Earnings call transcript: AGCO beats Q3 2025 expectations, stock reacts positively

AGCO Corporation (AGCO) reported its third-quarter earnings for 2025, surpassing both earnings per share (EPS) and revenue forecasts. The company posted an EPS of $1.35, beating the forecast of $1.20, and reported revenues of $2.48 billion, slightly above the anticipated $2.46 billion. Pre-market trading saw AGCO shares rise by 2.29%, reflecting investor optimism. However, the stock experienced a minor decline of 2.79% in subsequent trading, closing at $106.12.

Key Takeaways

• AGCO’s Q3 2025 EPS of $1.35 exceeded expectations by 12.5%.
• Revenue reached $2.48 billion, slightly above forecasts.
• Pre-market trading showed a positive reaction with a 2.29% increase.
• AGCO launched new digital and autonomous solutions, enhancing its innovation portfolio.
• The company maintained its full-year net sales guidance at $9.8 billion.

Company Performance

AGCO’s performance in Q3 2025 demonstrated resilience amid challenging market conditions, with net sales totaling $2.5 billion, a 5% decline year-over-year. The company continued to focus on innovation, launching the FarmEngage digital platform and OutRun autonomous solutions. Despite production cuts in North America, AGCO’s strategic initiatives, such as Project Reimagine, are expected to reduce costs significantly.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $2.5 billion (down 5% YoY)
• EPS: $1.35 (exceeded forecast by 12.5%)
• Operating margins: 6.1% reported, 7.5% adjusted
• Free cash flow: $65 million (improvement of $450 million YoY)

Earnings vs. Forecast

AGCO’s Q3 2025 earnings outperformed expectations, with an EPS surprise of 12.5%. The revenue surprise was a modest 0.81%, indicating strong operational performance despite a challenging market environment. This marks a positive deviation from previous quarters, where earnings were more aligned with forecasts.

Market Reaction

AGCO’s stock reacted positively in pre-market trading, rising by 2.29% to $108.55. However, it closed at $106.12, reflecting a 2.79% decrease. The stock remains within its 52-week range, between a high of $121.16 and a low of $73.79, indicating investor confidence despite broader market volatility.

Outlook & Guidance

AGCO reaffirmed its full-year net sales guidance of $9.8 billion and expects EPS to be approximately $5. The company is poised for growth with its strategic focus on precision agriculture and digital solutions. AGCO anticipates relatively flat global industry sales in 2026, with potential growth in Europe and South America.

Executive Commentary

"We are delivering higher margins through the business cycle," stated Eric Hansotia, highlighting AGCO’s focus on operational efficiency. Hansotia also emphasized the company’s strategic shifts, stating, "Our goal is to be autonomous across the crop cycle by 2030," underscoring AGCO’s commitment to innovation.

Risks and Challenges

• Supply chain disruptions could impact production schedules.
• Market saturation in North America may limit growth.
• Macroeconomic pressures, such as inflation, could affect cost structures.
• Potential trade agreement impacts with China remain uncertain.
• Currency fluctuations could influence financial performance.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of the China trade agreement and AGCO’s tariff mitigation strategies. Questions also focused on North America’s margin recovery challenges and the potential effects of farm subsidies on AGCO’s operations.

Full transcript - Agco (AGCO) Q3 2025:

Conference Operator: Good day, and welcome to the AGCO Third Quarter 2025 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. In consideration of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Greg Peterson, AGCO Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Greg Peterson, Head of Investor Relations, AGCO: Thanks, Gary, and good morning. Welcome to those of you joining us for AGCO’s Third Quarter 2025 earnings call. We will refer to a slide presentation this morning that’s posted on our website at www.agcocorp.com. The non-GAAP measures used in the slide presentation are reconciled to GAAP metrics in the appendix of the presentation. We will make forward-looking statements this morning, including statements about our strategic plans and initiatives, as well as our financial impacts, demand, product development, and capital expenditure plans, and timing of those plans, and our expectations concerning the costs and benefits of those plans and timing of those benefits. We’ll also cover future revenue, crop production, farm income, production levels, price levels, margins, earnings, operating income, cash flow, engineering expense, tax rates, and other financial metrics.

All of these forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those suggested by the statements. These risks are further described in the safe harbor included on slide two in the accompanying presentation. Actual results could differ materially from those suggested in these statements. Further information concerning these and other risks is included in AGCO’s filings with the SEC, including its Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, and subsequent Form 10-Q filings. AGCO disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. We’ll make a replay of this call available on our corporate website later today. On the call with me this morning is Eric Hansotia, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Damon Audia, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. With that, Eric, please go ahead.

Eric Hansotia, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, AGCO: Thanks, Greg, and good morning to everyone joining the call today. We delivered a strong third-quarter performance, underscoring the effectiveness of our strategic execution and the resilience of our global team. While macro conditions continue to be volatile, we benefited from a more favorable regional mix and stayed laser-focused on what we can control. Our disciplined approach to production and cost management continues to position us well in this environment. Thank you to the entire AGCO team for their continued focus in these two areas. We remained agile in the face of a complex and evolving landscape, and our people have been instrumental in helping us navigate this uncertainty, maintaining our momentum, and continuing to put farmers first. Net sales were $2.5 billion, down approximately 5% year over year, or up nearly 6% when excluding divested grain and protein business last year.

