Deere & Company and its subsidiaries (John Deere) engages in the production of agricultural, turf, construction, and forestry equipment and solutions.
Segments
The company operates through Production and Precision Agriculture (PPA), Small Agriculture and Turf (SAT), Construction and Forestry (CF), and Financial Services (FS) segments.
The PPA segment defines, develops, and delivers global equipment and technology solutions to unlock customer value for production-scale growers of large grains,...
Deere & Company and its subsidiaries (John Deere) engages in the production of agricultural, turf, construction, and forestry equipment and solutions.
Segments
The company operates through Production and Precision Agriculture (PPA), Small Agriculture and Turf (SAT), Construction and Forestry (CF), and Financial Services (FS) segments.
The PPA segment defines, develops, and delivers global equipment and technology solutions to unlock customer value for production-scale growers of large grains, small grains, cotton, and sugarcane. The segment’s primary products include large and certain mid-size tractors, combines, cotton pickers, sugarcane harvesters and loaders, and soil preparation, seeding, application, crop care equipment, and related attachments and service parts.
The SAT segment defines, develops, and delivers global equipment and technology solutions to unlock customer value for dairy and livestock producers, high-value and small acreage crop producers, and turf and utility customers. The segment’s primary products include certain mid-size tractors, utility and compact utility tractors, as well as hay and forage equipment, riding and commercial lawn equipment, golf course equipment, utility vehicles, and related attachments and service parts.
The CF segment defines, develops, and delivers a broad range of machines and technology solutions organized along the earthmoving, forestry, and roadbuilding production systems. The segment’s primary products include backhoe loaders, crawler dozers and loaders, four-wheel-drive loaders, excavators, skid-steer loaders, milling machines, log harvesters, and related attachments and service parts.
The products and services produced by the segments are marketed through independent retail dealer networks and major retail outlets. For roadbuilding products in certain markets outside the U.S. and Canada, the products are sold through company-owned sales and service subsidiaries.
The financial services segment finances sales and leases by John Deere dealers of new and used production and precision agriculture equipment, small agriculture and turf equipment, and construction and forestry equipment. In addition, the financial services segment provides wholesale financing to dealers of the foregoing equipment, finances retail revolving charge accounts, and offers extended equipment warranties.
Products
The John Deere enterprise manufactures agricultural equipment.
Smart Industrial Operating Model and Leap Ambitions
The company’s Smart Industrial Operating Model is based on the following three focus areas:
Production Systems: A strategic alignment of products and solutions around the company’s customers’ production systems. Production systems refer to the series of steps the company’s customers take to execute different tasks, operations, and projects to grow an agricultural product or execute a project.
Technology Stack: Investments in technology, as well as research and development, that deliver intelligent solutions to the company’s customers through hardware and devices, embedded software, connectivity, data platforms, and applications. The technology stack leverages these core technologies across the enterprise, including digital capabilities, automation and machine learning, autonomy, and alternative power technologies. The stack has the potential to unlock economic and sustainable value for customers by optimizing jobs, strengthening decision-making, and better connecting the steps of a production system.
Lifecycle Solutions: The enterprise integration of the company’s aftermarket and support capabilities to more effectively manage customer equipment, service, and technology needs across the full lifetime of a John Deere product, and with a specific lifecycle solution focus on the ownership experience. This integrated support seeks to enhance customer value through proactive and reactive support, easy access to parts, value-add services, and precision upgrades, regardless of when a customer purchases the company’s equipment.
The company’s Leap Ambitions are a framework designed to boost economic value and sustainability for its customers. The Leap Ambitions set goals to measure the results of the company’s Smart Industrial Operating Model. The ambitions align across the company’s customers’ production systems, seeking to optimize their operations to deliver better outcomes with fewer resources.
The Leap Ambitions framework has three components: size the incremental market opportunity, quantifying the value that can be created; identify the key actions required to guide investment in digitalization, autonomy, automation, and alternative power technologies; and define the desired financial and sustainable outcomes it hopes to achieve to help investors and stakeholders understand the opportunities that can be unlocked in the future through present investments.
