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Earnings Calls: 
Deere & Company Second Quarter Earnings Call
Author: Rozalina Destanova
123jump.com
Last Update: 3:18 AM EDT May 16 2008


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Revenue increased 18% to $8.1 billion from $6.88 billion. Equipment sales were below the Deere''s forecast for the April quarter, coming in at 19% growth vs. an expected 23%. Operating profit from Deere''s construction and forestry equipment unit slipped 14% to $166 million as sales declined 7% to $1.35 billion. Deere reaffirmed projections calling for income of $2.2 billion for the full fiscal year on equipment sales growth of 20%.


Investors Question and Answers

 
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Andrew Obin (Merrill Lynch): Looking at the tonnage number for construction and forestry, it seems that you still were able to get positive pricing in the quarter and in the segment. Is that a fair estimate?

Marie Z. Ziegler: Yes, price realization was positive in the quarter for that division.

Jamie Cook (Credit Suisse): Could you talk about your margins on the overseas front?

Marie Z. Ziegler: Overseas operations are performing well and the Montenegro is “fully ramped up.” They are operating where we had anticipated they would be. When you look at the margins, though, overseas, you do have to bear in mind that overseas is where a lot of our growth opportunities are occurring in the near term and so they are somewhat disproportionally hit by higher SA&G as we are working to develop future opportunities in these markets.

Jamie Cook (Credit Suisse): You said that the ag incremental margins are now expected to be about 20%. Last quarter you were saying 20% to 25%. Is that a number that you would be happy with on a longer term basis?

Marie Z. Ziegler: One of the things that have happened is we had a strong back order position which is a good thing. It gives us comfort and confidence in our production schedules but that is also price protected. We have instituted some interim price increases in the ag division which candidly because of the back order position will not have much impact on fiscal 2008 which will be more evident in fiscal 2009 and it is our intention to longer term improve those increment margins.

Terry Darling (Goldman Sachs): In the second half of the year price raw material balance will go negative for you and there is some sort of a reversion. What order of magnitude that might be?

Marie Z. Ziegler: What we have announced so far for large tractors for example would be 3% in the United States. We have not made any comments yet on several other product lines because basically on the combines we are fully ordered out because of the earlier program. That is all that we have announced at this point but we would have the ability to watch what is happening in the markets. The other point that we want to talk about is the technology that we are putting into our products that adds value and to our customers make some more productivity.

Terry Darling (Goldman Sachs): Is this 2% price net of raw materials or is that just on a year over year basis net of discounts?

Marie Z. Ziegler: It is price net of discounts. We always treat those things separately.

Terry Darling (Goldman Sachs): If you are pushing price another 3% which on a half year basis would be $300 million or $400 million, as you move into 2009, you go from a negative trade off to a neutral trade off, is that correct?

Marie Z. Ziegler: That is a degree of speculation we should not enter into. I would go back and point out that over time our objective is the 30% incremental margin and we are working to deliver that over a long period of time.

Bill Ratzburg: 2% is all the divisions’ blended average so we are going to expect to get better than that on the ag side of the business.

Terry Darling (Goldman Sachs): What your guidance for the second half of fiscal 2008 assumes for C&F decremental margins?

Marie Z. Ziegler: I would not be able to do that, but I can tell you that we are saying that there are absolute margins, should be in the range, or at least our current forecast assumes that absolute margin will be in the range of about 10%.

Andrew Casey (Wachovia Securities): Can you talk about any resistance that you may be seeing in North American construction equipment?

Marie Z. Ziegler: Our pricing realization has been positive. We talked about it last quarter and this quarter. We have helped ourselves by managing our inventories tightly and there is not a lot of excess equipment floating around in the system and we have even seen with use equipment, margins stabilizing over the last several months, which is encouraging to us as well.

Andrew Casey (Wachovia Securities): You might have better pricing ability in some of the stronger markets like ag. Are the competitors that you see in construction equipment all doing the same thing as you are?

Marie Z. Ziegler: I can not speak for our competitors. I can tell you that what is in our financial forecast, assumes that the construction equipment division is basically in a flattish environment overall for the full year. That is what is in the current forecast, and beyond that, I can not speculate.

Andrew Casey (Wachovia Securities): The ag receivables for the year in terms of year-over-year increases were lower than what you saw at the end of the quarter. Is that a function of the comps for the fourth quarter last year or does it imply that you are producing closer to whatever the end market demand is for the second half?
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