Investors will have to wait for next week’s Caterpillar Investor Day in Dallas to learn more about the company’s motivation for investing US$736 million in an Australian mining software business.
Chief financial officer Andrew Bonfield told analysts on Caterpillar’s September quarter results call the US mining and construction equipment major’s acquisition of RPMGlobal – continuing a spate of high-priced mining software deals involving mining OEMs and other software companies – would no doubt be part of Resource Industries (RI) president Denise Johnson’s deep dive on the division’s outlook.
London investment bank Panmure Liberum this week suggested UK-based mineral processing and mining equipment manufacturer Weir got a better deal than Caterpillar with its $800 million purchase this year of another Australian mining software firm, Micromine. It said Caterpillar “paid a significantly higher multiple for a less attractive business across all key metrics”.
Caterpillar CEO Joe Creed said on the Q3 call the company anticipated lower 2025 mining sales to users compared with 2024 “as customers continue to display capital discipline”.
RI sales were up 2% year-on-year in the latest quarter to $3.11 billion, with $61 million of “unfavourable price realisation” offset by a $138 million gain in volume. Caterpillar’s total Q3 sales came in at a record $17.6 billion and its $39.8 billion group order backlog at the end of September was also a record.
“We see positive momentum with healthy orders for large mining trucks, articulated trucks and large track-type tractors,” Creed said.
“Although most key commodities remain above investment thresholds declining coal prices have caused an increase in the number of parked trucks. As a result we continue to expect slightly lower rebuild activity compared to last year.
“Overall customer product utilisation remains high and the age of the fleet remains elevated. We also continue to see growing demand and customer acceptance of our autonomous solutions.”
Bonfield added that, “we continue to see greater acceptance by our customers of the need for autonomous solutions” and promised that Johnson would also expand on that next week.
He said unfavourable manufacturing costs, impacted by US tariffs, negatively impacted Caterpillar RI segment profit of $499 million, which was down 19% on Q3 2024.
