Caterpillar, Inc. (CAT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending June 30, 2023

August 1, 2023 8:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Second Quarter 2023 Caterpillar Earnings Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ryan Fiedler. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Ryan Fiedler

Thanks, Abby, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Caterpillar's second quarter of 2023 earnings call. I'm Ryan Fiedler, Vice President of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Jim Umpleby, Chairman and CEO; Andrew Bonfield, Chief Financial Officer; Kyle Epley, Senior Vice President of the Global Finance Services Division; and Rob Rengel, Senior IR Manager.

During our call, we'll be discussing the second quarter earnings release we issued earlier today. You can find our slides, the news release and a webcast recap at investors.caterpillar.com under Events and Presentations. The content of this call is protected by U.S. and international copyright law. Any rebroadcast, retransmission, reproduction or distribution of all or part of this content without Caterpillar's prior written permission is prohibited.

Moving to Slide 2. During our call today, we'll make forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. We'll also make assumptions that could cause our actual results to be different than the information we're sharing with you on this call. Please refer to our recent SEC filings and the forward-looking statements reminder in the news release for details on factors that individually or in aggregate, could cause our actual results to vary materially from our forecast. A detailed discussion of the many factors that we believe may have a material effect on our business on an ongoing basis is contained in our SEC filings.

On today's call, we'll also refer to non-GAAP numbers. For a reconciliation of any non-GAAP numbers to the appropriate U.S. GAAP numbers, please see the appendix of the earnings call slides.

Now let's turn to Slide 3 and turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Jim Umpleby.

James Umpleby

Thanks, Ryan. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. As we close out the first half of 2023, I want to recognize our global team for delivering a very strong second quarter. This included double-digit top-line growth, higher adjusted operating profit margin, record adjusted profit per share and robust ME&T free cash flow. Our results continued to reflect healthy demand across most end markets for our products and services. We remain focused on executing our strategy and continue to invest for long-term profitable growth. In today's call, I'll begin with my perspectives on our performance in the quarter. I'll then provide some insights on our end markets. Lastly, I'll provide an update on our sustainability journey.