Caterpillar CFO sees price to continue to be favorable, impact to moderate

Caterpillar CFO Andrew Bonfield said on the company’s Q1 call: "We expect price to continue to be favorable, although the absolute dollar value of the year-over-year price increases will moderate as we lap through the increases put through in 2022. We also expect the relationship between price and manufacturing costs for machines to normalize as the year progresses, as we’ve now caught up to the manufacturing cost increases, which have outpaced price in late 2021 and early 2022. This means that the benefit to margins of price outpacing manufacturing cost inflation will moderate, tempering the possibility of further margin expansion… Now on to our assumptions for the second quarter. We expect higher sales in the second quarter compared to the prior year on strong sales to users and price. Following the typical seasonal pattern, we expect higher sales in the second quarter as compared to the first… Specific to second quarter margins versus the prior year, adjusted operating margins at the enterprise and segment level should be substantially stronger than the prior year on favorable price and volume. However, we do expect to see a return to the typical seasonal pattern of lower second quarter margins compared to the first quarter, despite higher sales. We expect the year-over-year benefit of price realization in the second quarter to moderate compared to the benefit we saw in the first quarter, as we lapped prior year increases. In addition, SG&A and R&D investment spend should increase, as we continue to accelerate our strategic investments in areas like autonomy, alternative fuels, connectivity, digital and electrification. Finally, we do not anticipate that the favorable absorption impact that we saw in the first quarter will be repeated."