Strong growth in EAME led the quarter, which continues to be our largest, most stable, and most profitable region. Near-record global crop production in 2025 is leading to elevated grain inventories and putting pressure on commodity prices. While farm income is being supported by increased government assistance in the U.S., crop margins are still tight, and farmers around the globe remain cautious on capital spend. During this industry downturn, we are staying focused on executing our strategy, supporting our dealers and customers, and investing in technologies that will drive long-term growth. We also continue to look for every opportunity to limit the impact of tariffs on our farmers. We are closely monitoring evolving tariff policies and government support programs around the world while continuing to engage with suppliers and adjust our supply chain. We continue to assess and implement price increases where appropriate and feasible.

For the quarter, consolidated operating margins were 6.1% on a reported basis and 7.5% on an adjusted basis. Our results reflect strong execution by our teams. We maintain solid margins through disciplined operational performance, a favorable regional mix, and continued progress on our restructuring initiatives. This consistency underscores the effectiveness of our strategy and our commitment to delivering long-term value. Notably, we achieved these margins despite another quarter of significant production cuts in North America as part of our ongoing efforts to destock the dealer channel. When comparing third quarter of 2025 to the same period last year, production was down nearly 50% in North America. Production levels are actually down nearly 70% from 2023. In addition to making further progress on reducing dealer inventories, we’ve also decreased company inventories.

This continued discipline is reflected in our working capital improvements and free cash flow generation during the nine months of the year, which was approximately $453 million up compared to the same period in 2024. Slide four provides an overview of industry unit retail sales by region for the first nine months of 2025. The global farm equipment market continues to face significant headwinds. Brazil remains slightly up compared to the third quarter of 2024, driven primarily by demand for smaller and mid-sized tractors coupled with favorable trade dynamics. Despite record soybean harvests and potential trade benefits, demand for larger equipment has yet to show meaningful improvement. High financing costs and political uncertainty are expected to continue, constraining demand in 2025, but the early signs of recovery point to a modest increase in 2026.

In North America, tractor sales declined 10% in the first nine months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, with the steepest drops occurring in the high-horsepower categories. Driving this behavior is the significantly lower grain export demand, global trade uncertainty, and continued high input costs. We expect these pressures to persist, particularly with the demand for larger equipment. Recent announcements of government support are expected to support net farm income, which may help unlock future equipment investments. There are also potential upsides if further progress can be made on top of the trade agreement that was announced earlier this week between the U.S. and China. For Western Europe, tractor sales were down 8% during the first nine months of 2025 compared to the same period one year ago. The industry experienced double-digit percentage decreases across most markets.

Demand and mix are expected to remain soft through the remainder of the year as lower income levels weigh on arable farmers and correspondingly large tractors. As AGCO’s largest and most strategically important region, Europe continues to deliver stable demand that is less cyclical than other markets, with strong and consistent operating margins. Its performance provides valuable balance to our global portfolio, helping us to offset fluctuations in other markets, including those influenced by evolving U.S. trade dynamics. We remain confident in the region’s ability to support our long-term growth, especially as precision ag grows there. Combine sales continue to decline across all three regions, with North America experiencing the largest year-over-year drop at 29%. Amid industry-wide pressures, AGCO is performing more resiliently than in previous downturns and remains well-positioned for the long-term growth.

Looking ahead to 2026, current commodity prices and fundamental uncertainties continue to impact the global ag industry outlook. Positive market factors, including livestock and dairy prices, the replacement cycle, and government payments, are being offset by geopolitical tension, tariff impacts, and difficult farm economics, which include elevated borrowing costs and rising input costs. Given the combination of all of these factors, there is increasing likelihood of markets being relatively flat in 2026, with North America and large ag down and Europe and South America modestly up. This view confirms our assessment that the global industry is at the trough. Slide five outlines AGCO’s factory production hours. To ensure year-over-year comparability, we’ve excluded grain and protein production hours from the 2024 baseline.

Third-quarter production hours were up approximately 6% year-over-year, driven by a favorable comparison in Europe, where quarter three 2024 was impacted by the prolonged factory shutdowns as well as increased output in South America. In contrast, North America production was down over 50% again this quarter, reflecting our continued focus on reducing dealer inventories in response to soft market demand. Production levels are actually down nearly 70% from 2023. Looking ahead, we now expect full year 2025 production to be down approximately 15% versus 2024, a slight revision from our prior estimate of down 15% to 20%, primarily due to stronger quarter three output in EAME. Right-sizing inventory in North America remains a top priority, while Europe and South America will continue to see production effectively aligned with retail demand. Looking at regional inventory breakdown, in Europe, dealer inventory is now just over three months, slightly below our target.

Fendt is below this average, while Massey Ferguson and Valtra are just above. Europe’s near-target inventory levels are encouraging, particularly given our strong exposure to the region. In South America, dealer inventory ticked up to around four months, slightly above our three-month target and quarter two levels, given the decline in demand for low and medium-horsepower tractors. The increase in inventory reflects mainly a more cautious industry outlook, given the demand changes in quarter three, which led us to adjust our forward sales expectations. In North America, we continue to make meaningful progress, reducing dealer inventory from nine to eight months. While still above our target, the reduction reflects the success of our disciplined production cuts, with units being reduced almost 13% in the quarter. Our three high-margin growth drivers, globalizing and expanding our Fendt product line, growing precision ag, and increasing our parts business, remain central to our strategy.

To unlock the full potential of these growth levers and transform AGCO into a higher-performing company throughout the cycles, there are five major strategic shifts we’ve just made in the past two years that position us for significant earnings growth. Let’s start with a significant update regarding our resolution with TAFE. We recently announced the sale of our ownership interest in TAFE, generating approximately $230 million in after-tax proceeds. For the first time under my leadership, we now plan to move forward with a $1 billion share repurchase program, reflecting our confidence in the business and our commitment to shareholder returns. We plan to begin purchasing $300 million of shares in the fourth quarter.

