AGCO at Bank of America Conference: Strategic Growth Amid Challenges

On Tuesday, 18 March 2025, AGCO Corporation (NYSE: AGCO) participated in the Bank of America Global Industrials Conference 2025. The company outlined its strategic plans to navigate current market challenges and capitalize on future growth opportunities. While AGCO highlighted its strong position in the agricultural equipment market, it acknowledged the cyclical downturn affecting the industry.

Key Takeaways

• AGCO aims to grow its precision ag portfolio from $850 million in 2023 to $2 billion by 2029.
• The company raised its mid-cycle operating margin target from 12% to 14%-15%.
• AGCO expects 2025 to be a trough year for the ag economy, with improvements anticipated in 2026.
• Tariffs from Canada and the EU pose potential challenges to AGCO’s revenue.
• Inventory management strategies include significant production cuts to align with market conditions.

Financial Results

• AGCO reported $12.7 billion in revenue last year.
• The company expects to generate 75% to 100% of adjusted net income in cash flow.
• AGCO anticipates outgrowing the agricultural industry by 4%-5% annually.

Operational Updates

• AGCO’s three growth pillars are the Fendt business, precision ag portfolio, and parts and service business.
• The Fendt brand is expanding globally, with revenues in North and South America growing to around $1 billion last year.
• The Trimble joint venture enhances AGCO’s precision ag offerings and supports future autonomous solutions.

Future Outlook

• AGCO raised its mid-cycle operating margin target to 14%-15%, driven by market share expansion in precision ag and Fendt.
• The company expects modest improvements in the ag economy starting in 2026.
• Regional performance varies, with Europe being stable, North America volatile, and South America experiencing significant fluctuations.

Q&A Highlights

• AGCO discussed the impact of tariffs, noting that Canadian retaliatory tariffs could significantly affect North American exports.
• The Purdue Ag Barometer indicates improving farmer sentiment, which could positively influence future equipment demand.
• Inventory levels are being carefully managed, with production cuts and strategies to reduce inventory in South America and North America.

In conclusion, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a detailed account of AGCO’s strategic plans and market insights.

Full transcript - Bank of America Global Industrials Conference 2025:

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: I’m Michael Feininger, the Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst here on The U. S. Side and we’re pleased to have AGCO join us, one of the many U. S. Companies that came to London for this global event.

We appreciate you both being here. I’m going to actually pass it off to Greg and Damien just to introduce themselves, give a little bit of background of their time and we’re going to kind of jump into some Q and A to kind of cover many of the key topics facing AGCO and the ag economy at large. So over to you, Greg. Sure.

Greg Peterson, Investor Relations, AGCO: So excuse me, Greg Peterson, I have been with AGCO almost twenty years the whole time in Investor Relations. It’s been an interesting time for me to see the industry go through several cycles. Two different CEOs and very excited about having Damon Adia, our new Chief Financial Officer, new in the sense that he’s been here three years. So he’s the new kid on the block. But interesting time for Ag and I’ll hand it over to Damon.

Yes.

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Thanks, Greg. So as Greg said, Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer for AGCO. Coming up on just under three years in the company, before that I’ve grown up with multinational industrial companies my whole life mainly in the automotive sector, but also working for a few specialty companies in aerospace and medical and an industrial tooling company before joining EITCO.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: Perfect. Well, thanks for being here again. Really appreciate your attendance. Just Damon, Greg, maybe for the audience, when Europeans industrial investors think of farm equipment, Deere is the first name that comes to mind. I’m not asking you to comment on your competitor, but just help us understand investors who are new to Acco, where does kind of Acco fit in into that whole ag ecosystem?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes, sure. I think so, for those of you who are maybe less familiar with ATCO, I’ll just do a little bit of a general overview. So last year, ATCO was $12,700,000,000 in revenue and we are the only pure play ag and tech company in the industry. So you referenced John Deere, Case New Holland would be the other major competitor that we compute against on a global scale. Both of them have other parts of their businesses, construction, lawnmowers, but AGCO is the only one that’s a pure play ag company.

We’re a very global company with more than half of our revenue coming here out of the European business unit, about 25% of our revenue coming from North America, 15 Percent from South America and then around 10 coming from Asia. So very global, very diverse. As a company, we basically have three major growth pillars and I’m sure we’ll talk about them in detail here. But our three major growth pillars are our Fence business and we’ll talk about that a very well known brand in Europe. It’s globalizing that brand and putting a full line of full portfolio of products for our dealers to sell.

