The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[DewDiligence]

More details on CAT’s announcement:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/building-stronger-future-caterpillar-announces-130000327.html

Caterpillar Inc. today announced significant restructuring and cost reduction actions that are expected to lower operating costs by about $1.5 billion annually once fully implemented. The cost reduction steps will begin in late 2015 and reflect recent, current and expected market conditions.

For 2015, the company's sales and revenues outlook has weakened, with 2015 sales and revenues now expected to be about $48 billion, or $1 billion lower than the previous outlook of about $49 billion.

For 2016, sales and revenues are expected to be about 5 percent below 2015.


[From the Q&A section of today’s PR]:

…Q3: You typically provide a preliminary outlook of the following year in your third-quarter financial release. It seems as though you've done that in today's announcement. Why have you done that earlier than normal?

A: We started our planning process earlier than usual due to the convergence of challenging marketplace conditions our business is facing. At this point, we are experiencing continued weakness in key industries that we serve…

We currently expect the decline in sales and revenues in 2016 will occur in all three of our large segments – Construction Industries, Energy & Transportation, and Resource Industries – with the most significant decline in the oil and gas portion of our Energy and Transportation segment. With the continuing decline in sales, it was appropriate to take the additional restructuring and cost reduction actions that were announced today, and issuing next year's preliminary sales and revenues outlook provided additional context for today's restructuring announcement.

Ouch.