Can Caterpillar Keep Up?

Compounding the North American drop is the decline in Asia, where growth has been the story for so long, and must remain the story if a global recovery is to gain traction. Knowing that sales in these regions have slowed has already caused analysts to lower their estimates. Expectations are that the company will report a soft forecast for 2013 with its earnings release on Monday.

To punctuate the mood, Caterpillar recently reported that it will be forced to report a charge of $0.87 per share because of accounting misconduct at a subsidiary in China. This is not just costly monetarily, but has raised a number of red flags about the company’s vetting process, and whether there are any problems at any of its other subsidiaries.

At the end of the day on Friday, shares were off about 1 percent. Analysts are looking for a 26.7 percent year-over-year drop in net income to $1.70 per share, and a 6.3 percent decline in revenue to $16.16 billion.

Meanwhile, competitors continue to advance their stock price at tremendous speeds. CNH Global (NYSE:CNH) is up over 15 percent this year to date, while Oshkosh (NYSE:OSK) surged over 18 percent after its earnings on Friday morning. The company increased its net income by 19 percent year over year, towing a 6 percent drop in revenue.

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