So that’s one of our three primary growth engines. Two is our precision ag portfolio. So we have a significant precision ag portfolio that was enhanced last year with the joint venture with Trimble, really creating a second cornerstone technology for us, which is the cornerstone for autonomy as we think forward and our plan is to grow those businesses from around $850,000,000 last year to around $2,000,000,000 in 2029. So precision ag is our second portfolio growth vector and our third one is our parts and service business, which is a very stable sort of mid single digits growth business here, but we’ve enhanced that with the introduction of Farmer Corp. And again, it’s a unique value proposition that AgCo is bringing to the industry versus our competitors as we’re really transforming how we service farmers more on the farm versus the traditional brick and mortar models that has required the farmers for over a century to bring their equipment into the dealership to get service.

So we think we’re in a very unique position there and that will help us grow our parts and service business and also enhance our FENT market share growth. And when you layer those three growth vectors on top of our core business, it’s allowed us to set some longer term targets out there. So at our December Investor Day, we raise our mid cycle operating margin targets. So when you think about mid cycle, that’s what we take the ten year average, we put that in the middle and that’s what our mid cycle convention is. We put a mid cycle operating margin target out there of 14% to 15% that was 12% and then at the December meeting, we raised that to 14% to 15% and we will grow that from where we are today through our FEM market share rollout, our precision ag growth coupled with our parts growth really enhanced by Farmer Corp.

On top of the mid cycle operating margin, we still have a strong cash flow generating business where we expect to do between 75% to 100% of adjusted net income and we expect to outgrow our industry by around 4% to 5% per year, really driven by the precision ag business and the FET market share rollout. So overall, we’re in a unique position. The industry itself is very challenging right now as we are cyclical, but for those who are longer term investors, the ag industry is dynamic. The long term growth prospects for this business, when you think about the population growing from 8,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000, when you think about the middle class growing and as they grow, they generally consume more grain and the multiplier sorry, they consume more protein and the multiplier effect on protein that for every pound of beef or pork, that’s seven to nine pounds of grain. Chicken is three pounds of grain.

So when you think about the middle class consuming more protein, that puts more pressure on grain demand. And then you layer on the whole topic of sustainability, things like renewable fuels, renewable aviation fuel, putting more pressure on demand for things like soybeans, significant pressure on farmers around the world to produce more. You layer on the needs for sustainability to produce more of that with less fertilizer, less chemicals and asking them to increase yield with less chemicals. It puts a lot of pressure on companies like AGCO to bring technology to the marketplace because our goals are to improve the yields on the acres for the farmers, and either at a lower cost or higher output, And it’s right at the center of what we’re doing is trying to make the farmers more profitable and more productive. So it’s a great industry to be in long term.

Short term, we’re in a downturn as we’ll talk about, but we do see that coming out hopefully next year as an inflection point as this should be the trough year and positioning ourselves to ramp up towards those long term targets that we’ve talked about.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe Damon, we could kind of lead into that. I mean, every day there’s another headline if we’re going to go into a recession. I know you were formerly the CFO of Kennametal, which many of the audience know, a short cycle volume driven industrial production type business, Ag is a little different. Just love to give the update of where you think we are in the ag economy as everyone’s worrying about our recession. It feels like the ag economy has kind of been in one already.

So love to kind of get a sense where you think the last few years have driven us to today and where the ag economy kind of sits.

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes. So the ag sector tends to beat to a slightly different drum than your traditional industrial, your industrial cyclical companies. We tend to ebb and flow a little bit more based on grain prices. Again, we’re cyclical like many other industries and we usually have several good years and we go through a couple of down years. And if you go back 2021, ’20 ’20 ’2, very strong years for our farmers around the world.

Most of them were making record profits coming off in 2021, ’20 ’20 ’2. They were buying everything they could get their hands on at that point in time, which is a great thing for industry. The challenge for us in the industry is we were supply constrained because of the chips, the other supply chain challenges, we as an industry couldn’t produce as much as the farmers were demanding of us back in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two and even into early twenty twenty three. So when I talk about that mid cycle convention, as AgCo, we look at that ranging from 85% in the low end to 115% in the high end. And if we looked at prior upturns and downturns, we troughed at around 85% last time and we peaked at 115 through the prior upturn.

