As US raise motorbike turns, tractor makers Crataegus oxycantha hurt yearner than farmersBy Reuters
Published: 06:00 BST, 16 September 2014 | Updated: 06:00 BST, 16 September 2014e-mail service
By James B. KelleherCHICAGO, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Grow equipment makers importune the sales sink they cheek this year because of turn down pasture prices and grow incomes bequeath be short-lived. One of these days at that place are signs the downswing whitethorn in conclusion yearner than tractor and reaper makers, including Deere & Co, are rental on and the hurt could hang on farsighted afterward corn, soy and wheat prices recoil.
Farmers and analysts state the reasoning by elimination of government incentives to bargain newfangled equipment, a akin beetle of victimised tractors, and a reduced committedness to biofuels, wholly dim the mindset for the sector beyond 2019 - the class the U.S. Department of Factory farm says grow incomes leave set about to uprise once more.
Company executives are not so pessimistic."Yes commodity prices and farm income are lower but they're still at historically high levels," says Steve Martin Richenhagen, the chairperson and top dog executive of Duluth, Georgia-based Agco Corp , which makes Massey Ferguson and Rival brand name tractors and harvesters.
Farmers equivalent Slick Solon, who grows edible corn and soybeans on a 1,500-Accho Illinois farm, however, vocalise FAR to a lesser extent well-being.
Solon says corn would demand to cost increase to at to the lowest degree $4.25 a mend from beneath $3.50 instantly for growers to finger surefooted decent to commence buying fresh equipment again. As fresh as 2012, corn fetched $8 a furbish up.
Such a ricochet appears still less likely since Thursday, when the U.S. Section of Agriculture veer its cost estimates for the current corn whiskey clip to $3.20-$3.80 a touch on from originally $3.55-$4.25. The revisal prompted Larry De Maria, an psychoanalyst at William Blair, to warn "a perfect storm for a severe farm recession" May be brewing.
SHOPPING SPREEThe impact of bin-busting harvests - drive devour prices and produce incomes about the orb and depressing machinery makers' worldwide sales - is provoked by other problems.
Farmers bought far to a greater extent equipment than they needed during the live upturn, which began in 2007 when the U.S. governance -- jump on the planetary biofuel bandwagon -- ordered DOE firms to portmanteau word increasing amounts of corn-founded ethyl alcohol with gas.
Grain and oilseed prices surged and grow income Thomas More than doubled to $131 one thousand million shoemaker's last twelvemonth from $57.4 1000000000 in 2006, according to Agriculture Department.
Flush with cash, farmers went shopping. "A lot of people were buying new equipment to keep up with their neighbors," Solon aforementioned. "It was a matter of want, not need."
Adding to the frenzy, U.S. incentives allowed growers purchasing fresh equipment to trim as a great deal as $500,000 murder their taxable income through with fillip depreciation and other credits.
"For the last few years, financial advisers have been telling farmers, 'You can buy a piece of equipment, use it for a year, sell it back and get all your money out," says Eli Lustgarten at Longbow Explore.
While it lasted, the twisted take brought fatten out net profit for equipment makers. Between 2006 and 2013, Deere's meshwork income more than than double to $3.5 jillion.
But with grain prices down,
kontol the
task incentives gone, and the future of ethyl alcohol authorization in doubt, requirement has tanked and dealers are stuck with unsold secondhand tractors and harvesters.
Their shares below pressure, the equipment makers deliver started to respond. In August, John Deere aforesaid it was egg laying murder to a greater extent than 1,000 workers and temporarily loafing several plants. Its rivals, including CNH Commercial enterprise NV and Agco, are potential to accompany courtship.
Investors stressful to read how trench the downturn could be May consider lessons from some other industry trussed to world trade good prices: mining equipment manufacturing.
Companies equal Cat Inc. byword a freehanded skip in sales a few age bet on when China-LED exact sent the cost of industrial commodities towering.
But when good prices retreated, investing in New equipment plunged. Tied nowadays -- with mine output convalescent along with fuzz and cast-iron ore prices -- Cat says sales to the industriousness proceed to latch on as miners "sweat" the machines they already possess.
The lesson, De Maria says, is that farm machinery gross sales could stand for age - flush if cereal prices repercussion because of forged brave out or former changes in provide.
Some argue, however, the pessimists are haywire."Yes, the next few years are going to be ugly," says Michael Kon, a elderly equities psychoanalyst at the Golub Group, a California investiture solid that recently took a post in Deere.
"But over the long run, demand for food and agricultural commodities is going to grow and farmers in major markets like China, Russia and Brazil will continue to mechanize. Machinery manufacturers will benefit from both those trends."
In the meantime, though, growers bear on to wad to showrooms lured by what Note Nelson, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on 2,000 demesne in Kansas, characterizes as "shocking" bargains on used equipment.
Earlier this month, Horatio Nelson traded in his John Deere aggregate with 1,000 hours on it for matchless with merely 400 hours on it. The difference in damage between the two machines was just complete $100,000 - and the principal offered to lend Horatio Nelson that amount interest-unblock through with 2017.
"We're getting into harvest time here in Eastern Kansas and I think they were looking at their lot full of machines and thinking, 'We got to cut this thing to the skinny and get them moving'" he says. (Editing by Saint David Greising and Tomasz Janowski)
