Good news, fans of mining-equipment companies like Caterpillar (CAT) and Joy Global (JOY)–Deutsche Bank believes the “fundamentals are stabilizing” even if the industry isn’t “fully out of the woods yet.”
Bloomberg News Deutsche Bank’s Vishal Shah and team explain:
A number of leading indicators point to a stabilization in mining equipment sales: 1) equipment destocking at mines is 75-80% over and is expected to be completed by year end and excess capacity for Caterpillar is 10-15%; 2) Excluding 1 Caterpillar dealer in Indonesia, dealer inventories are largely normalized; 3) Fleet utilization at Emeco, a leading mining equipment rental company that we use as a proxy for utilization at mines and, has bottomed and begun to recover; 4) bidding activity for operations and maintenance work for contract miners has improved, which is another indicator that excess capacity is being absorbed; In the case of Caterpillar, replacement rates are running <5%, a historical low, and implies a fleet age run rate of +20 years, vs. the useful life of 8-15 years.
In other words, it really can’t get much worse (or can it?). Joy Global, which has dropped 0.9% so far this year, should benefit once the cycle turns, Shah says, but he prefers Caterpillar, which has “a more favorable risk/reward,” despite gained 15% in 2014.
Shares of Caterpillar have dropped 0.5% to $103.14 at 3:21 p.m., while Joy Global has gained 0.3% to $57.95.
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