Coming just a week after Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman tipped another difficult trading year for the US giant in a filmed interview with Fortune magazine, the Komatsu forecast is a further sign of poor prospects for global aggregates and mining markets, as falling commodity prices cool customers’ investment plans.
“Demand will probably be lower than the current year’s level,” said chief executive Tetsuji Ohashi speaking to reporters on Tuesday at the company’s Tokyo, Japan headquarters. “We anticipate there will be fewer markets showing growth.”
Ohashi said that the bottom of the market for mining equipment is getting closer, without giving a time-frame for recovery. In October, following a 19% slump in Komatsu’s quarterly profit, his view was that a recovery is unlikely next year and uncertain in 2017.
Komatsu isn’t counting on the usual pick-up in demand seen among buyers in China after the Chinese New Year, Ohashi said. The company’s exposure to China, once its largest market, has shrunk to 4% of sales as growth weakens in Asia’s largest economy.
Demand for mining equipment may enter a fifth year of decline in 2016, with the largest miners predicting another 25% cut in capital spending, according to November 30 report from Bloomberg Intelligence.
Komatsu’s Japanese rival, Hitachi Construction Machinery Co, said in October that China’s excavator market is set to contract to less than one seventh of its 2010 peak in the current year to March.
Ohashi said the majority of the company’s job losses are behind it, after cutting more than 3,500 positions worldwide since 2013.