The company is introducing viable alternative power technologies for various product families. Furthermore, the company plans to enhance how it delivers value by investing in a Solutions as a Service business model.
The company continues to work toward production of a fully autonomous, battery-powered agricultural tractor and have launched several models of electric turf and compact construction products. The company also expects to support sustainable outcomes and deliver value through increasing the use of grade management control for earthmoving customers, intelligent boom control for forestry customers, and precision solutions for roadbuilding customers.
Equipment Operations
The company’s equipment operations consist of three of its business segments: PPA, SAT, and CF.
Production and Precision Agriculture
The PPA segment is committed to meeting the fundamental needs of the company’s customers through a combination of equipment and technology designed to enable its customers to overcome some of their biggest challenges: doing more with less, labor shortages, volatile input costs, and executing jobs in tighter timeframes. This segment defines, develops, and delivers global equipment and technology solutions for production-scale growers of crops like large grains (such as corn and soy), small grains (such as wheat, oats, and barley), cotton, and sugarcane. Equipment manufactured and distributed by the segment includes large and certain mid-size tractors, combines, cotton pickers, cotton strippers, sugarcane harvesters, and related harvesting front-end equipment. In addition, the segment includes tillage, seeding, and application equipment, including sprayers and nutrient management and soil preparation machinery.
The company continues to invest in the development and production of advanced technology through integrated agricultural solutions and precision technologies across its portfolio of equipment. For example, the company has advanced its planting and crop care offerings for corn and soy production systems to better meet customer demands throughout the cultivation cycle.
The company has developed a differentiated, production system-level approach that helps it understand how customers operate, focusing on their costs, identifying the opportunities for them to reduce inputs, and improving productivity, crop yields, and sustainability. Advancements, such as precise global navigation satellite systems technology, advanced connectivity and telematics, on-board sensors and computing power, automation software, digital tools, applications, and analytics provide seamless integration of information designed to improve customer decision-making and job execution. The company’s advanced telematics systems remotely connect equipment owners, business managers, and dealers to equipment in the field. This connection provides real-time alerts and information about equipment location, utilization, performance, and maintenance to improve productivity and efficiency, as well as to monitor agronomic job execution.
In fiscal year 2024, the company introduced the new S7 Series combines and updated 9RX tractors, designed to enhance customer value and address key agricultural challenges, such as time constraints caused by variable weather, labor shortages, and rising costs. The S7 Series combines feature advanced automation packages and the 9RX tractors come with new engine options, updated technology packages, and modernized cabins.
Small Agriculture and Turf (SAT)
SAT is committed to meeting the needs of the company’s customers through defining, developing, and delivering global equipment and technology solutions designed to unlock value and sustainability for dairy and livestock producers, high-value crop and small acre crop producers, and turf and utility customers. The segment works to provide product leadership while extending integrated agricultural solutions and precision technologies across its portfolio of equipment to unlock incremental value for customers.
Equipment manufactured and distributed by the segment includes certain mid-size, small and utility tractors, and related loaders and attachments; turf and utility equipment, including riding lawn equipment, commercial mowing equipment, golf course equipment, utility vehicles, implements for mowing, tilling, snow and debris handling, aerating, and other residential, commercial, golf, and sports turf care applications; and hay and forage equipment, including self-propelled forage harvesters and attachments, balers, and mowers. SAT equipment is sold primarily through independent retail dealer networks, although the segment also builds turf products for sale by mass retailers, including The Home Depot and Lowe’s. The company’s turf equipment is sold primarily in North American, Western European, and Australian markets.
In the small agriculture market, the company has introduced autonomous solutions, connectivity capabilities, and a path to electrifying its future by delivering a portfolio that helps current customers meet sustainability goals while finding innovative ways to serve new customers and unlock new markets for mechanization at scale.