Turning to other key elements that are meaningfully reshaping our company, the creation of our PTx business is the most critical to helping us achieve our vision to be the trusted partner for industry-leading smart farming solutions. By combining Precision Planting, the ag assets of Trimble, and six additional tech acquisitions over the last five years, plus doubling our engineering budget, we’ve built a $900 million platform with a path to $2 billion in precision ag revenues as synergies and scale take hold. As we strengthened our high-margin, high-growth portfolio, we exited the lower-growth, lower-margin business of grain and protein, which lacked alignment with our core machine and technology products, as well as our distribution strategy. Project Reimagine is a company-wide restructuring effort focused on automating, standardizing, simplifying, centralizing, and in some cases, outsourcing work.

With over 700 active projects, we are driving efficiency, lower costs, and most importantly, improving the outcomes for our dealers, farmers, and employees enabled by AI. This initiative is expected to reduce our cost base by $175 million to $200 million. Finally, FarmerCore is unique in our industry and is transforming our go-to-market strategy. We’re taking service and support right to the farmers, online and on the farm, by investing in digital tools and enabling dealers to shift from brick-and-mortar to mobile service models. This is about servicing the farmer, not just the product. We’re making meaningful progress in North America and South America with expansion to other markets planned in the future. Together, these five strategic shifts are shaping the AGCO Weave envisioned: more focused, more agile, and better positioned to deliver sustainable high-margin growth.

The results include margins at this trough that are comparable to the company’s margins at the previous cycle’s peak. AGCO is delivering higher margins through the business cycle, driven by these structural changes to the company’s portfolio and value proposition. Going deeper into precision agriculture, slide seven showcases two major innovation milestones that reflect AGCO as a leader in smart farming solutions. We’ve launched phase one of FarmEngage, our new mixed-fleet digital platform designed to deploy work plans, track fieldwork, and collect task data from all machines on the farm, regardless of brand. This retrofit-first solution enables AGCO equipment to seamlessly integrate with existing Trimble technology while also supporting interoperability with non-AGCO fleets. Looking ahead, phase two will consolidate features into a unified platform experience, and phase three will complete the full farm operation cycle, delivering an end-to-end solution for planning, execution, and optimization.

Together, these phases position FarmEngage as an absolute cornerstone of our smart farming strategy. As you know, our goal is to be autonomous across the crop cycle by 2030. We are accelerating this journey, and at a recent tech day in Germany, we unveiled the latest OutRun autonomous solution for tillage and fertilization. Tillage is now in beta testing, and fertilization is in alpha. These build on the success of our OutRun autonomous grain cart solution, which is already in production. These innovations offer autonomous capabilities for Fendt and competitive machines in three of the five major stages of the crop cycle, making us one of the industry leaders in this transformational technology. This progress reflects our commitment to delivering practical, scalable technologies for the mixed fleet that reduce labor dependency, improve efficiency, and help farmers operate more profitably.

On that exciting note, I’ll hand it over to Damon for a deeper dive into the financials. Thank you, Eric. And good morning. Slide eight summarizes our regional net sales performance for the third quarter and year to date. Net sales for the quarter increased approximately 1% year-over-year, excluding the positive impact of currency translation. For comparability, we’ve also excluded the $251 million of sales associated with the divested grain and protein business in Q3 of 2024. Breaking net sales down by region, Europe, Middle East posted a 20% increase compared to the same period in 2024, excluding the impact of favorable currency effects. This reflects a recovery in the production levels and corresponding sales following extended plant downtime last year. Growth was strongest in the high-horsepower and mid-range tractors. South America declined close to 10%, excluding favorable currency impact.

Weaker industry demand drove most of the decrease, with lower sales across most product categories. North America was down 32%, excluding unfavorable currency effects. The decline was driven by continued market softness and our focused underproduction to reduce dealer inventories. The largest decreases occurred in high-horsepower tractors, sprayers, and combine. Asia-Pacific Africa declined 5%, excluding unfavorable currency translation impacts. Lower demand across the Asian markets was partially offset by stronger performance in Australia and Africa. Finally, consolidated replacement parts were $498 million in the third quarter, up 2% year-over-year on a reported basis and down approximately 2% when excluding the favorable currency translation. Turning to slide nine. Third-quarter adjusted operating margin was 7.5%, 200 basis points higher than the prior year. The industry backdrop remains challenging, with continued pressure from factory underabsorption and elevated discounting.

The margin improvement was primarily driven by strong performance in our Europe, Middle East segment, where higher sales and production volume supported improved operating leverage. By region, Europe, Middle East income from operations increased around $163 million, with operating margins approaching 16%. The improvement reflects the significantly higher volumes and sales compared to Q3 of 2024, which was impacted by the extended plant shutdowns. North American operating income declined approximately $56 million year-over-year, with margins remaining negative again this quarter. Lower sales and significantly reduced production hours were the key drivers, coupled with the significantly weaker industry. South America operating income declined $23 million, with margins down to around 6%, primarily due to lower volumes. Asia-Pacific Africa posted a slight increase in operating income of $1 million, driven by lower manufacturing costs, partially offset by lower sales volume. Slide 10 shows our year-to-date free cash flow performance.