As we went into this up cycle in 2021, ’20 ’20 ’2 and 2023, we only peaked at 109 because we couldn’t produce enough. And now as we’ve now gone through the downturn and our industry has one big correction year, so after several strong profitable years for farmers, commodity prices drop, stock to use ratios go up, farmers generally take a year and they hunker down and they pause. So last year sorry, in 2023, we finished at 105. Last year was that big correction year. We dropped from 90 from 105 down to 90.

We saw the industry slow. When you look at our history, it says, okay, we have one big correction year and then the industry tends to float in that vicinity for another year, maybe two years. So this year, we’re seeing a drift a little bit further south. So it’s drifting from 90% to around 85%. Again, that’s where we trough last time.

We have said we expect 25% to be the trough year for us. I think our both of our competitors have said they expect this year to be the trough year and then the industry to start to modestly improve in 2026. So following a very similar pattern to the prior industry downturn where we were at 90, this year 85 and then starting to pick up, I don’t think we’ll be above mid cycle next year. It’s what we start to pick up. So we’ll have sort of this three years in that general vicinity of a low point and then hopefully industry starts to improve above mid cycle again like we’ve seen in the past.

So nothing different from the prior downturns other than the age of the equipment this time didn’t get to be new. Again, when you go to the prior downturns and downturns, if you look at the average age of the equipment, it gets old, markets get hot and it goes from old to average to young. In this time, it went from old to average. We never got it to young because we couldn’t produce as the industry. So that was 2023.

So now you have 2024 and 2025 where farmers are slowing their purchases. That inventory or that aged equipment has gone from average to old already. And so that means hopefully the cycle will either be less severe or shorter because we know that farmers will have to look to update their equipment likely sooner than what they would have had in the prior downturn.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: And do we have a sense on the fleet age or the replacement cycle for farmers? How often they kind of churn their fleet? I’m just curious if we kind of have a sense of that. Yeah.

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: I mean, every farmer is a little bit different somewhere on the much shorter period where they try to churn their fleet based on the warranty pattern and then others have a little bit longer. But if we look at The US, which is the one we probably have the best data, the average age of the equipment out there is around seven, the average is just over seven years. So, it’s getting a little bit above that long term average now.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: Perfect. And I know we touched on we’re getting closer to that bottom or it feels like we’re at that bottom. You guys are global and it’s kind of moved in different directions when you think of Europe, North America and Brazil, which are all in a downturn, but they kind of all entered in a different periods. Maybe, Damian, you kind of help us understand where we think about Europe, North America and Brazil in terms of that peak to trough to mid cycle range?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes, sure. So again, if we think about AGCO as a total company, we would say the high end of our site, when we look at our geographic weighting, as a company, we probably historically have maxed out at 115% of mid cycle and we trough at around 85% of mid cycle. If we look at our three major regions, Europe being the big part of our business over 50% of our revenue, that’s usually the most stable. So that market because of the subsidies that Western European farmers get, you usually see a much less volatile part of the business there. That normally goes from around 90% to 110%.

Last year, we would have said Europe was right around 95%, this year probably closer to 90%. So again, we feel it’s sort of hitting that bottom. We don’t usually see Europe drop below that level. So again, if we look at our dealer inventory levels, overall Europe feels that it’s hitting a low point relatively stable and it’s our most consistent of the three regions. If we look at North America, a little bit more volatile, you’re probably looking more at that 85 to 115 range sort of in line with the total company.

And again similar, we were probably in the upper 80s last year trending down probably into the low 80s this year. So getting closer to the bottom, that’s the one that’s probably the most questions. We have that in the large ag industry being down 25% this year. I think our competitors are somewhere in that 25% to 30% range. So all of us expecting a significant decline in the large ag market in the North American region.

And then on the extreme is you have our South America region and that usually fluctuates from 70% of mid cycle to about 130% of mid cycle. And again, if you look at South America, that’s the region that has the least amount of subsidies. They’re a global, they’re an exporting community. So on top of commodity prices, stock to use ratios, no subsidies, you layer on currency as commodities are traded in dollars and then you layer in the real dollar exchange rate or the real euro exchange rate that has another influence on those farmers profitability. That market is down in the low to mid-70s right now.

