Boston, MA 09/23/2013 (wallstreetpr) – On Friday, Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) said that there was a drop in rolling global retail-sales for the 9th consecutive month. This has been attributed to the sales plunge in the Asia Pacific region. In the quarter that ended August, there was a 10% dip in total machine-sales that dealers reported in comparison to the same quarter of 2012.
Miners spending less
Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) is the largest mining and construction equipment maker in the world. It said that there has been a drastic drop in the amount of spending from miners. This in turn has been attributed to a reduced demand for resources and a slowdown in markets like China. There was a dip in retail-machine sales in every region apart from North America. There was a 1% rise in the latter region which was the first climb since November 2012.
In the company filing, the company said that the biggest dip of 30% came from the Asia pacific region. A prominent analyst said that the North American region was the one bright spot for the company and that it had reversed 8 months of drops with its marginally positive result. However, the overall sales are dismal and a rebound is not something that can be expected soon.
Friday’s trading
In Friday’s trading session, Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) stock dropped 3.42%. The opening price of the shares was $87.61 which touched an intraday high of $87.65 and dipped to close at $84.75. Approximately 13.44 million shares were traded on Friday. An average of 5.98 million shares was traded over 30 days. The 52-week low of the shares was $79.49 and the 52-week high was $9.79. The company has a market capitalization of $54.89billion.
The company
Apart from mining and construction equipment, Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) also manufactures natural gas and diesel engines, industrial gas-turbines and diesel electric locomotives. It operates in 2 different segments: Machinery & Power Systems, and Financial Products. The Machinery & Power Systems segment represents a combination of Resource Industries, Construction Industries, All Other and Power Systems segments and its related corporate-items and eliminations.