As a reminder, free cash flow is defined as cash provided by or used in operating activities less capital expenditures. Free cash flow conversion is calculated as free cash flow divided by adjusted net income. Through September, we generated $65 million of free cash flow, an improvement of around $450 million versus last year’s net outflow of $387 million for the same period. This was driven by stronger working capital performance and roughly $120 million in lower capital expenditures year-over-year. We continue to expect full-year free cash flow to be within our targeted range of 75% to 100% of adjusted net income. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged: reinvest in the business, potential bolt-on acquisitions, maintain investment-grade credit ratings, and return capital to shareholders.

As Eric mentioned, following the TAFE resolution and the board approval of our new $1 billion share repurchase program, we expect to begin repurchasing $300 million of shares in the fourth quarter. We also recently declared our regular quarterly dividend of $0.29 per share. We remain focused on deploying capital effectively to drive long-term shareholder value, and we’re encouraged by the increased flexibility to return capital through the preferred investor method of share repurchases. Slide 11 highlights our current 2025 market outlook across our three major regions. Our outlooks remain relatively unchanged since the second quarter call, other than a modest adjustment to our North American large ag forecast. In North America, we continue to expect significantly lower industry demand in 2025. While net farm income has improved, supported by government programs and record-high cattle prices, sentiment remains challenged by wheat, corn, and soybean prices.

Investment confidence is declining, and interest rate cuts haven’t yet provided meaningful relief. We’re maintaining our outlook for the small tractor segment to be down approximately 5%, and now expect large ag to be down around 30% versus our prior range of down 25% to 30%. In Western Europe, we continue to expect the industry demand to decline 5% to 10%. The market remains soft but relatively stable. Wheat prices are below historical averages, and geopolitical uncertainty continues to weigh on sentiment. In South America, record soybean exports, partly driven by U.S. tariff barriers, have supported trade flows. However, margins are under pressure from higher input costs and elevated interest rates in Brazil are dampening demand, especially for large ag. Under these conditions, we still expect Brazil to be flat to up 5% for the year. Slide 12 outlines the key assumptions supporting our full-year 2025 outlook.

We continue to expect global industry demand to be around 85% of mid-cycle levels. Our sales outlook remains unchanged despite a slightly softer pricing outlook now in the 0% to 1% range, which is down from approximately 1% in Q2, given the increase in competitive pricing in certain regions. We continue to anticipate a favorable currency impact of roughly 2%. Our guidance reflects current tariffs across our global footprint, along with mitigation efforts through cost actions and pricing. That said, the potential for additional U.S. tariffs or retaliatory measures fosters continued uncertainty. We’re monitoring developments closely and will adjust our outlook if needed. Engineering expense is expected to remain effectively flat year-over-year. We still expect our adjusted operating margin to be approximately 7.5%, reflecting structural improvements in cost initiatives, positioning us roughly 350 basis points above our last trough in 2016.

Lastly, we revised our effective tax rate to 33% to 35%, modestly better than our prior estimate of approximately 35%. Turning to slide 13 for our current 2025 outlook. We continue to expect full-year net sales of approximately $9.8 billion, consistent with our prior outlook. This reflects the modest changes in demand trends across key markets. We’ve refined our earnings per share forecast to approximately $5. Reflecting strong execution across our global operations, this assumes no material changes to existing trade measures. Capital expenditures are now expected to be around $300 million. While this represents a decrease from the prior estimate of $350 million, we remain focused on supporting strategic initiatives and maintaining flexibility in response to shifting demand trends. We continue to target free cash flow conversion of 75% to 100% of adjusted net income, supported by disciplined working capital management and improved inventory efficiency.

As Eric noted, we’re pleased with our performance for the third quarter in what remains a challenging and evolving year. Our teams have executed well, grown share, and continued to reduce dealer inventories while supporting farmers’ needs. With this updated outlook, we believe our results further demonstrate the structural improvements in AGCO’s profitability. Even in a down cycle, we’re delivering stronger margins and more consistent earnings, a reflection of our transformed business model. With that, I’ll turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.

Our first question today is from Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer & Company. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank you so much for the question. I’m wondering if we can start here with the strong Europe results. Maybe just ask a simple question: how Europe performed relative to your expectations? I’m just trying to parse through some of the one-time items versus the underlying trends there and what’s supporting the outlook for a little bit more constructive growth in 2026. I’ll start there. Yeah, sure, Kristen. I think Europe, I would say, performed modestly better than what we had expected, more on the top line. Volumes were a little bit stronger than what we had originally anticipated. The production, what you saw with the margins, heavily influenced by the production schedule, I would say, was relatively in line with what we had expected. Overall, we feel good.

I think the key point for us as we look at Europe right now, the dealer inventory levels are sitting below the optimal level for us. We feel very good as we go into the fourth quarter and into 2026. Here, we’re sitting in a relatively strong position from producing in line with retail or hopefully if the markets were to pick up. We haven’t given a full outlook for 2026 yet, but the dealer inventory levels are positioned well there for 2026. My follow-up, understanding it’s very early days to digest, but any initial thoughts on the China trade agreement that was announced yesterday and how that might complement some of the government support that’s been floated out there? Just early thoughts on what that could do for your North American outlook next year. Thank you. Yeah, we see this as clearly net positive.