So definitely at the low end, to your point, Michael, that market of our three major regions was the first one to go into the downturn. Again, if we flash back to would have been second, first half of twenty twenty three, South America was booming. We were making 20% margins, selling everything. Commodity prices dipped. There was some on the harvest and that market started to slow down in the third quarter of ’twenty three.

’twenty four, we started to cut fourth quarter of ’twenty three, we started to cut production. And so for six quarters now, we’ve been cutting production in South America 20 plus percent every quarter, trying to right size that dealer inventory as that market has continued to be weakened. This year, we finally see it stabilizing, so that’s a good sign that we should be able to get our inventory levels where we need them to be in by the end of the first half of the year.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: And talking about you guys being global, obviously you’re a global manufacturer and every day there’s a new tariff headline. So I just would love to help kind of get the context just as a manufacturer, how you’re contending with these tariff headlines, what you’re seeing as the biggest risk to write down when we think of Mexico, Canada, Europe, how to kind of contextualize that as with your manufacturing footprint?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes, I think like many other companies, we’re doing a lot of scenario planning right now and it’s changing daily a lot of times. If I think maybe I’ll start with what’s sort of been known that will go to the retaliatory tariffs, what’s the big risk and then how does it affect the farmers, especially in North America? Because I think that has the biggest question mark for us is how the farmers in North America are affected. But I start with what we’ve heard Mexico tariff, China tariff, Canadian tariffs. Those have a relatively small de minimis effect on AGCO.

Given our U. S. Manufacturing locations, given where we source materials, we don’t see those being a significant effect on us from an overall business standpoint and the incremental costs we’d have in our layer on steel and aluminum on top of that. With those sort of tariffs, we don’t really see them having a significant effect to our current business. And if we had to, we would be able to raise prices that would probably really not be visible too much.

There’s always the risk that as tariffs increase the cost of imported products, there’s always the local producers who may take advantage of that and try to raise prices. But that’s where we got to make sure the sourcing team stays diligent in keeping prices low. So current U. S. Tariffs relatively little effect.

Retaliatory tariffs, again, you heard Canada has announced that they would put a retaliatory tariff on to The U. S. That would have a little bit more meaningful effect on us is because of the products we make in North America, our tract tractors, our sprayers, some of our combines, hay equipment find their way into Canada. So to the extent we were not able to offset that, that would have an effect on my 2025 outlook. But I think as we in the industry are all planning to try to push this through to the end users to the extent that we can, we think we’d be able to mitigate that.

The big risk for us is the EU. If we look at North American revenues in 2024, we were just around $2,800,000,000 in total revenues, 35% of the $2,800,000,000 was imported into the country. Of the $2,800,000,000 20 5 percent came from Western Europe. So that’s our Fent tractors coming out of Germany, it’s our high horsepower Massey Ferguson tractors coming out of France, our combines coming out of Italy. So 25% of that North American revenue would be vulnerable to any sort of EU tariff.

That would be one that would have a more meaningful effect on us and we’re working through different alternatives. So how do we dampen that? Again, what would be sold in Canada? How do we ship that directly to Montreal instead of Baltimore and shipping it up? Do we do sort of kit assemblies here in North America?

Do we buy certain products like tires, for example? Do we buy them here or buy them in The U. S. Rather than buying them in Germany and shipping them over? So, we’re running a lot of iterations, trying to figure out what we could do to dampen the cost.

I’d say we’re also looking at our competitive footprint, because again, this is oftentimes a relative game. And so we know where our competitors are assembling a lot of their products. We think we have a better a good understanding of where they may be sourcing the materials. And so if you think about a combine that may be assembled in North America, if 50% of its product is imported from suppliers in Mexico, what does that do to the cost of that combine there versus if it’s a 10% tariff coming in from the EU and we’re importing a combine from Italy, what’s the relative change in the cost structure? So we have a fairly large model where we go by horsepower, by segment, by product, by competitor, trying to understand what we think the landscape will look like depending on what tariffs come in and what we would think the industry would do and what we would have to do correspondingly to either address our costs or to look at this as an opportunity depending on the competition.

So those are sort of, I’ll call it the first or second level effects, modeling. Again, a lot of this is still TBD as things evolve with The U. S. I think the bigger question for us is how does it affect the farmers in North America. So, last time when President Trump was in position, he raised the tariffs.

