Cat Stock Blog

The facts on Caterpillar’s Jan. 26 earnings announcement:

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) will release 2008 fourth-quarter and year-end financial results at 6:30 a.m. Central Time on Monday, January 26, 2009. The release will be available on http://www.CAT.com/earnings and the full text of the news release will also be available on PR Newswire at about 6:30 a.m. Central Time. The news release will be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) via a Current Report on Form 8-K (Form 8-K) on the date of the release or within four business days after the release, in compliance with applicable SEC rules.

Wall Street Journal has the details on listening in on the earnings call at 10 a.m. central time.

Looks like CEO Jim Owens won’t be crying any tears: On Dec. 10 he exercised his options on 100,000 shares with a strike price of $31 a share. He disposed of about 82,000 shares with a profit of $12.75 per, according to my math, turning a cool $1.04 million on the transaction, but the SEC filing says he acquired another 18,000 shares that weren’t sold, which would’ve set him back over a half-million (though without seeing his employment contract it’d be impossible to know how that shakes out; I never knew execs used options to actually invest in their own stock; I figured it was just free money).

One juicy tidbit: Owens cashed his options six months before expiration; generally the strategy is to hold as long as humanly possible and exercise at expiration. Makes you wonder what Owens knew that the rest of us didn’t, but that’s always the case with insider sales.

Something else to think about in regards to exec compensation next year: As long as I can remember, Cat traded between the 30s and the 70s. With the stock huddling around 40, I suspect vast oceans of options are underwater, potentially forcing many bigwigs to rely on mere salaries (which are not small, but everybody lives up to their paycheck; some are going to be living down next year.)

A recent Caterpillar filing to the SEC shows growth in its machinery and engines business slowing or reversing around the globe.

North American sales were down more than 10 percent year-over-year from September through November, the SEC filing shows. Latin American sales are still booming, though the growth rate shrank from 34 percent y-o-y in September to 18 percent y-o-y in November. Overall, global sales went from plus-1 percent in September to minus-6 in November. A 7 percent reversal in three months is major money for a company the size of Cat.

In Cat’s engines business, the electric power and marine categories are thriving, while trucks and buses are sinking. The petroleum sector rebounded from an 7 percent loss in September to a 1 percent loss in November. Not bad in light of tanking oil futures (and equals a cumulative 8 percent loss in the quarter, which isn’t so great).

Here’s the whole chart from the Securities and Exchange Commission: