Hey, and welcome to the AGCO and Trimble Joint Venture Announcement Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. In consideration of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Greg Peterson, AGCO Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Sarah, and good morning. We are very excited that you're able to join us today as we discuss AGCO's acquisition of Trimble's Ag business through a joint venture focused on next-gen precision Ag technology. We'll refer to a slide presentation this morning that's posted on our website at www.agcocorp.com. Slide two has our safe harbor information, and we will make forward-looking statements on our call this morning, including statements about the transaction and our strategic plans, as well as synergies, growth in revenue and EBITDA, accretion of the transaction to growth, margin and earnings, and our ability to close the transaction and the timing of the closing. All of these items are subject to risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those suggested by the statements.
These risks include, but are not limited to, adverse developments in the agricultural industry, including those resulting from COVID-19, supply chain disruption, inflation, weather, commodity prices, changes in product demand, interruption in supply of parts and products, difficulties in integrating the Trimble Ag business in a manner that produces the expected financial results, reactions by customers and competitors to the transaction, including the rate at which Trimble Ag's largest OEM customer reduces purchases of Trimble Ag equipment and the rate of replacement by the joint venture of those sales, and adverse changes in the financial and foreign exchange market, including increases in interest rates. Actual results could differ materially from those suggested in these statements.
Further information concerning these and other risks is included in AGCO's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and subsequent Form 10-Q filings. AGCO disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. A replay of this call will be available later today on our corporate website. With that, on the call with me this morning are Eric Hansotia, AGCO's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Damon Audia, AGCO's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Rob Painter, Trimble's President and Chief Executive Officer. With that, Eric, please go ahead.
Thanks, Greg, and good morning. We appreciate everyone's interest in AGCO and for making time to join us for this very exciting call. Today, we are announcing the largest acquisition in the company's history and one of the most transformational events in our technology evolution. We are acquiring an 85% interest in Trimble's portfolio of agricultural assets and technologies and creating a new joint venture. This is a milestone in AGCO's Farmer First technology strategy that will create an industry leader in mixed fleet precision ag solutions. The newly created joint venture will be the exclusive provider of Trimble's industry-leading technology that will support the future development and distribution of next-generation ag products and will become the largest ag tech deal ever.
AGCO's multi-pronged channel strategy will now include Trimble Ag, AGCO OEM and aftermarket, other OEMs, and Precision Planting dealers, which is expected to drive significant growth and meaningfully expand the global market opportunity. All of these farmer touchpoints will result in our being even more farmer-focused and are expected to deliver financial performance that is accretive to AGCO's growth, margin profile, and EPS in the first full year. The transaction enhances and accelerates AGCO's growth ambitions around autonomy, precision spraying, connected farming, data management, and sustainability. The transformational nature of this deal will result in AGCO offering a comprehensive suite of disruptive technologies across the crop cycle to address the farmers' needs of tomorrow. So let's start with a look at Trimble's Ag portfolio. Trimble has a long history of being the ag market innovator. Since 1978, it has built a global, independent precision ag portfolio.
Trimble is best known for its mixed fleet retrofit brand in the market. When combining this industry leader with Precision Planting, another industry leader, it positions AGCO to turbocharge the growth of this critical business. Trimble and its global network of dealers helps design, engineer, and distribute market-leading precision agriculture, hardware, software, and cloud-based platforms that are designed to meet the needs of farmers around the world. Their precision solutions allow farmers to use their resources more efficiently while producing a safe, reliable food supply in a profitable and environmentally friendly manner.... The ag business touches all brands, equipment types, and farms, and spans the entire crop cycle, from land prep to planting and seeding to harvest. It offers hardware, software, and cloud-based applications that maximize productivity and profitability while also optimizing accuracy and efficiency. These ag products are sold in over 70 countries at 2,400 independent distribution points.
This results in over 125 million farmed acres leveraging Trimble Ag's solutions. Trimble Ag's business consists of approximately 900 employees in areas like engineering and software development, operations and production management, customer support, and admin functions. The graphic on the right side of the screen shows the expected 2023 financial performance for Trimble Ag's business. Revenue is anticipated to be approximately $535 million, and EBITDA is expected to be approximately $170 million, resulting in margins of 32%. Please note, these figures are a carve-out from Trimble's overall business and are embedded in their resources and utility segment within its operations. Turning to slide six, you can see how Trimble Ag's solutions cover the entire crop production cycle.
These products are based on a foundation of sustainability and autonomy, and include areas like in-cab displays that allow farmers to accurately cover their fields without overlaps while monitoring and mapping real-time activities, steering motors for added precision in the field, application control to apply inputs where needed, and software that provides a farm management tool to leverage all of the precision data coming off of machines, up to and including vehicle location and statistics. From land preparation through harvest, Trimble's products allow the farmer to do more with less, helping to optimize their bottom line while tending to the environment. Taking a look at each process in the diagram on the slide, you'll see words like efficiency, accuracy, productivity, and automation, describing each step of the farming process and how Trimble helps with every process.
Slide seven is something we've shared with you in the past, and it shows how each of our recent acquisitions has helped build our tech set. The joint venture we're announcing today is another cornerstone in AGCO's organic and inorganic ag tech growth. AGCO began its precision journey by updating the foundational architecture of our products to accommodate the increasingly advanced features of our equipment. We've greatly increased our internal development efforts, increasing our engineering spend over 60% since the year 2020. Over time, we've made acquisitions to accelerate our path to artificial intelligence and autonomy. We've added JCA to help with guidance and autonomy, which will be foundational to the future development of autonomy in the JV. In addition, we added Headsight to optimize and automate combine header height using sensors and Precision Planting to further expertise in automation and artificial intelligence.
By layering Trimble Ag on top of our already strong portfolio, we will fast-track AGCO's technology transformation. The joint venture will allow AGCO to be a key player in guidance by offering advanced hardware and correction services. We will be able to automate even more activities for farmers through Trimble's automated steering system and enable farmers to connect with all of their data via Trimble's Farmer Core software. Finally, this partnership will strengthen AGCO's commitment to mixed fleet operators by having more supportive machines and compatibility than any other ag OEM. Above all, we will be providing the growing number of mixed fleet farmers a choice that will provide the best option to work across their fleet. Turning to slide eight, the main theme of this business venture from the beginning has been better together.
Trimble Ag and AGCO combination provides a full suite of advanced technologies for farmers everywhere. The infographic shown here overlays some of the great product offerings of both companies at each phase of farming, and as you can see, there are a lot of recognized names on that list. Radicle Agronomics , our new automated soil sampling system, and Farmer Core to help with planning and preparation, Smart Firmer for best-in-class planting, Trimble RTX, and the list goes on and on. With our combined solutions, we further expand our mixed fleet offerings throughout the crop cycle and are able to put technology on more than 10,000 different models in almost any OEM. That's unprecedented in this market. Slide nine shows our unique and expansive go-to-market approach. AGCO's global distribution channel currently include traditional OEM dealers as well as Precision Planting dealers.
Our OEM dealers include large dealerships with multiple locations that focus on some factory-installed technology. On the OEM side, we also have our aftermarket channel that provides dealer-installed technology for farmers with mixed and aging fleets. Unique to AGCO, we have a Precision Planting retrofit channel. The retrofit channel is made up of smaller dealers that serve as trusted advisors for the farmer and include agronomists, seed salespeople, and consultants. Combined, our different channels will allow us to truly complement the strong channels Trimble Ag already sells through.... Trimble's channels include its OEM business, which consists of partnerships with large multi-location equipment manufacturers, including Bilberry and Müller. There are also Vantage dealers that act as value-added resellers and distributors that provide the full Trimble Ag portfolio to other retail outlets and to farmers.
Lastly, there are the Trimble retail outlets that are small to mid-sized dealers that purchase directly from antage dealers. We believe there is significant growth potential with these channels. AGCO's multi-channel approach will drive increased adoption of Trimble's portfolio of technology across the machinery park, allowing farmers more locations to access next generation technology. This multi-channel access is a key lever to achieving two times growth in EBITDA over the next five years. With that, I'll now turn it over to Damon to walk through some of the financial aspects of this transaction.
Thanks, Eric. Slide 10 summarizes the key highlights for the transaction. AGCO will pay Trimble $2 billion and contribute the JCA Industries' autonomy assets in exchange for an 85% ownership stake in the joint venture. Trimble will contribute its portfolio of Ag assets and technologies and provide exclusivity in global Ag markets to the joint venture. Trimble will retain 15% ownership. This puts an enterprise value of approximately $2.35 billion on Trimble's Ag business and has an implied transaction multiple of 13.8x for 2023 expected EBITDA for Trimble's Ag business of approximately $170 million. In addition to the agreements that cover the transition services, supply, technology transfer and licenses, and positioning services, there is also an agreement on year five exit mechanism.
From a financial effect and synergy standpoint, the JV will be consolidated into AGCO's financial statements upon closing. We expect significant commercial synergies for the JV as a result of the direct access to AGCO's distribution channels that Eric highlighted. In addition, there are incremental annual run rate synergies of approximately $25 million that we expect by year three following close. The acquisition is expected to be accreted to growth, operating margin, and earnings within the first full year following close, and is anticipated to deliver a return on invested capital of approximately 10% by year three following close. We are currently planning to fund the transaction with surplus liquidity and strong free cash flow generation this year, as well as newly issued debt. We remain committed to maintaining our solid investment grade ratings, even with this joint venture.
