The fiscal quarter just ended was another record one for Deere and Company. The Quad-Cities-based maker of farm and other implements saw third quarter profits rise thirteen-percent, though spokesman Ken Golden says it wasn’t quite as good as expected.
Golden says worldwide, net income was 436-Million, the most the company’s ever made in that quarter. Overall, he says it looks like Deere will earn one-point-six-Billion dollars this year. Still Golden says Deere’s focused on being a great business, “and a great business returns value to its shareholders.”
Golden says it’s the farm equipment that’s showing anemic sales in Deere’s third financial quarter. With a lot of extreme weather in Europe as well as U.S. markets, farmers have slowed their buying of implements, and sales of farm equipment are now expected to be down around four-percent this year, a drop originally expected to be only two-percent.
Golden says Deere’s worked to create a company that makes more than farm equipment, and he says this year it’s been “lifted up” by revenues from construction equipment, and home and commercial lawn and garden products in the “Landscapes” division. In addition Golden says the John Deere Credit division is holding its own. Higher fuel costs are blamed for eating into farm budgets, one reason for the weak sales of Deere ag equipment.