What we saw was The U. S. Farmers, a lot of their grain which was purchased from China or by China that found its way being sourced from Brazil. So The U. S.

Farmers lost a fair amount of their market share. And even when the tariffs were released back, not all that came back to The U. S. Farmers. So Brazil became a beneficiary at the expense of The U.

S. Farmers. And I think we’re sort of working through what happens this time. Again, I think that’s a risk. As you see China talk about retaliatory actions to the extent he does put these tariffs or maintains these tariffs, it puts the source for the farmers, puts their customer base at risk and that means that Brazil is likely a beneficiary and maybe to a certain degree Western Europe as well.

If I think about what that means for AGCO though, again given our global footprint as you said, if I think about our relative share position in large ag, AGCO has a better stronger position in large ag in South America than we do in North America. So, if North America goes down, South America goes up, relatively speaking that may not be a bad thing for AGCO given our FENT and our Massey Ferguson and Vulture positions in South America, specifically in Brazil relative to our current market share position here in North America.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: And just with tariffs, you discussed how you mapped out externally where some of your other OEMs and competitors might be. What did you guys see last time with tariffs in terms of how it impacted farmer sentiment, but also your ability to get price? Is things different this time around? Just curious how maybe the farmer contends with the tariffs as go around in Trump two point zero or even the ability to kind of raise pricing in this environment?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes. Well, I think last time there was a lot of uncertainty when Trump one point zero, the last time they provided subsidies to The U. S. Farmers to try to neutralize them or dampen the effects for their grain. Still TBD on how things unfold this time, as he talks about the tariffs.

Interesting fact though, if you look at the farmer sentiment in The U. S. And we look at the Purdue Ag Barometer, over the last several months that index has been ticking up. So, it just came out a week or two ago, I think it hit 152. And if you look at that level of 152, that’s the highest that it’s been since around mid summer of twenty twenty one.

So the farmer’s sentiment of how they’re thinking about their businesses six to nine months from now is actually improving. Now whether that means it’s going to be subsidies or whether they have other variables that are giving them confidence, you’re seeing their sentiment, which is a pretty good indicator of the future, both the indicators we look at in North America and what we look at in Europe here. The fact that that sentiment is improving at that level now back to mid-twenty twenty one is a positive sign. Again, don’t know how whether it’s subsidies or other things, but that is definitely something we’re watching as it influences their buying behavior along with their net farm income at the end of this year.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: And you just touched on net farm income just for the audience. Obviously, commodity prices have kind of moved around a lot, but what are some parameters we should think about for corn in terms of breakeven level for farmers right now?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes, I mean, it’s no farmers ever going to tell you exactly what his or her breakeven. But if we look at the math, I mean, directionally, somewhere in the range of $4 to $4.5 depending if you own all of your land or if you lease your land. So if you own it all, it’s probably closer to $4 if you have a high percentage that you’re leasing is probably closer to $4.5 but directionally in The U. S. That’s what we would say is around the breakeven point for the farmers.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: Perfect. And just you touched on it, but Brazil could be that natural hedge in this trade war that we’re potentially entering into. It’s been in a brutal downturn. Are you seeing any signs to start this year that Brazil is bottoming, nearing a bottom? And how does that influence your cadence when it comes to production this year in Brazil?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes. So I think Brazil, we have the market being flat, retail being flat year over year. I was just in Brazil probably close to a month ago now. I would say generally there is a little there is probably more optimism now than what it was when we gave our outlook in a couple of variables, but I think about more tactically right now the soybean harvest, I guess, is probably getting close to being wrapped up. We’re looking at likely a record soybean harvest coming out of Brazil this year.

So, I heard one of the farmers said that they were going to bushel their way through. So even though the commodity prices themselves for soybeans are not great, the yields have been so strong that they’re going to do okay just based on the yields. As you know, they do two to 2.5 plantings per year. So they’re already doing the second corn crop planting. I think the data I saw is almost 80 has gotten planted in this optimal window, which is a lot higher than what it’s been historically.

So again, a little bit more optimism that the yields on soybeans were strong. Second, corn crop planting is ahead of schedule or further ahead in the optimal window, both of which are positive for that near term sentiment. I think you layer on top of that the geopolitical tensions and I think most of the Brazilian realize that they are likely a beneficiary of any political tension between The U. S. And China.