At this time, we would likely expect the deal to close in the first half of 2024, subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. With the formation of this joint venture, we are significantly increasing our focus on the technology segment of our market. Given this increased focus on this high margin, fast-growing segment of the market, we will also revisit our current portfolio. In that regard, we are placing our grain and protein business under strategic review as part of our broader portfolio transformation to ensure our businesses are able to service the farmers the best way, and that we continue to ensure we are delivering the best long-term value to our shareholders. Slide 11 depicts an overview of the joint venture structure.
As previously stated, Trimble is contributing its Ag portfolio, which includes items such as displays, steering motors, application controls, and certain software, Müller Elektronik and Bilberry, which is a precision spraying business, and the Farmer Core Data platform, in exchange for its 15% ownership interest. AGCO is contributing its JCA assets and paying Trimble $2 billion in exchange for 85% ownership interest in the JV. As I mentioned earlier, the long-term agreements include a supply agreement that governs the hardware and technology that Trimble will supply to the joint venture for sale to all joint venture and AGCO channels. The initial term of the supply agreement is seven years, and AGCO will have the right to extend this agreement if we desire.
To the extent we elect to end the supply agreement, we will continue to retain the right to the ag-related technologies and trademarks through the Technology Transfer and License Agreement, which will be a long-term agreement that governs the licensing of the Trimble trademarks and technology for use by the JV after termination of the supply agreement. Given the recurring revenue associated with positioning signals, the positioning service agreement governs the sharing of annual recurring revenue between Trimble and the JV around the use of positioning services. And lastly, the joint venture exit mechanism has been pre-established put call structure in place that will be actionable no earlier than year five of the JV, with standard renewal periods if neither side elects to exercise its put call right. Moving to slide 12. The business combination will create meaningful commercial growth opportunities for AGCO through access to expanded geographies and channels.
AGCO has been targeting $800 million-$850 million in precision ag revenues through our Fuse and Precision Planting channels in 2023, growing to 1 billion by 2025. If we overlaid Trimble Ag's 2023 expected revenues of approximately $535 million, the effective pro forma sales would be over $1.3 billion....With the combination of AGCO's precision ag revenues and Trimble Ag JV revenues, we now expect to deliver over $2 billion in combined precision ag revenues by 2028. On slide 13, you will see the EBITDA of the JV. 2023 projected EBITDA of Trimble's standalone ag business is around $170 million. We expect this to double by 2028, driven by four value streams.
First, Precision Ag market growth, as farmers continue to look for increased technology, helping reduce their input costs with greater precision or increasing their yields on their farms. We see the combination of Trimble Ag's technology not only complementing our Precision Ag technologies, but we see the combination helping accelerate future product innovation to help solve farmers' biggest challenges. Second, we also see significant growth potential by leveraging AGCO's OEM and aftermarket channel, as we see the Trimble Ag technology becoming the foundation of our new equipment. In addition, we expect to see further penetration of the Trimble Ag portfolio through the growth in AGCO's unique and highly respected Precision Planting channel.
Finally, in addition to these strong market opportunities, we also see some incremental cost synergies as we are able to streamline some duplicative costs and refocus some key engineering talent into other areas, further accelerating growth and new product development. I will now turn the call back to Eric to touch on how this transaction aids in AGCO's sustainability initiatives and to close us out.
Thanks, Damon. Turning to slide 14. AGCO's purpose is to deliver farmer-focused solutions to sustainably feed our world. Today's announcement strengthens our farmer focus, while at the same time accelerating our ability to deliver sustainability solutions. Our JV's precision ag technologies are built on a foundation of sustainability, and we are committed to integrating sustainable best practices into the design, manufacturing, and distribution of our agricultural solutions. The JV will facilitate the path to global food security. It will support farmers with technology solutions, helping them achieve higher yields while using inputs more efficiently. The world's population is growing from 8 billion today to 10 billion by 2050, demanding farmers to do more with less. Rising middle classes will consume more meat, and there will be higher demands for biofuels. Reduction in CO2 is a critical step in slowing climate change.
The technology offered through the JV will help farmers transition to more sustainable farming practices. Yields must increase, all while we reduce carbon from the ag sector from 15 gigatons down to 4 gigatons. Our mission is centered around getting the most out of the limited land available for agriculture. The ag industry uses two-thirds of the world's fresh water, and Trimble's water management solution will help the ag industry consume less. Fertilizers and chemicals are facing increased regulation, and harnessing the joint venture's expertise in smart nozzles, along with AGCO's vision spraying technology, will help farmers meet the challenge. Ultimately, our smart agricultural solutions help farmers across the value chain and sustainably feed our world. I'll conclude my remarks with slide 15. This landmark transaction accelerates AGCO's strategic transformation and creates a unique platform in the global ag market.
