Caterpillar Is Ready to Roll: Opinion

Fundamental factors:

• Solid following on Wall Street, where 18 firms have assigned 22 analysts to make projections about the stock for clients.
• Analysts project revenue will increase by 14.4% this year and another 6.5% next year
• Earnings are estimated to increase by 29.9% this year, 9.40% next year and continue to increase by an annual rate of 17.5% for the next five years.
• The consensus numbers lead analysts to issue five strong buy, 10 buy, 7 hold and no underperform or sell recommendations to clients.
• If the numbers hold, analysts predict investors should see a total annual return in the 16% to 20% range over the next five years.
• The balance sheet gets an A+ rating.
• TheStreet Ratings gives the stock a B rating.
• The price-to-earnings ratio of 9.52 is a discount to the market P/E of 14.8.
• The dividend rate of 2.38% is about 15% of projected earnings and almost the same as the market dividend rate of 2.40%.
• The company is grounded in the production of power production equipment, all types of heavy construction equipment and the heavy equipment used in mining.
• Acquisitions in all three of these sectors in the U.S., Germany and China give CAT added production capacity.
• The company's marketing plan is targeting the growing economies of China and Brazil, and when those countries restart building their power grids and infrastructures CAT will benefit directly.

Investor interest:

• Most brokerages have a hold or better on this stock, and there are favorable recommendations from Bank of America Securities, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital Management, Jefferies, UBS and RBC.
• Since Jim Cramer gave it a thumbs-up in July, the stock is up about 5.59%
• Other positive comments came from Tobin Smith, Gary B. Smith and Tom Gayner.
• I look for individual investor sentiment from the readers of Motley Fool, where 5,922 readers gave the stock a 94% vote of confidence to beat the market

I always compare a stock's performance to its peers, and while CAT was down 0.30% for the past 12 months, Deere(DE) was up 12%, Cummins(CMI) was up 11% and PACCAR(PCAR) was up 9%.