Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tami Zakaria: Hi good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and fantastic quarter. So, going back to the dealer inventory levels, and you said you don’t expect much restocking this year. Can you comment where dealer inventory currently stands in a number of months for tractors and combines in, let’s say, North America, Europe and South America. I am trying to gauge what the volume benefit to you could be in 2024 if restocking finally happens?

Brent Norwood: Hi Tami. I would say overall inventory remains below historic averages. And there is probably €“ there is a few pockets where it’s built, and I will call those out. But North America, large ag again, we don’t see any big builds this year. If we compare where we are today versus historical averages, if I look at 220-plus horsepower tractors, we are sitting at about 14% inventory to sales ratios. Typically, that’s going to be in the mid-20s to maybe even low-30s at this point in the year. Four-wheel drives and combines are €“ I think are at a similar point there. And so I think there is definitely some restocking that will serve as a tailwind in subsequent years there. C&F is really a similar narrative. We are sitting between 15% and 20% inventory to sales ratios.

And typically, that’s going to run in the mid-30s to maybe even low-40s is depending on what our expectation is of the market. So, there is a little bit of restocking tailwind. I think that’s more of a €˜24 event, assuming that the supply chain continues to get better and demand holds. Where we have seen a few areas of inventory build, as we called out earlier, it’s really on the small compact utility tractors, so the under-40 horsepower, where you have seen our inventory get to about a 50% inventory to sales ratio. The industry is even higher, maybe about 10 points higher. And then the other pockets that have built a little bit have been really in Brazil, CE and Brazil small ag. And Brazil has been a market where it’s kind of €“ it’s really a tale of two markets there.

Inventory, I think is right in line with where we want it to be for large ag. It’s built a little bit on the small ag side. And what you are seeing there is those producers have a little more sensitivity to higher interest rates. And I think as a result, that’s really cooled the market a bit here in the first quarter. We will see how that trends. We are watching it really closely for those 5 Series, 6 Series tractors that we sell in the Brazilian market. But otherwise, I would say inventory there is more normalized. Thanks Tami.

Tami Zakaria: Got it. That’s very helpful. Can I ask a quick follow-on? So and I am sorry if I missed it. Can you quantify by how much your second quarter production rates would be up sequentially and year-over-year?

Brent Norwood: Certainly. So, for North America large ag, our large factories like Waterloo and Harvester Works, we talked about the first quarter having about 25% less production days than what we would have had in the fourth quarter. So, sequentially, it was significantly less production days. Now, as we look forward to the second quarter, second quarter we will have, I would say an average number of production days. So, more similar to what we had in the fourth quarter of 2022. It’s roughly between 60 and 65 production days for that quarter.

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