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Been watching Caterpillar run hard the last few months and wanted to get some other eyes on this before I size up a position. Stock's at $1,050 now, up something like 50%+ this year. The whole move is being driven by the idea that CAT isn't really a cyclical machinery company anymore, it's an AI infrastructure play because their power and energy segment sells generators and turbines to hyperscalers building data centers. Got reclassified out of the Russell value/defensive indices and into the Russell top 50 recently too, which tells you how the market's repricing it.
It's trading at like 49x trailing earnings and 39x forward, when a direct peer like Cummins is sitting around 24x forward. Average analyst price target is still under $951, meaning the sell side collectively thinks fair value is below where it's actually trading. Michael burry apparently agrees, he disclosed a short at $1,060.98 a couple days ago, first time he's ever shorted CAT after being long it for years, and cited the price to sales ratio hitting a 30 year high.
The thing I keep coming back to is the tariff drag, management's guided $2.2-2.4B in tariff costs for this year and that's already been squeezing power and energy margins. Q2 earnings land Aug 4, and if that margin pressure shows up again, the narrative gets a lot harder to defend, and multiples like this don't hold up if it's still just cyclical industrial earnings underneath.
I'm looking at a bear put spread out to January rather than anything naked, mainly so I've got runway after the August print for a re rate to actually play out instead of getting chopped up by earnings IV.
Where I could be wrong, backlog is genuinely strong (record $63B), dividend just got hiked 8%, and if the AI power capex cycle really is structural rather than a story, CAT could keep re rating regardless of what trailing multiples say. Also aware shorting a stock in a strong uptrend with this kind of momentum behind it is its own risk even if the thesis is right eventually.
Anyone here on the other end of this trade who actually holds CAT or has looked at the setup, am I missing something on the bull case, or does this feel like a crowded trade that unwinds on the first soft print?