There’s the combination of the soybean purchases that are more clear now for this year and the next few years. Farmers can—that’s really the core of what farmers look to, is market stability and predictability. There’s also the government support that’s been strengthened. It’s a dual positive outlook. Having said that, we think this is going to be a little bit of a show-me situation where the farmers are going to need to have the trades actually happen, the deal actually finalized, the beans actually being purchased, which will then drive real pricing in the market. Our phones weren’t ringing off the hook yesterday with all kinds of purchasing orders coming in. It’s net positive that it will just take some time to play out in the market. It’s probably more of a 2026 effect. The next question comes from Jamie Cook with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I guess just my first question just on the North America dealer inventory. It’s nice that it came down to eight months, I guess, versus eight to nine or nine months last quarter. This sounds like this is obviously going to go into the excess inventory is going to go into 2026. Just any color there on at what point in 2026 do you think we could get right size? If we continue this way, given what you’re saying about North America, is there greater risk in 2026 North America would be at a loss again for 2026? I guess that’s my first question. I’ll ask the next one after you answer this. Yeah, Jamie. I think overall, North America, the team did a really good job in reducing the units on hand. As I think Eric said, around 13% down sequentially.

Given the change in our industry outlook for this year, with large ag being down now around 30%. As Eric alluded in his opening comments here, we do see North America down, large ag down in next year as well. That is putting pressure on us to get to that six-month target. We won’t get there by the end of the year. I think we’ll make improvement from the eight months down, but we won’t get to the six months now. That’s based on our current outlook. I think, as Eric just said on the prior question here, a lot of new information has come out over the last couple of days with the China trade agreement, with more conversations about subsidies for the farmers. Just to put it in perspective, our inventory levels are based on the 12-month forward look.

Hypothetically, if large ag in North America was flat next year instead of what we’re assuming is down, that would have changed my current eight months. I would have reduced it by around a half a month. It’s fairly sensitive to what 2026 will look like. If we see that market turn here based on farmer sentiment, based on increased purchasing in 2026, we’re going to be in line with our target fairly quickly. It’s a little bit hard to answer right now because I think there’s a little bit of flux in the system based on some of the most recent news. Okay, thank you. I guess just my second question, tariffs and the lower price. I think last quarter, the guidance assumed $0.45 in net tariff impact to EPS. Any update with Section 232, how that impacts you?

I’m curious how we’re managing the higher cost, but then obviously you lowered your pricing assumption. Where are you seeing the discounting and how do you think about pricing into 2026, given what some of your peers have communicated? Yeah, we’re definitely—I think the incremental Section 232 items had a relatively modest impact to our overall tariff cost. As we’ve quoted a net tariff number for 2025, I would say we are marginally worse relative to the $0.45, more due to the incremental loss volume that we’re estimating here versus the industry. I think that’s a little bit of the challenge for us here. As we think about the pricing comment for this year, we have seen some increased competitive pricing tension more in South America and Europe.

That’s what’s forced us to change our outlook from what was up around 1% to somewhere in the range of 0% to 1%. We will still be net neutral to positive on price versus material costs, and that does include tariffs on a global basis. We’re still going to be able to cover it, but maybe not as much as we had hoped given the current environment. As we look into 2026, we’re going to see how the industry dynamics play out. As we’ve said from the beginning, our goal is to limit the cost of the tariffs to us and to the farmers. Where we can’t do that, we know that those costs will be centralized, likely here in North America, and we’re going to look to try to spread pricing as broadly as possible.

Again, early look into 2026, I think as a total company, we should be able to cover the material costs and the pricing, but we want to get through the year-end before we give more official outlooks for 2026. Thank you, Damon. Very helpful. The next question is from Kyle Menges with Citigroup. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking the question, guys. Maybe just jumping off from the last question, it’d be helpful to just hear you guys elaborate a bit more on the pricing competition you’re seeing, particularly it sounds like in Brazil and in Europe, just maybe what’s going on there. Thanks. Yeah, I think, Kyle, what we’ve seen is the South American market, especially Brazil, as we said, the last quarter has started to recover. It was the first one of our three major markets into the downturn.

It started to recover mainly in the medium and low horsepower segments of the market and influenced a lot by the specialty crop farmers, coffee, citrus. What we’ve seen is a little bit of a slowdown in those markets here, and so the market is still growing. I would say we were 0% to 5% last quarter. We were probably closer to the high end of that, and as we look at some of the competitive nature down there with some discounting, especially in that segment, it’s reduced our outlook now closer to the lower end of that segment. I think the markets are still doing well, but just given the push to try to drive volume there, we’re seeing that segment of the market be a little bit more competitive in nature. Got it. And then.

Just on your earlier comments on global retail sales, looking like they could be flattish year over year next year, assuming that’s more so just talking about unit sales. I’m curious if that includes precision at all, and would be helpful just to hear you discuss a little bit the trends you’re seeing in demand for your precision solutions into 2026. How you feel like you’re positioned in that retrofit market going into next year. Yeah, maybe I’ll touch on the industry comments and then I’ll let Eric elaborate on the PTx business. Our outlook for next year is really based on retail unit sales. It’s not really including parts or our PTx business. Think of that more as whole goods sales. PTx, we’re hitting all our forecasts this year. It’s going as we would plan it to be at this stage of the cycle.

We’re at the trough, so the parts are lower than where we ultimately want them to be, but we’re signing up dealers. We’ve got over 90% of our AGCO machines now going out of the factories with Trimble technology. Essentially, if you look at the two channels that we inherited, the Precision Planting and the PTx Trimble channels, we’ve got over 90% of the market covered in everywhere except for Brazil, and that’s in the low 80s with that dealer network, and we’re working on melting those together. The effort to end up with combined dealers that have the full portfolio is well underway. We’ve got 50 of those done. Target is to have 78 of them by the end of the year. That’ll cover about 70% of the U.S. market, which is the fastest-growing precision ag business.

