Deere & Co (NYSE:DE) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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John Joyner : Feels like eating dessert first with your results here. So — and this should be quick. I mean just following up on Mig and Larry’s question. When you think about the per-acre model, I mean, does this ultimately become a kind of take it or leave it decision for producers such that if you want to get Autonomy, if you wanted to have See & Spray, then you have to have the subscription, otherwise, you don’t get it?

Josh Jepsen : Yes. I think the — John, thanks for your question. I think the opportunities do retrofit gives you some optionality to whether or not you want to leverage it. I think what we’re seeing from customers having it and having the opportunity or the optionality to engage is really important. And we’ve seen this, whether it’s with See & Spray or Autonomy, there are different trade-offs that customers will make, whether it’s timing, whether it’s field conditions, whether it’s labor availability, something creating optionality is really, really critical and really providing an opportunity for more scale skilled use of these technologies across greater acreage and farm sizes.

John May : Josh, I think it’s also important to talk about what our goal here is with each one of these technologies. Our goal is to develop technologies that are targeted at the greatest problems that our customers have with the and/or the outcome being by using John Deere technology, you as the customer will be more profitable because it will minimize your inputs you’re going to be more productive because of the case of Autonomy, when we might take somebody out of the cab or other technologies. And you’re going to do the jobs you do in a more environmentally sustainable way. That’s really good for our business. It’s good for our business long term regardless of where we are in any given cycle. Customers are going to buy these technologies to improve their profitability.

Operator: The next question comes from David Raso of Evercore ISI.

David Raso : I was curious about the comment you made about the inability to raise your dealer inventory through ’23. Obviously, that’s very encouraging for your build schedule for ’24. Can you give us a sense of what percent below normal? Do you see your dealer inventory exiting ’23?

Brent Norwood : Yes. Thanks for the question, David. With respect to dealer inventory — and I’ll talk kind of both new and used here. I know your question is more around new. For high horsepower equipment, on four-wheel drives, we’re at 10% inventory to sales. High-horsepower two-wheel-drive tractors are 12%. Historically, that would be 25% to 30% IS ratios there. Combines are especially low, although that’s a bit seasonal. Those are always — that always in the year pretty low post harvest. But that gives you an idea of sort of the magnitude of the increase we need to see in the channel going forward into 2024.

Brent Norwood: And with that, we’ll wrap up the call. We appreciate everyone’s time and hope you all have a great Thanksgiving.

Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect at this time. Thank you, and have a good day.

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