Agriculture and Turf Operations
Smart Industrial Operating Model: As part of the company’s Smart Industrial Operating Model, the segments are aligned around production systems, enabling focus on delivering equipment, technology, and solutions across all the jobs customers execute during a season. Sales and marketing support for both the PPA and SAT segments is organized around four geographic regions: U.S., Canada, and Australia; Latin America and South America; Europe, and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); and Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Seasonality: For certain equipment, the company offers early order programs, which can include discounts to retail customers who place orders well in advance of the use season.
In Australia, Canada, and the U.S., there are typically several used equipment trade-in transactions that take place in connection with most new agricultural equipment sales. To provide support to its dealers in these countries for carrying and ultimately selling this used inventory to retail customers, the company provides these dealers with pools of funds awarded as a percentage of the dealer cost for eligible new equipment sales at the time of the new equipment settlement.
Retail demand for turf and utility equipment is normally higher in the second and third fiscal quarters. The company has pursued a strategy of building and shipping such equipment as close to retail demand as possible.
Construction and Forestry (CF)
CF segment is committed to meeting the need for smart and more sustainable solutions to help the company’s customers meet industry challenges, including jobsite safety, a shortage of skilled labor, volatile input costs, reducing rework, maximizing uptime, and minimizing their environmental footprint.
To address these challenges and unlock value for customers, the company delivers a robust portfolio of construction, roadbuilding, and forestry products with precision technology solutions. The company’s smart solutions such as SmartWeigh, grade control offerings, machine and system automation, and Operations Center, are designed to allow customers to complete more functions with fewer inputs, reduce rework and guesswork, and transform data into insights to allow for better decisions. Obstacle detection solutions such as SmartDetect supplement operator visibility on the jobsite through a combination of cameras, radar, and machine learning. Additionally, the company plans to deliver hybrid-electric and battery electric equipment solutions to help customers reduce tailpipe emissions without sacrificing power and performance.
The company’s primary construction products include excavators, wheel loaders, motor graders, dozers, backhoes, articulated dump trucks, skid steers, compact excavators, and compact track loaders, along with a variety of attachments. The company’s Wirtgen roadbuilding products include milling machines, pavers, compactors, rollers, crushers, screens, and asphalt plants. Similar to the construction product lineup, the Wirtgen brand also provides a technology stack aimed at allowing customers to make smarter and more sustainable decisions. Technology offerings include Wirtgen Performance Tracker, Mill Assist, Level Pro, Vögele Roadscan, Smart Compact, WITOS Paving, Spective Connect, AutoTrac, and John Deere Connected Support.
In forestry, the company’s primary products include skidders, wheeled and tracked feller bunchers, forwarders, knuckleboom loaders, wheeled and tracked harvesters, swing machines, and precision forestry technology solutions, such as Intelligent Boom Control, TimberMatic maps, and TimberManager. These solutions allow customers to closely track jobsite progress and provide visibility into fleet location, utilization, performance, and maintenance information.
The company has a number of initiatives in the rent-to-rent, or short-term rental, market for construction, earthmoving, roadbuilding, and material handling equipment. These include specially designed rental programs for its dealers and expanded cooperation with major national equipment rental companies.
The company owns retail forestry sales operations in Australia, Brazil, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In addition, the Wirtgen Group sells its products primarily through company-owned sales and service subsidiaries in many markets worldwide (most significantly in Europe, India, and Australia). In most other geographies, the company sells through an independent dealer channel.
The prevailing levels of residential, commercial, and public construction, investment in infrastructure, and the condition of the forestry products industry influence retail sales of the company’s construction, roadbuilding, and forestry equipment. General economic conditions, interest rates, the availability of credit, and certain commodity prices, such as those applicable to oil and gas, pulp, paper, and saw logs, also influence sales.
In addition to John Deere brand names, the table below provides a list of CF products and their associated brand names:
Competition
The competitive environment for the agriculture and turf operations includes some global competitors, such as AGCO Corporation, CLAAS KGaA mbH, CNH Industrial N.V., Kubota Tractor Corporation, Mahindra & Mahindra Limited, and The Toro Company.