Just trying to give you a few data points on both channel as well as technology on our product. New technology, we had our field tech days, and PTx launched 11 new innovations this year, well ahead of what we had anticipated when we were putting the business together. The innovation engine is probably running ahead of schedule. Financials are on track. Channel development is on track. We’ve got a new leader in charge of PTx. He’s hitting the ground running really well. Has visited many of our global operations in terms of sites and dealers. I’m very pleased with how that’s going. Just as a reminder, retrofit doesn’t go down as much as the rest of the business. It only declines about a third as much as the overall decline of the whole goods. We’re seeing, although it’s down, it’s not down nearly as much.

As it recovers, we expect that will recover as well. Thanks, guys. The next question is from Tammy Zakaria with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank you so much. I wanted to get a little more clarification on the pricing outlook being changed. Can you help us with which regions or region is driving that reduction in outlook? I just wanted to make sure, is fourth quarter pricing still positive, or are we talking about negative pricing? Yeah, so Tammy, fourth quarter will still be positive. If you look at our year-to-date, I think we’re up around 50 basis points, give or take. Pricing will be up around 1% in the fourth quarter total company-wise. If I think about the change in the pricing, based on one of the prior questions, the change really was driven more in South America and Europe.

This is where we saw the reductions relative to our Q2 outlook for you guys. Understood. Thank you. My next question is, I think I heard you say North America large ag expect to be down next year. Can you help us frame what the down means as of right now? Are we talking about flat to down or down to some degree, but less than this year’s 30s? Any way to frame that? Yeah. Prior to the news of the last two days, we would have said down, say, single digits. Nowhere near as much as this year. Since then, we’ve had a couple of pretty significant positive indicators in terms of farm support for farmers from the government and pricing. Stability of China buying soybeans. Where that’ll actually end up is unknown, but it won’t be anywhere near what we saw this year.

We believe we’re at the bottom of a global industry. We believe pricing is probably at about its worst. We think pricing power will be stronger next year. I think that 2025 is probably, in many cases, the worst of the cycle. Understood. Thank you. The next question is from Stephen Volkman with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Great. Good morning. Thank you. Damon, can you just give us a little bit of a walk into the fourth quarter? There’s a pretty big margin expansion kind of implied in your guidance, and I’m just curious, what are the buckets that kind of deliver that? Yeah. I think, Steve, for us, the margins in the fourth quarter should finish up at around 9% or a little bit over 9% to deliver the 7.5% full year.

As we look at some of the improvements, I think Europe, again, the fourth quarter is generally a fairly strong quarter for Europe from a volume standpoint, so we should see the margins tick up there. Asia-Pacific was in the down market early, and we see that improving. I think we see a little bit of the margin coming out of there. South America would be the other one. North America continues to be the challenge. If I think about the margins in North America relative to the third quarter, given the increased level of underproduction, again, we said on the scripted remarks that we were down around 50, and Q4 will be down. We’ll be cutting production over 50% as we continue to try to focus on that dealer inventory. I think sequentially, those margins will be even lower here in the fourth quarter for North America. Okay. Thanks.

Helpful. Maybe just to focus on the restructuring program, so the $175 to $200 million, is there a benefit of that in the fourth quarter? What would the benefit of that be in 2026? Yeah. Again, year over year, we’re picking up steam as we move through the restructuring actions. There will be some benefit in the fourth quarter relative to last year. That’s embedded in the outlook already. As I look at next year, you’re going to get the carryover from the original $100 to $125 million, and you’ll get some of the early parts of the incremental $75 million. Next year, as we look at the restructuring benefits, today, I’d say it’s probably in the range of $40 to $60 million of incremental improvement relative to 2025. Super. Thank you. The next question is from Mick Dobra with RW Baird. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone.

I want to go back to the tariff discussion if we can. What I’m confused about, frankly, is this interplay between Section 232 and just the normal reciprocal tariffs. I guess the way I would ask the question, when we’re sort of thinking about your guidance for 2025, there was a sort of cadence in the way these tariffs kind of came into play, not much impact in the first half, maybe more impact in the second. You also have SIFO accounting. I’m wondering, is it fair to think that the impact from these tariffs is actually greater in 2026 than what’s embedded in the 2025 guidance? If so, is there a way to maybe quantify it for us? Yeah. Sure, Mick. Yes, in answer to your question, if we look at the—there’s a couple of variables.

To your point, we still have some costs that have flown through our P&L related to the tariff payments we’re making. Some of it is still tied up in inventory. We will have the full year run rate of those tariffs, assuming there are no changes. When we think about that, we’ve also announced that we’ve put price actions in effect in many of our businesses, PTx parts, whole goods for model year 2026. We have only seen a portion of that, and that’s why we’re sort of giving you that net effect this year. If I just try to quantify in absolute terms what the tariff costs are, again, not mitigating with price or other actions, for next year, assuming no changes to what’s in effect today, I would tell you that the total tariff costs are less than 1% of my total company sales.

This year, we’re guiding to $9.8 billion. I’d tell you the total tariff costs on an annualized basis would be less than 1% of that. That would be concentrated here in North America, so the percent would be more. As we’ve talked about in the past, our philosophy is to try to price in the region where we can. To the extent we’re not able to pass all of that, given competitive dynamics in that region, we look for opportunities to be strategic and increase prices in other parts of the world to offset that total cost here for the total company. Okay. That’s really helpful. Thank you for that. Maybe a quick follow-up on South America. I don’t know if this is the right way to think about it, but when I’m sort of looking at margin here, your revenue has gradually recovered sequentially through the year.

