CHICAGO (Reuters) - Construction and mining equipment maker Caterpillar Inc said on Tuesday that its quarterly earnings fell 6.4 percent as demand in emerging markets partly offset weakness in the United States, Europe and Asia.
The company, the world's largest maker of earth-moving equipment, reaffirmed its full-year profit forecast but painted a bleak picture of the much of the developed world. It called conditions in North America "recessionary" and predicted that Europe would be in recession by year end.
CATERPILLAR (CAT.NY)acknowledged that a weakening world economy could continue to push commodity prices down and prompt mining and energy companies to reduce investment.
But it expressed optimism that much of the developing world would continue to grow as commodity prices stay above levels that encourage investment and said that it does not expect "a worldwide economic collapse as occurred in the early 1980s."
The company, a Dow component and U.S. business bellwether, reported a third-quarter net profit of $868 million, or $1.39 a share, down from $927 million, or $1.40 a share, a year before.
Sales rose 13 percent to $12.98 billion.
Analysts, on average, had expected the Peoria, Illinois-based company to earn $1.41 a share on sales of $11.53 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.
(Reporting by James Kelleher, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
