Caterpillar (CAT) FY2025 results: revenue $67.6 billion, up 4.3% on the year

Caterpillar makes construction and mining machinery, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. It sells through independent dealers, and it runs its own finance company, which lends to both the dealer and the customer buying the machine. It was organised as Caterpillar Tractor Co. in California in 1925 and reorganised as Caterpillar Inc. in Delaware in 1986.

How the company is cut up

Two categories sit above everything. Machinery, Power & Energy covers the design, manufacture and marketing of the products. Financial Products covers the finance and insurance subsidiaries, principally Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, known as Cat Financial, and Caterpillar Insurance Holdings. Below those, the company runs five operating segments, four of which it reports on: Construction Industries, Resource Industries, Power & Energy, and Financial Products.

Construction Industries

This segment serves customers using machines in infrastructure and building work. Most of its machine sales go into heavy and general construction, rental, quarrying and aggregates, and mining. The product line runs to asphalt pavers, backhoe loaders, cold planers, compactors, compact track loaders, forestry machines, material handlers, motor graders, pipelayers, road reclaimers, skid steer loaders, telehandlers, track-type loaders and tractors, track and wheel excavators, and wheel loaders, together with the parts, services and work tools that go with them. What customers weigh differs by market: in developing economies purchase price tends to decide, while in developed economies the cost of owning and running the machine over its life carries more weight. Caterpillar builds separate product lines for the first group, including its SEM brand.

Resource Industries

This segment serves mining, heavy construction, and quarrying and aggregates. It builds equipment for surface and underground mining, and sells work tools, machinery components, wear and maintenance parts. The machines are used to extract and haul copper, iron ore, coal, oil sands, aggregates, gold and other minerals. The product line covers electric rope shovels, draglines, hydraulic shovels, rotary drills, hard rock vehicles, large track-type tractors, large mining trucks, large wheel loaders, off-highway, wide-body and articulated trucks, wheel tractor scrapers, wheel dozers, and landfill and soil compactors. Beside the iron, the segment sells technology: fleet management, equipment management analytics, autonomous machine capability, safety services and mining performance work.

Power & Energy

This segment serves oil and gas, power generation, marine, rail and industrial customers, and supplies Caterpillar's own machines as well. It covers reciprocating engines and the generator sets built around them, integrated systems, turbines and centrifugal gas compressors with their services, electrified powertrains and zero-emission power sources, diesel-electric and hybrid locomotives and other rail products, the remanufacturing of Caterpillar engines and components, remanufacturing done for other companies, and product support for on-highway engines. Emissions rules shape the spending here, and the company notes that compliance in developing markets is complicated by requirements that change quickly and enforcement that varies.

The dealers, and the money behind the machine

Caterpillar sells through what it describes as one of the largest independent global dealer networks. Cat Financial, a wholly owned subsidiary, has been financing Caterpillar products for over 40 years and lends on both sides of that network. To customers it offers loans secured on the equipment, revolving charge accounts for parts, service and rentals at participating dealers, and leases, both the kind where the customer is treated as the owner for tax and the kind where Caterpillar is. To dealers it offers wholesale financing for inventory and rental fleets, and retail loans for working capital secured on dealership assets. It also buys short-term wholesale trade receivables from Caterpillar itself. Rates are fixed or floating, Cat Financial usually keeps a security interest in the financed equipment, and it generally requires physical damage insurance on it. Most of its activity is in North America, with further offices in Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa.

From Caterpillar's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 13 February 2026: read the full 10-K.