Why Caterpillar Stock Edged Past the Market Today

One day after it published earnings that pleased investors, Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) got some love from analysts, too. Wednesday saw a clutch of them raise their price targets on the sturdy industrial stock, moves that helped keep its share price more or less level while the S&P 500 index closed nearly 0.8% lower.Caterpillar crushed analyst profitability estimates for its second quarter, delivering a per-share net profit of $5.99, well ahead of the consensus prognosticator expectation of $5.54. It missed on revenue ($17.7 billion actual versus the nearly $17.8 billion collective analyst estimate), but not by much. The company earned praise for its pricing strategy, which has proven to be nimble and effective in hedging against slowing domestic markets and declining sales in key regions abroad. The amounts of the resulting analyst price target hikes varied, but collectively, they brought cautious optimism to Caterpillar stock. Continue readingWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei MotleyFool Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei MotleyFool