저자: 미상 · 외국인
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캐터필라 분기 매출 205억달러로 사상 최대, EPS 8.17달러로 예상 상회, 수주잔고 721억달러 기록. 그러나 FCF 마진이 전년 14.9%에서 0%로 급락했고, 자사 금융으로 AI 데이터센터 발전기 구매를 지원하는 구조가 우려됨. 마이클 버리의 공매도와 EV/EBITDA 31배(커민스 20배 미만) 고평가 지적. 실적 상향 유지 속에서도 FCF 추이를 핵심 관찰 지표로 제시.
다듬은 글
Caterpillar just reported its best quarter in history, but the stock still hasn't recovered what it lost 7 weeks ago. This morning Caterpillar reported that revenue in a single quarter exceeded $20 billion for the first time in history. By the end of this video, you'll understand why the same report that beat all the key metrics also hid one metric that should make you a little wary, and why one of the most famous "shorts" on Wall Street is betting against the story.
There is a construction site right next to my house , and you know I often apologize for the noise. You can probably hear it right now. For months it was just a pit, and this week it is home to at least four, maybe ten, yellow Caterpillar machines, working non- stop and making noise 24/7. I mean 24/7.
I didn't really pay much attention to it until I heard today's earnings report. Here's the news that everyone is discussing today. Caterpillar reported $20.54 billion in quarterly revenue. This is 24% more than a year ago. For the first time in the company's history, this figure exceeded 20 billion in one quarter.
And, friends, that's a pretty impressive revenue growth rate. This is what we expect from a technology company, not an industrial giant . Adjusted earnings came in at $8.17 per share, crushing Wall Street's expectations of $6.20, sorry . CEO Joe Creed made this clear during the report. This is the first time in the company's history that they have achieved over 20 billion in sales in a single quarter.
On this news, the shares jumped about 10.7% in premarket trading to $919 a share , adding billions, literally billions, to a market capitalization that already stands at nearly $382 billion. Construction revenue grew by 35 %, and in North America by 50%. This is truly impressive. The energy and power plants segment grew by 17%.
Together, these two segments now account for 81% of the entire company. Orders for the quarter were $9.4 billion, and the order backlog— remember this— reached a record $72.1 billion. Management raised its full-year forecast to mid- to high-teens percentage revenue growth , up from the low double-digits it was giving just three months ago.
So, they improved their forecasts. They even lowered their own forecast for tariff costs to about $2.2 billion per year from a previous range of $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion. This was not a quarter where expectations were exceeded and forecasts were lowered. It was an exceedance of expectations and an increase in forecasts on all fronts, and everyone knows why.
Are you ready for this? AI data centers need energy now faster than utilities can build power lines, and Caterpillar, well, they also make yellow generators. So Caterpillar is having the best year in its 100-year history while everyone else is chasing Nvidia and other chipmakers for the benefits of AI.
This is the story that's making all the headlines today, and it's a good one. Industrial company, AI winner, buy on growth, but that's not the whole story. That's how it always happens. But before we dig, dig, dig deeper, if you like this kind of content, please give it a like and don't forget to subscribe .
It's very important to stay informed, and here's how you do it. Okay, let me show you what was hidden right underground. Title. Let's start with a number that, oddly enough , didn't make any headlines today, but it's a number I always look at because early in my career I learned from very important people that cash is king.
So, let's talk about cash, because Caterpillar's free cash flow margin this quarter was about, well, zero. A year ago, the same margin was 14.9%. Now it is zero. Yes, seriously. Revenue grew by 24%, profits exceeded expectations by 30%, but there was essentially zero real money left after running the business .
That's down from nearly 15 cents on every dollar just a year ago. Caterpillar is spending cash as fast as it's getting it to develop, guess what? This business runs on artificial intelligence. Is n't this starting to sound familiar? And this is where the structure gets quite interesting, really interesting.
Caterpillar just announced a deal to supply 2 gigawatts of generators , cool, with the goal of reaching a total of 8 gigawatts, cool, for a new computing campus in West Virginia. This deal is being financed through Caterpillar Financial, Caterpillar's own lending arm . Doesn't this start to sound familiar now?
Caterpillar doesn't just sell generators, it lends its own customers money to buy them. Supplier financing is a common, very common practice in the heavy equipment industry, and this part is not new, but it means that some of this record revenue is being financed from Caterpillar's own balance sheet, rather than purely independent customer demand.
If you've been following the story of AI vendor funding cycles here or elsewhere this year, this should sound very, very familiar to you. Now here's my "shadow" data point for today. You know, I love "shadow" data. On June 30, Michael Bury, the investor who once predicted the 2008 housing crisis , disclosed his first-ever short position in Caterpillar stock.
Its entry price was $1,060.98 per share, almost at an all-time high. Oho. His stated reason? This AI-induced rally looked, he said, like an inflated price bubble. Quite pessimistic. And here is the assessment he was referring to. Before his short position, Caterpillar had risen about 48 % year-to-date.
The stock traded at an EV to EBITDA multiple of over 31, while its closest competitor, Cummins, had one below 20. That's a significant overpayment for a company that still makes money selling bulldozers and mining trucks. After news of Barry's short became known , the stock fell. Today's better-than- expected earnings have somewhat reversed the decline, but at around $919 per share, Caterpillar is still well below its peak of $1,073.
The market has yet to decide who is right . So you have a record quarterly cash flow margin that has fallen to zero. A famous short seller, or rather, a notorious short seller, calls this valuation a bubble. Nothing strange. And a funding structure that is very similar to the same cyclical funding model for AI vendors that is popping up everywhere during this rally.
None of this made it into today's headlines. So, where does this lead you? Well, here's an honest look. The demand is quite real. AI data centers need energy now, not in five years. And Caterpillar's orders and order backlog are real numbers, not hype. This is not a story from scratch, but real demand and a reasonable price are completely different things.
When a 100-year-old industrial company trades at a premium to its competitor and its cash conversion falls to zero , the market is pricing in years of flawless performance that hasn't happened yet. This is the same lesson we've learned from every AI infrastructure story this year. A company that sells "picks and shovels" and profits from construction is not necessarily a safer bet than one that builds.
Sometimes it's just another way of owning the same—if you will, the bubble—the same bubble, but with a longer history, making it seem safer than it actually is. For your portfolio, the signal to pay attention to is not today's higher income, but next quarter's free cash flow margin . If it remains near zero as revenue grows, it means that such growth is being purchased from Caterpillar's own balance sheet, not from independent demand.
If it recovers, it will mean that the construction is self-financing, the story is very real, so watch for the gap in the valuation. The fact that Caterpillar is trading at an EV/ EBITDA multiple of over 31 versus Cummins's under 20 means that the market has decided that Caterpillar deserves to be valued as a software company, even though it is a hardware business .
This gap will either narrow because Cummins and other competitors catch up in AI power orders, or it will narrow in other ways. You know this because the Caterpillar will return back, well, for lack of a better term, to Earth. History shows that such large gaps in assessments rarely disappear quietly.
Like the noise outside my window, there is nothing free in trading AI infrastructure . Every dollar of this growth is financed by someone's capital. Now a significant part of it is Caterpillar's equity. So, here's your " truth bomb" for today. Caterpillar just had its best quarter ever, financing some of its own demand, and its free cash flow margin plummeted to zero to do so—a metric that Michael Bury is probably betting against.
Not the revenue line that everyone is celebrating right now as we speak. Join me every day for the Wall Street Truth Bombs column , where I lay it all out here before the market figures it out for itself.
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