We’ve seen a sequential step down in margin from the second to the third quarter, despite revenue being higher. I’m kind of wondering if this is a function of pricing, as you talked about earlier, or if there’s something else going on that we need to be aware of as we think about the fourth quarter. Thanks. Yeah. I think, Mick, there’s been a couple of things. The mix, if you think about year over year and you’re thinking more, the mix, as we talked about, the high horsepower segment, despite all of the geopolitical stuff that we’re hearing about Brazil being a beneficiary, we’re not seeing the large ag part of that market pick up yet. What we have been seeing is that medium-low horsepower specialty crops. What you’re seeing year over year there is really more of a mix challenge.

In the quarter, we had a little bit of a warranty spike year over year, nothing significant, but just on a quarter-year-over-year basis, warranty was a little bit higher. When I think about the fourth quarter, again, you’re going to see that mixed headwind come in in South America. Again, we’re not seeing the large horsepower pick up. If you look at the fourth quarter for South America specifically, last year, we called out a special tax benefit for R&D. It was about 1 to 1.5% of a margin lift. That’s not repeating this year. Those are the two drivers, as I think about the fourth quarter, really the continued mixed decline year over year and then that one tax benefit that I had in the fourth quarter of 2024. All right. Much appreciated. The next question is from Chad Dillard with Bernstein. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, guys.

Question for you guys on North America. Can you walk through the path to margin recovery? Is there further restructuring that you can do? Also, I guess, how much of that headwind is just coming from tariffs? Yeah. Chad, part of the overall restructuring programs that we’re talking about, a portion of that is in North America, so we will see some marginal benefits of that as we move into next year. When I look at the margins right now or the negative margins, it’s heavily influenced by the level of underproduction. I think, as Eric mentioned, when you look at where we were producing in 2023, the number of hours versus what we’re producing right now in the back half of 2025, we’re down around 70+% in hours in North America.

When you just think about the cost of those factories running at that lower level of utilization, that is a significant drag on the margins. On top of that, as I said, the tariff costs are centralized here. The team’s doing a nice job in trying to offset that. I’d say on a dollar basis, we’re not offsetting it on a margin basis. Obviously, that’s going to be margin-dilutive. The key for us is to get the volume, right? We look at this industry, and I think last year, when you exclude grain and protein, we were $2.3 billion or so, give or take. We need to get that volume back up. Whether that’s the industry recovering, whether that’s the continued focus on gaining share, all of those things are going to be critical.

I’d say parts is doing quite well, but in North America, parts is a little bit weaker year over year. That’s a high-margin part of the business. We need the volume to start flowing back in North America. It’s not necessarily a reflection of what we’re doing. It’s more a reflection of the industry because when we look at Fendt, we’re actually gaining share here in North America. You’re just gaining share on a much smaller pie, and you’re not seeing that drop to the bottom line given the overall industry decline. That’s super helpful. Secondly, you were talking about your pricing strategy to mitigate tariffs and talking about spreading it more globally. I’d love to get a little bit more color on that.

What I’m trying to understand is how successful are you seeing pricing stick if you’re looking to expand more globally than narrowly focusing on pricing in North America? Maybe I’ll take that one. Our biggest market is Europe, and we continue to grow share there even though we put pricing into that market. South America is probably the opposite. It’s like Damon said, it’s the most price-competitive right now, and it’s been the one that’s the most difficult for us to have pricing power at the moment. Big picture, South America is going to come back as the industry comes back. We’ve had the most success in Europe. Put the price in and gain share at the same time. Our disconnect between where we incur the tariffs and where we offset it has been working. Remember, there’s a three-pronged strategy there.

Number one is work with our supply chain to minimize the cost impact. Moving products from within our supply base or within our manufacturing operations is item number one. Item number two is Project Reimagine. We’re going to take about $200 million out of our cost structure on a little over a $1 billion base. That’s a self-help area. Only third is the pricing action. We’ve been really clear all the way along as we’re going to put price around the globe wherever we can, where the market will bear. That focus is on North America. Thank you. The next question is from Joel Jackson with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Good morning. What’s your outlook that you expect next year? Global sales flat, Europe up, the rest of the markets down a bit.

Can you speak to, knowing what your inventory levels will be at the end of this year, what that might mean for underproduction in the various regions we might expect next year? Yeah, Joel, obviously. I think if we look around the world, Europe, we continue to be in a really good position. You didn’t see much underproduction in Europe this year. Given the dealer inventories right now are sitting below our optimal level, I would say sort of consider that relatively flat year over year, producing closer to retail or in line with retail, excuse me. South America, the industry is picking up year over year. If you remember, we had a lot of underproduction here in the first half of 2025. As I think about South America, you’d probably see some incremental positive from absorption on the full year.

It’ll be first half weighted, and then we’ll start to lap the comps that we’re seeing here in the third and fourth quarter where we’re producing closer to retail. North America is a little bit of the wild card. If you look at what we’ve said with North America, large ag potentially being down, our dealer inventories at eight months right now, hoping to get that closer to our target, that would likely result in some underproduction here in the early part of 2026. As Eric said, given the recent news with the trade deal with potential incremental subsidies, and my comment that if that changes the industry outlook for large ag, that may help us accelerate or not have to underproduce. North America is still a little bit of a TBD next year.