The company’s forestry and roadbuilding businesses operate globally. The construction business operates in competitive markets in North and South America, as well as other global markets. Global competitors of the CF segment include Caterpillar Inc., CNH Industrial N.V., Doosan Infracore Co., Ltd. and its subsidiary Doosan Bobcat Inc., Fayat Group, GOMACO Corporation, Hitachi Construction Machinery, Komatsu Ltd., Kubota Tractor Corporation, Ponsse Plc, SANY Group Co., Ltd., Terex, Tigercat Industries Inc., Volvo Construction Equipment (part of Volvo Group AB), and XCMG.
Sales and Distribution
Through the U.S. and Canada, the company markets products to approximately 2,050 independent dealer locations. Of these, approximately 1,600 sell agricultural equipment, while approximately 450 sell construction, earthmoving, material handling, roadbuilding, compact construction, and/or forestry equipment. In addition, roadbuilding equipment is sold at approximately 100 roadbuilding-only locations that may carry products that compete with the company’s construction, earthmoving, material handling, and/or forestry equipment. Turf equipment is sold at most John Deere agricultural equipment locations, a few construction, earthmoving, material handling, roadbuilding, and/or forestry equipment locations, and about 280 turf-only locations. In addition, certain lawn and garden and compact construction products are sold through The Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Outside the U.S. and Canada, the company’s agriculture and turf equipment is sold to distributors and dealers for resale in over 100 countries. Sales and administrative offices are located in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, South Africa, Spain, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Turf equipment sales outside the U.S. and Canada occur primarily in Western Europe and Australia. Construction, earthmoving, material handling, and forestry equipment is sold to distributors and dealers primarily by sales offices located in Australia, Brazil, Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Some of these dealers are independently owned while the company owns others. Roadbuilding equipment is sold directly to retail customers and independent distributors and dealers for resale. The Wirtgen Group operates company-owned sales and service subsidiaries in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. The equipment operations operate centralized parts distribution warehouses in the U.S., Brazil, and Germany in coordination with regional parts depots and distribution centers in Argentina, Australia, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
The company markets engines, power trains, and electronic components worldwide through select sales branches or directly to regional and global original equipment manufacturers and independently owned engine distributors.
Financial Services (FS)
U.S. and Canada: The financial services segment primarily provides and administers financing for retail purchases from the company’s dealers of new equipment manufactured by its agricultural and turf and construction and forestry operations, as well as used equipment taken in trade for this equipment. The company and John Deere Construction & Forestry Company (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company) are referred to as the sales companies. John Deere Capital Corporation (Capital Corporation), a U.S. financial services subsidiary, generally purchases retail installment sales and loan contracts (retail notes) from the sales companies. In Canada, John Deere Financial Inc., a Canadian financial services subsidiary, purchases and finances retail notes acquired by John Deere Canada ULC, the company’s Canadian sales company. The terms of retail notes and the basis on which the financial services operations acquire retail notes from the sales companies are governed by agreements with the sales companies. The financial services segment also finances and services revolving charge accounts, in most cases acquired from and offered through merchants in the agricultural and turf markets. Additionally, the financial services operations provide wholesale financing to dealers of the company’s agriculture and turf equipment and construction and forestry equipment (wholesale notes), primarily to finance inventories of equipment for those dealers. The various financing options offered by the financial services operations are designed to enhance sales of the company’s products and generate financing income for the financial services operations. In the U.S. and Canada, certain subsidiaries included in the financial services segment offer extended equipment warranties.
Outside the U.S. and Canada: The financial services operations also offer financing, primarily for the company’s products, in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, New Zealand, and in several other countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. In certain markets, financing is offered through cooperation agreements or joint ventures with other financial institutions. For example, in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024, the company entered into a joint venture agreement with a Brazilian bank, Banco Bradesco S.A. (Bradesco), for Bradesco to invest and become 50 percent owner of its subsidiary in Brazil, Banco John Deere S.A.
History
Deere & Company was founded in 1837. The company was incorporated under the laws of Delaware in 1958.
