Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar Inc on Tuesday said its earnings had again fallen sharply in the third quarter as the company grappled with the collapse in commodity prices. The company reported sales and revenues of $9.16 billion for the quarter, down 16 percent from the same quarter last year. Analysts had forecast revenues of $9.88 billion. The company had also recorded a 16 percent drop in revenue in the second quarter.
Net profits sank nearly 50 percent year on year to $283 million. The disappointing results come just over a week after the company announced that chief executive Doug Oberhelman would step down at the end of the year after more that 40 years at Caterpillar.
Oberhelman had suffered stinging criticism for the $8.8 billion takeover of mining equipment maker Bucyrus just before the sharp decline in the industry. While revenues were short of forecasts, earnings per share, excluding restructuring costs, came in at $0.85, well above analyst expectations of $0.76.
The company also lowered its full-year sales and revenues outlook for 2016 to $39 billion from a range of $40-$40.5 billion. "Economic weakness throughout much of the world persists and, as a result, most of our end markets remain challenged," Oberhelman said in a statement announcing the results. "In North America, the market has an abundance of used construction equipment, rail customers have a substantial number of idle locomotives, and around the world there are a significant number of idle mining trucks."
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