AGCO is pursuing the biggest ag tech deal ever

Well, we've had two or three extremely strong years over the last three years. It's cooling a little bit in 2024, you know, and ag is not so much tied to general GDP or interest rates. It's more tied to how much grain is in the world and grain prices. And that's cooled off a little bit. Higher interest rates is a bit of a headwind because most of these farmers finance their equipment and that costs a little bit more than when they want to finance. So it's a little bit of a headwind, but not the biggest issue. All right. Eric, I know you guys are involved right now in acquiring an 85 percent interest in Trimble. Tell us what Trimble is. Tell us what this deal is. Why are you doing it? Yeah. Well, you know, if you start with our vision of our company, it's to become the trusted partner for industry leading smart farming solutions. And essentially what that means is machines that have sensors on them that can understand their environment, see changes in the soil or the crop, and then make onboard calculations, often using AI engines to be able to optimize their own performance. We invest in six tech companies over the last several years, increased our engineering budget for by 60 percent since I've been leading the company. And so we've been gaining a lot of momentum. But then Rob Painter, the CEO of Trimble and I had this notion of we could be better together. He's got the very best ag tech team that we would be able to add to our team. And so the combination of that group coming together with our Agco group is going to rapidly accelerate our ability to deliver solutions for farmers. Machines can do more for themselves, increase yields and reduce costs. So OK, Eric, are you still an ag company? Are you a tech company? I know you're going to say you're an ag tech company, but seriously, where should the valuation be? Absolutely. For this type of our work, we're absolutely a tech company. There's no question about that. That's where all of our investment is, that's where our new hiring is, that's where our focus is. Probably two thirds of our engineering budget is now on either smart machines or clean energy solutions.