So I think overall they’re feeling a little bit more optimistic about what they’re seeing sort of this year and sort of longer term than what we probably would have said at the start of the year.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: That’s helpful. And then if we could just move to Europe, which is your largest region, but probably more stable out of the other two. I think it’s nearly 75% of your operating profit, so a nice stable earnings driver for you guys. Just it seems like sentiment has picked up there on the CEMA index, but German tractor registrations were a little bit weak to start the year. Just what are you kind of seeing in Europe?

I think I know it’s different by region, but what could possibly surprise the market for Europe? What should we be looking at for risk there?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes, I think Europe, as you said, is our biggest market, generally the most stable of our three major markets here, given the level of subsidies. I would say the January, February numbers for German tractors, a, it’s normally a low those are low volume months generally speaking. And when you compare, remember, you go again, we’re going back into 2023, but Q4 of twenty twenty three was a very, very strong, it was a record year for record quarter for our European business. So those wholesale units in 2023 found their way into retail in early twenty twenty four. So you’re probably looking at a tough year over year comp ’25 versus ’24.

So we’re not concerned with what we saw starting the year here in Germany or at least in Western Europe. I think the question is to long term outlook. Again, I look at that CEMA index, which is a very good predictor. Not only are the farmers feeling more confident about their business six to nine months from now, but they’re feeling more confident about their business today. So that’s a very strong sign for us as we think about the sentiment of the mindset of the farmers.

I think the questions of what could improve is certainty. There’s so much uncertainty in the world right now and no one likes that. Everyone likes predictability and certainty. So, I think the more clarity we have on what may be happening with tariffs, obviously, there’s a lot being talked about in Western Europe related to the Ukraine. So, if there was to be some sort of peace or resolution that was happened there, obviously, that would influence energy costs for many of the farmers in Western Europe.

Again, it may improve the overall sentiment for the market. We know within Ukraine that would create a catalyst for some sort of an initial injection as you look to rebuild. That’s not going to change the amount of grain that comes into the world overnight, but it would result in a rebuilding of the equipment, part of the infrastructure that was destroyed during the war here. So again, we feel that could be a sort of a positive for us and our industry and hopefully improve the overall sentiment for Western Europe.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: Fair enough. And then just moving on to the other big obstacle that investors talk about our inventories and I know that’s been a big target for you guys coming this year. So where kind of are we globally when we figure your regions on that inventory? How are you guys kind of making progress? How do we sense if we’re ahead of schedule, if there’s still more work to be done?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes. So I mean, at the high level we’re cutting production. We were cutting we cut production 28% last year, more than our sales decline. We’re cutting production at least 10% to 15% this year. So our plan is to try to reduce the production to right size the dealer inventory.

That’s our primary focus rather than trying to add incentives or do things that reduce the long term value of our business. But if I go region by region, we’ll start in Europe as that’s our biggest part of our business. We finished the year at four months of inventory. That was that’s in the ideal level of inventory. Fent was a little bit below that, Massey and Vulture a little bit above.

But generally speaking, we feel like Europe’s in a really good position with dealer inventory, and we won’t see much underproduction or overproduction relative to retail for the European market, which is a great sign given the stability and the size of that business. If I go to South America, we finished the year at five months of dealer inventory. Our target is to get that down to three. Now I think an important variable to, we’ve heard that when we report the number of months of inventory, ours is based on a twelve month forward look. So our views of the industry outlook, I believe at least one competitor may look historical.

And so it’s not always an apples to apples. But as we think about it, one of the things we’ve been trying to give our investors a little bit more clarity as we talked about months of supply, but we’ve now started to layer on the number of units. So if I think about South America, we finished with five months. At the end of the third quarter, we were right around five months as well, but we’ve reduced the number of units in South America around 7% or 8% from Q3 to Q4. So we’re getting the units out of the system, but because we have a little bit of a weakening market, the math is keeping that at five months in South America.

So we’re going to under produce again here in the first and second quarter significantly. So that’ll be the sixth and seventh quarters of significant underproduction, based on our comments on South America, our industry outlook, underproduction, we think that we should be able to get that dealer inventory down to the optimal level by the end of the second quarter. So get that five down to around three. That can change quickly again because it’s a forward look. So if Brazil picks up its optimism, the math may make that may make the months drop fairly quickly even though the units aren’t changing.

