforce
Caterpillar worldwide full-time employment was 118,501 at the end of 2013 compared with 125,341 at the end of 2012, a decrease of 6,840 full-time employees. The flexible workforce decreased 2,863 for a total decrease in the global workforce of 9,703. The decrease was primarily the result of restructuring programs and lower production volumes.

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