Caterpillar Scales 52-Week High: What's Driving The Stock?
Zacks Investment Research | Aug 08, 2017 10:01PM ET
Caterpillar Inc.‘s (NYSE:CAT) shares attained a 52-week high of $115.25 during intraday trading on Aug 8, finally closing lower at $114.41. The company has delivered a one-year return of about 43%. Caterpillar has a market cap of $67.61 billion. Average volume of shares traded in the last three months was approximately 4.45 million.
What's Driving Caterpillar?
Caterpillar delivered another upbeat quarter with adjusted earnings per share of $1.49 in second-quarter 2017, logging a 37% improvement year over year and also outpacing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.26. The better-than-expected results were driven by the company’s disciplined cost-control efforts. Revenues improved 9.6% year over year to $11.3 billion in the quarter, also surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $10.9 billion. Favorable price realization and higher sales volume, with most significant increase witnessed in Construction Industries owing to higher end-user demand for construction equipment led to the improvement.
At the end of second-quarter 2017, Caterpillar’s backlog was at $14.8 billion that improved by about $3 billion year over year driven by improvement across all segments, particularly in Construction and Resource Industries.
This follows a stellar first quarter wherein Caterpillar reported year-over-year improvement in both top and bottom lines for the first time in 10 quarters. Consequently, the company has outperformed the industry on a year-to-date basis. Shares have gained 26.3% while the Zacks Investment Research
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