Tempered optimism ahead of Caterpillar earnings

Stacey Vanek Smith: Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, releases its quarterly earnings today.

From WILL, Sean Powers reports.

Sean Powers: Fears about poor business overseas and in the U.S. led Jeffries analyst Stephen Volkmann to downgrade his rating for Caterpillar this month. Still, he thinks the Illinois-based company will turn out a positive earning’s report today.

Stephen Volkmann: The stock has obviously pulled back quite a bit already. I think it’s unlikely in my view that you’re going to see a huge disappointment.

Volkmann and other analysts, like Morningstar’s Adam Fleck, are worried about how international markets could impact Caterpillar’s long-term performance.

Adam Fleck: You could paint a pretty gruesome picture in which China gets a lot worse, Europe continues to be very bad, and even in the U.S. gets pulled down along with that, and Caterpillar would certainly not be immune.

Caterpillar maybe gave us a hint of what today’s earnings report will say when it reported an 11 percent increase yesterday in machinery sales from April through June, driven in part by strong U.S. demand.

I’m Sean Powers for Marketplace.