Deere & Company
Deere & Company (DE)
Overview
Deere & Company, doing business worldwide as John Deere, is the world's largest manufacturer of agricultural machinery and a major player in construction, forestry, and turf-care equipment. Founded in 1837 in Grand Detour, Illinois, and headquartered today in Moline, Illinois, the company sits in the Industrials sector under the Farm & Heavy Construction Machinery industry. Deere employs roughly 73,000 people globally and generated about $45.7 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2025 (down from a peak of $61.3 billion in fiscal 2023 as the agricultural equipment cycle cooled), with a market capitalization around $187 billion. Its iconic leaping-deer logo and green-and-yellow color scheme are among the most recognized brand marks in American industry.
What They Do & How They Make Money
Deere designs, manufactures, and sells heavy equipment — tractors, combines, planters, excavators, skid steers, and lawn and turf equipment — to farmers, construction contractors, and landscapers around the world, primarily through a network of independent dealers rather than direct retail. Roughly half of revenue still comes from selling durable, high-ticket machinery outright, but an increasingly important share comes from "precision agriculture" technology: GPS-guided autosteer systems, the John Deere Operations Center software platform, sensor- and camera-based automation (including See & Spray and autonomous tractors), and data subscriptions that farmers pay for on top of the hardware. This shift mirrors a broader industry move from one-time equipment sales toward recurring, higher-margin technology and services revenue. Deere further monetizes its installed base through its Financial Services arm, which extends retail financing, leases, and wholesale dealer financing, generating interest income and helping dealers move inventory while locking customers into the Deere ecosystem for parts, service, and future upgrades. Aftermarket parts and service, which carry higher margins than new equipment and are more resistant to cyclical swings, are also a meaningful and growing profit contributor.
Business Segments
Deere reports through four operating segments plus an "Other" category:
- Production & Precision Agriculture — the largest segment, covering large equipment for commercial-scale growers: four-wheel-drive and row-crop tractors, combines, cotton pickers, sugarcane harvesters, sprayers, and precision-ag technology and guidance systems. In fiscal 2023 this segment generated about $26.8 billion (roughly 44% of total revenue).
- Small Agriculture & Turf — compact and utility tractors, hay and forage equipment, and residential/commercial turf-care products (mowers, golf-course equipment) for smaller farms, homeowners, and grounds-care professionals; about $14.0 billion (~23%) in fiscal 2023.
- Construction & Forestry — backhoe loaders, excavators, motor graders, dump trucks, crushers, pavers, compactors, and forestry equipment (including the Wirtgen Group road-building brands acquired in 2017); about $14.8 billion (~24%) in fiscal 2023.
- Financial Services — retail and wholesale financing, leasing, and extended warranties supporting equipment sales across all segments; about $4.7 billion (~8%) in fiscal 2023.
Revenue and segment mix have since declined from the 2023 peak amid an agricultural equipment downturn, with recent quarters showing softness in Production & Precision Ag partially offset by steadier Construction & Forestry and Small Ag & Turf results.
Competitors
- Agriculture equipment: CNH Industrial (Case IH, New Holland), AGCO Corporation (Fendt, Massey Ferguson, Valtra), Kubota, CLAAS, and Mahindra & Mahindra.
- Construction equipment: Caterpillar, CNH Industrial's Case Construction, Komatsu, Volvo Construction Equipment, and Hyundai/Doosan.
- Broader industrial peers commonly tracked alongside Deere include AGCO, Caterpillar, CNH Industrial, Titan International, Ingersoll Rand, and Xylem, reflecting its position among large-cap capital-goods manufacturers.
Competitive Position
Deere's core moat is scale combined with an unusually dense, loyal dealer network — thousands of independent dealerships worldwide that provide sales, financing, parts, and service, creating high switching costs for farmers who have built their operations around Deere equipment and its proprietary technology stack. The company's early and aggressive investment in precision agriculture (autosteer, the Operations Center software platform, machine-learning-driven automation via its Blue River Technology acquisition, and autonomous tractors) has extended its lead beyond hardware into data and software, a business that is stickier and higher-margin than iron alone, and increasingly hard for competitors to replicate given Deere's scale of field data. Its Financial Services arm reinforces this by financing equipment purchases and keeping customers inside the ecosystem. Historically, Deere has held roughly a third or more of the U.S. farm equipment market, a position built since the mid-20th century.
Key risks include the deeply cyclical nature of agricultural equipment demand, which tracks commodity crop prices, farm income, and interest rates — the company is currently navigating a multi-year down-cycle after the 2022–2023 boom. Trade policy and tariffs affecting steel, components, and export markets are a persistent concern, as is the "right to repair" movement, which has pushed regulators and farmers to challenge Deere's control over software-locked equipment diagnostics and repairs — a fight that touches directly on the profitable parts-and-service revenue stream that helps offset cyclical hardware sales. Competition from CNH Industrial, AGCO, and Kubota (particularly strong in smaller/compact equipment and emerging markets) remains intense, and construction equipment exposes Deere to a different but overlapping cyclical risk tied to construction and infrastructure spending. Longer term, Deere's bet on autonomy and precision agriculture is central to its strategy of decoupling growth from unit sales alone, but it requires continued heavy R&D investment and dealer/customer adoption to pay off.