Finally, can you maybe talk about what sort of subsidy packs in the states, payable packs in the states, of magnitude might move the needle for your end customers? $5 billion, $10 billion, $15 billion programs, whether that’s $50 an acre, $100 an acre. Have you thought about sort of what’s needed to move the needle to get farmers to look at capital purchases and not just do leveraging or working capital? Yeah, I think it needs to be over $10 billion. $10 to $20 billion, anything in there will get farmers’ attention. Granted, that money is not seen as the same as market-driven profitability. They’re more likely with subsidy money to pay down debt and other things because they’re not sure if it’s going to be sustainable in the next year and year after.

If the trade deal really sticks and there’s a three-year commitment to purchase 25 million metric tons type purchasing or more, that’s going to drive confidence way more in farmers than will the subsidy. The next question is from Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to go back to maybe one of the earlier discussions on North America margins and tariffs. I just wanted to check, am I doing the math right based on what you talked about with the 1% or 2% sales impact next year, that that kind of implies something approaching or roughly a dollar of tariff headwind?

If you could just comment on that and then just relate it to that, based on what you’re estimating today for kind of the North America outlook, fully accepting that there’s a lot of moving pieces still, which quarter would you expect to see the peak pressure in? Angel, can you clarify peak pressure in what regard? In terms of how you spread that tariff headwind, which I’m assuming there’s a little bit of a ramp-up as you work through inventories and the flow-through of that tariff impact on your P&L. I’m just curious which quarter would be the peak of it before it starts to comp your numbers. If our sales right now are $9.8 billion, I said less than 1%. You’re probably looking at less than a dollar, call it closer to $0.80, give or take, depending on how things finalize.

Some of these tariffs, as you know, are still changing, and those will influence some of the small horsepower tractors that we buy that are imported from other countries. I don’t want to be too precise, but directionally, less than that. That doesn’t take into consideration the pricing actions that I mentioned as well. When I gave Mick that number, that was the absolute tariff cost. That’s not my net effect to P&L next year because I already have pricing actions in effect in parts in PTx for model year 2026 equipment. The net number will be less than that. We haven’t given a specific outlook. We want to see how the fourth quarter unfolds, but it will be a lot less than that absolute number that I’m quoting you for the tariff costs themselves.

As I think about the cadence, we’re starting to already see that flow through our P&L in North America, depending on the product. As you know, we buy a lot of these medium and low horsepower tractors from other companies. Depending on the level of inventory that we had in stock and that our dealers had in stock, that’s flowing through over a period of time, coupled with the costs that we’re incurring for some of the raw materials that we’re purchasing for our assembly operations here in the U.S. I think it’s going to phase itself in. As we get into the second quarter, I would think we’d work through most of the inventory that we’ve had, and we’d start to see more of the full effect, I’d say, directionally around Q2. That’s very helpful. Thank you.

Maybe earlier, I think you had indicated that flat volumes next year would actually reduce your inventory levels by about half a month. I think your current assumption was down single digits. First, can you put a finer point on kind of what that assumption was for North America? Is that closer to mid-single digits or high single digits type of decline? If for some reason, volumes in North America, large ag, wind up being closer to down kind of mid-teens, which I think some investors’ channel checks suggest that might be a realistic risk, what’s the sensitivity or math or impact on your inventory levels if it were to be closer to the mid-teens? What does that mean for underproduction next year? We haven’t given a specific number related to what we were thinking for 2026.

As we look at the data, as we look at the analytical models running, we’re starting to see it down. I think, as Eric said, sort of in that mid-single digit range is what we were directionally looking at. I’d rather not speculate right now with all of the recent news that’s come out this week. I think, as Eric said, those are both net positive data points for farmers in North America, and we’re hopeful that that has more of a positive catalyst as we go into 2026. Obviously, to the extent it was down, using your mid-teens numbers, we would be forced to keep the underproduction probably longer to continue to reduce the dealer inventories. We want to make sure that we’re getting that down to that six months as quickly as possible.

Given the numbers you hear us quoting with production down over 50% in the fourth quarter, we’re being as aggressive as we can in trying to minimize the putting incremental inventory into the dealer channel here. Very helpful. Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Eric Hansotia for any closing remarks. Thank you for joining us today and all these thoughtful questions. AGCO continues to make meaningful progress on our transformation journey. We delivered a strong third-quarter performance with strong margins, disciplined inventory management, accelerated cost reduction, and healthy free cash flow generation year to date. I’m really proud of the team for achieving this amidst macro volatility by focusing on what we can control in a dynamic environment and always keeping our eyes on putting the farmer at the center.

In fact, the feedback we’re getting from our farmers is real strong. Our net promoter scores are at our all-time highest level in the company’s history. They like the net impact of our products and what we’re doing with our dealers to serve them better. In the quarter, Europe is our biggest market, continued to provide stability. We know farmers around the world are under pressure. Our priority is supporting them with efficient machines and technology that keep them productive and profitable. We continue to execute our strategic shifts that sharpen our focus and unlock long-term potential, including the TAFE exit, the PTx creation, and Project Reimagine. Our innovation flywheel is spinning faster than ever with new autonomous solutions and the launch of FarmEngage, reinforcing us as one of the most progressive leaders in smart farming.

I think you’ll see that on display big time at Agritechnica, the world’s largest ag show coming up here in a week or so. That will be a great way to engage with all the exciting things that AGCO’s got going on. Our 2025 financial outlook reflects our confidence in the strategy and the strength of our global team. Even in this challenging environment, we are investing in the future, gaining share, executing with agility, and always putting the farmer first. Thank you for your participation today. We really appreciate it. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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