Caterpillar Inc announced massive layoffs and warned of a tough year ahead as a downturn that began in the United States metastasized into a full-blown global recession, gutting orders for its earth-moving equipment. The world's largest maker of construction and mining machines, which also reported lower-than expected fourth-quarter earnings, said on Monday it was laying off 17,000 workers, and buying out 2,500 others, to reduce costs in the face of what it predicted would be the weakest year for business since the end of World War Two.
The company slashed its outlook for 2009 and seemed to raise the possibility that it would report a loss in the current quarter. The news sent Caterpillar shares skidding 8 percent in premarket trading, pulling the broader market lower.
In a statement, Jim Owens, the company's chief executive, said Caterpillar had been "whipsawed" by a rapidly deteriorating global economy and plunging commodity prices. He said the company had responded by encouraging dealers to align their inventory levels with falling volume and "they responded with significant order cancellations, particularly in December."
The layoffs and buyouts, which will hit one in every 10 of the company's regular workers and idle 8,000 contract workers, represent the biggest wave of job cuts at Caterpillar since the early 1980s, when the company was losing about $1 million a day. In addition, the company said it was freezing salaries of most employees and significantly reducing the total compensation of executives and senior managers.
"It's just a very pessimistic outlook in terms of the world economy," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in Bedford Hills, New York. "Clearly the building of global infrastructure has come to a grinding halt."
The company reported a fourth-quarter profit of $661 million, or $1.08 a share, compared with $975 million, or $1.50 a share, last year. Sales rose 6 percent to $12.92 billion. The company attributed the drop in profitability to significantly higher operating costs in its manufacturing operations as capacity utilization plunged. It also said a sharp decline in profit in its captive finance unit contributed to the poor showing. Analysts, on average, expected the Peoria, Illinois-based company to report a profit of $1.28 a share on sales of $11.97 billion.
After shrugging off the downturn in U.S. housing that sparked the worldwide crisis, Caterpillar and other makers of bulldozers, dump trucks and excavators have suddenly faced a world of challenges, including a drop in spending by their well-heeled energy and mining customers. Results last week from rival CNH Global NV and a profit forecast cut from Komatsu Ltd starkly confirmed that global demand for construction and mining equipment took a sharp turn down in the fourth quarter. "We knew Caterpillar was going to be a disaster." said Eli Lustgarten, an analyst at Longbow Research. "We just didn't know the magnitude of it. And it's ugly."
by James B. Kelleher for Reuters
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