Caterpillar Asia Sales Crater By 30% – Company Reports Weakest Stretch Of Global Demand Since Lehman Collapse

Caterpillar Asia Sales Crater By 30% – Company Reports Weakest Stretch Of Global Demand Since Lehman Collapse

Tyler Durden on 06/19/2014 10:54 -0400

The chart below, showing CAT latest monthly retail sales for the month of May and broken down by region as well as consolidated for the entire world, paints a vastly different picture than that presented by the company’s stock price.

The highlights: US retail sales, up 14% in May, were a modest increase from the 12% increase in April. However, the bounce is from a base of a -16% tumble reported a year ago. Still, the US was the only bright spot on a very dreary landscape as the rest of the world continues to slide. In fact, while both the EAME and Latin America region posted their third consecutive month of 20%+ declines (-22% for EAME, -23% for Latin America), it was Asia (read China) where CAT sales have createred, and the -30% plunge in annual retail sales means Chinese demand for industrial equipment is the weakest it has been since the Lehman collapse.

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Consolidated, CAT retail sales for the entire world declined by 12%, virutally unchanged from last month’s 13% drop, which was the biggest also since Lehman, and represents 18 continuous months of declining annual sales.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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