Caterpillar Retail Sales Slowing Substantially, Hitting Negative Growth

November sales were up in key markets, with declines in December and wider drops in January. The company did note:

Due to time delays between Caterpillar’s sales to dealers and dealers’ deliveries to end users, Caterpillar believes this information may help readers better understand Caterpillar’s business and the industries it serves.

Caterpillar shares are down 1.4% at $94.22, against a 52-week range of $78.25 to $116.95. As a reminder, Caterpillar is a Dow Jones Industrial Average component, so it is acting as a drag on the DJIA.

We did not include the power systems retail statistics because those were not broken down by region, but the January sales were down 9% in electrical power, down 24% in industrial, down 7% in transportation and flat in petroleum. In all retail power systems sales combined, the reading came to being down 7% in January.

Here are the dealer statistic figures from January, December and November, by region. EAME refers to Europe, Africa and Middle East; and ROW signifies the rest of the world, everything except North America. The drops in North America and Asia are of real concern.