But our goal is to not assume a recovery. We want to take the dealer inventory levels down if we have to overbuild, that’s not a bad position to be in. So staying focused on cutting in South America. North America is probably the biggest challenge for us right now. We finished the end of the year with nine months at the dealer level.

That nine months was similar to where we were at the third quarter. So again, similar to South America, we took the number of units down 7% to 8% from Q3 to Q4. But given that industry outlook where we have large ag down around 25%, we’re seeing that dealer inventory staying at around nine months. So again, a lot of underproduction in North America scheduled for the first half. But what I’ve said on a few other calls is, it’s that’s the one we have the most risk and that underproduction will likely bleed into the second half of the year is trying to get that nine months down to six months is going to be a challenge.

And given the market outlook and the uncertainty in North America, I think that’s the one where we probably have the biggest risk to get dealer inventories right sized as quickly as possible.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: And you guys are doing cutting production trying to get that inventory down to what part of your strategy. What we hear from talking to dealers and not just yours but others is the used side is the biggest obstacle right now. Is that still an obstacle? What are you seeing in the first few months of the year? How do you attack that when maybe that might be independent channels that have a little different dynamics?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes. So if we look at our dealers, our dealers are probably not as deal with as big of challenges maybe some of the other competitive dealers here. But like others in the industry, we use what we call the pool funds. So every time that there’s a new piece of equipment sold, the dealer earns the opportunity to apply some funds to help move the use piece of equipment is again in large ag, I think in North America. Most people know it’s usually one in one out, so they’re normally dealing with the trade in.

So as that dealer takes in that trade in, we apply some funds that he or she can use to help move that. We continue to monitor that. We’re not really doing anything significant. If you look at the number of units on our dealers lots, they’re growing a little bit, but relative to the pre COVID levels, they’re modestly higher, not significant. If I look at the pricing of the used equipment, again, it’s going down over the last year or so, but again, relative to pre COVID levels, it’s actually still doing quite well.

So now you may argue, well, there’s a lot more technology, there’s a lot higher prices originally, but generally speaking, the trade in values, and the prices are holding up relatively well, but we’re watching that and we’ll work with our dealers as necessary with those pool funds, but there’s nothing we’re doing more broadly to try to move that out. It’s not a huge issue for our dealers to deal with right now.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: Perfect. And can we talk about the outgrowth? I mean, FENT is a big part of that, I think, strategy. Before the pharmacovert downturn, I think FENT grew 30% just in 2022. So just help us understand that outgrowth strategy, where are you gaining share?

There’s FENT, there’s MASA, there’s a couple of different brands that you’re kind of trying to attack that outgrowth. So just wanted to get a sense of where that is. I think for some people, the idea of importing a European premium product to The U. S. Is a little strange to some even though it’s been gaining traction.

So help us kind of understand how that outgrowth plays out?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes. So FENT, the primary growth driver has been FENT. I would tell you last year the primary the market FENT grew market share, but but it was heavily centered here in Europe actually. I mean, they actually did quite well even in this industry. FENT Europe had its second best year ever from an earnings standpoint.

And so they gained significant share given the quality of the products, some of the new introductions they had with the Fence 600, the Fence 700, Gen seven, all doing quite well with in Western Europe. But if I think about the biggest growth opportunities, those sit in North America and South America. Again, your point is, Spencer, it’s not a new brand in The UK, it’s not a new brand in Europe, but it is a newer brand in Western Europe and South America, but it’s the best of the best. And so when you look at these large row crop farmers who are looking for productivity, they’re looking for the most fuel efficient vehicle, they’re looking for the ones that have the best technology. In The U.

S, it has the best warranty, the Gold Star three year warranty and it creates that overall FENT experience for those farmers. It delivers a better value proposition for them and we’ve seen great growth in FENT. So we’ve seen our to your point, we’ve seen our revenues in North And South America go from just under just over $300,000,000 in 2020 to over $700,000,000 in 2022. Last year, we were just under just around $1,000,000,000 and our target by 2029 is to take that up to $1,700,000,000 So we’re seeing great growth in the FENT business. We’ve added a full suite of portfolio again.

FENT started as a tractor company. We’ve added the best planter in the industry. We’ve added one of the best sprayers in the industry. And now we have the Ideal Combine, which we make in Italy and we make in South America, which is a high performing combine. So our dealers now have a full suite of products that is the best of the best in many categories.

And for the farmers who now have an alternative to pick, we’re seeing many farmers look at the alternative, see the value that Fend’s bringing and we’re seeing great penetration in North America, South America. So we see that being the part of how we’re going to help outgrow that industry. I would say the other part of the outgrowth of that 4% to 5% is coming from our precision ag. Again, when you think about ag code, another thing that’s unique about us is we talk a lot of our precision ag portfolio and that goes into our FENT products, it goes into our Massey product. But when you think about the differentiator is that retrofit channel.

So we’re the only one in the industry that believes that technology starts in the aftermarket or retrofit. We have a unique go to market channel. So again, our competitors have technology, all of that and they have retrofit that’s sold through their new equipment channel. ADCO has a separate channel that is based off of the Precision Planting acquisition. These are not usually new equipment people.

These are seed sales people. These are agronomists. They’re technology people who are more on the farm looking to drive productivity. It’s a whole different channel of going to market and because we start with our technology there first and because we’re OEM agnostic, this retrofit channel is growing and we see it as a true differentiator to bring that technology there regardless of what color machine the farmer may be using and that’s helping us again outgrow the overall industry from a new equipment standpoint.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: And maybe that’s a great way for us to wrap it up in terms of what did you feel that Trimble brings? We could all discuss the timing of that acquisition, but what did that bring to your retrofit aftermarket kind of opportunity that you guys see going from there?

Damon Audea, Chief Financial Officer, AGCO: Yes. So I mean there’s numerous things. I’m not sure two minutes is enough time to talk about what Trimble brought to the table, but it is a transformational acquisition for us in a lot of ways. And if you think about when you do surveys, the two most well known brands from a retrofit mindset and a mixed fleet mindset were Precision Planting and Trimble, two different companies at that point in time. And by bringing them together, you brought the two most powerful mixed fleet mindset companies together to create this technology dealer network now that is there to drive the optimization on the farm rather than new equipment and all going through that unique separate channel.

So when you think about what we now have from a channel standpoint is we will continue to have Trimble be going into the AGCO OE products, so the FEMT Massey vulture at the factory, which wasn’t primary before the acquisition. So we’ll be growing the Trimble portfolio through the AGCO OEM footprint. You have the AGCO dealers, who will sort of be what I’ll call base dealers. So they will sell your typical guidance type systems. So we’re bringing on all of these AGCO dealers around the world.

We have over 200 CNH dealers signed up, and they were purchasing that product from CNH originally. They’re now signed up to be, Trimble or PTX Trimble dealers. So that’s growing. And then you have your full line tech dealer. And so that’s taking the Precision Planting dealer or the Trimble dealer, giving them the other part of that portfolio and training them up to be able to either sell Trimble products alongside Precision Planting or sell Precision Planting alongside their Trimble.

That’s that full line tech dealer. That’s that separate go to market channel. That’s the special sauce within AGCO that these are going to be on the farm looking to drive productivity. That’s going well, that’ll probably take us a little bit over a year to get that modeled out. So that channel is a differentiator.

What it does for us from a technology standpoint is you think about the future of autonomy, right? Today, most of our equipment does edge processing. So it’s making all the reading in the field and it doesn’t have to be connected constantly, because it’s making sort of that decision in the field. And then when it gets off into the barn, it can upload the information. But when you start to think about autonomy, you need that real time connectivity.

And that’s what Trimble brings to the table for us as we start to think about creating autonomous opportunities around the crop cycle, you need that real time connectivity and Trimble is going to be the cornerstone technology that we build on. And we were the first to market this year announcing the Outrun product. So that’s the autonomous grain cart. So you think about that farmer, he or she’s in the midst of harvest running that combine. Normally there’s a couple of great tractors pulling grain carts, one next to the combine, the other one going off to the truck.

We demoed at our Tech Day last year, two different OEM tractors, neither with an operator in it and that farmer in the middle or with an iPad controlling two different grain carts autonomously, one coming up getting unloaded for the with the combine and the second one up at the truck and then flipping all of that done with one operator in the combine. So you think about the ability to really drive that technology, Trimble is at the cornerstone of that for us.

Michael Feininger, Bank of America Machinery Engineering and Construction Analyst, Bank of America: Perfect. Well, we’re going to leave it there and I want to thank Adco and the team for joining us and being at the conference today. Thank you, gentlemen.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.