It establishes AGCO as an industry leader in mixed fleet precision ag. For our farmer customers, AGCO's technology stack and product offerings will reach new highs and will support the delivery of disruptive technologies that cover every aspect of the crop cycle. The exclusive access to Trimble Ag products, combined with AGCO's existing precision ag offerings, makes for a winning combination that creates significant commercial opportunity by unlocking the power of AGCO's multi-channel strategy. For our investors, the transaction improves our profitability, helps dampen the cyclicality of our business, and deepens our differentiation in the high margin, high growth precision ag segment. The JV is also well aligned with and enhances AGCO's sustainability objectives and ambitions.
Finally, this high margin, high growth, and high free cash flow generative business will put AGCO on a path to achieve over $2 billion in Precision Ag net sales by the year 2028. With that, I will turn it back to Greg for Q&A.
Thanks, Eric. As we start Q&A, let's just remember to limit ourselves to, one question and one follow-up. Sarah, please go ahead and get us started.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press two. Star then two, excuse me. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our first question comes from Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking the question, and congratulations on the announcement. Was hoping to get a little bit of additional color on this bridge that you provided on slide 13 and just parsing out that portion of growth in AGCO's OEM and aftermarket channel, help us understand how much internalization is there of the Trimble technology in the AGCO OEM portfolio today, and how quickly can you ramp that to the full OE channel?
Yeah, I can start with that in terms of the strategy elements and and see if we cover everything that you're interested in there. So today, AGCO has designed its own navigation control software and then leverages two different companies' receivers, one from Trimble and one from another supplier. We actually have less than half of our product going out with Trimble receivers today, interfacing with our navigation controller. So very quickly, we can transition a lot of our tractors, combined sprayers to utilize Trimble's receiver technology. That can happen very, very quickly. To take another step, where we are able to embed the full Trimble platform into our machines, that'll take a little bit longer to replace the software we've developed with a full end-to-end solution from Trimble.
But that will then create the in-cab user experience, off-board experience, and GNSS capability that will be head to tail Trimble. So short term can go very quickly, and more deeply embedded will take a little bit more time.
No, that's really helpful. Thank you, Eric. And then as it relates to the accretive nature of the acquisition, I mean, operating margins, well, north of 30%, just how we should think about that accretion in the context of your long-term through cycle margin target of 12%. Thank you.
Yeah, I think, Kristen, for us, you know, given the announcement today, as you alluded to, this is very accretive to our underlying business that we have outstanding or we currently have. We'll go back and reassess as we close this transaction sometime, hopefully, in the first part of 2024. That'll give us a chance to go back and revisit that 12% mid-cycle margin. I think the key takeaway for this transaction is really twofold. One, it is very accretive, as you're seeing with the EBITDA margins that this business is currently offering. And as Eric alluded to in his opening remarks here, we do think that this will dampen the cyclicality of our business. So not only improving us here above mid-cycle, but also helping create a better floor on the down cycle.
But we'll revisit that 12% when we close this transaction here in 2024.
Our next question comes from Larry De Maria with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Good morning. Congratulations. Quick questions here. So the 2028 $2 billion target, if we combine the, the Trimble portion, you know, I think $340 million, and we add your Precision Planting and Fuse, does that not imply, you know, $600 million-$700 million in pure precision EBITDA in 2028? Is that fair, or is that low, high? And obviously, that would be highly, you know, additive to the valuation of AGCO.
Yeah, I think, Larry, you're hitting on one of the key long-term strategic rationales of this combination. And the quick answer is you're directionally correct, but maybe I'll unpack that for, you know, for the broader audience here. So if we think about the Trimble Ag JV here and the $170 million, we expect that EBITDA to double, and you're seeing at that revenue, or sorry, the EBITDA margin in the low 30s%. So we're very excited about that becoming part of our portfolio. If you look at the precision ag side of the business, and we haven't given a lot of specifics related to the profitability, but we see that business growing to $1 billion by 2025, and we would expect continued growth in that business going into 2028 and beyond.
From a margin standpoint, what we have said is it's about double from an operating margin standpoint of the overall business. So you're sort of getting a number into the low 20s, and that is a fairly asset light business. So you can assume the EBITDA margin on the precision ag business is sort of in that mid-20s as well. And so I think when you look at the growth of precision ag, mid-20s margins of what we're offering, you couple that with the growth of the Trimble Ag business and those 32% margins, directionally, you're getting into that, the numbers that you quoted. So I think you're directionally close, and I think that's what makes us excited as this starts to become more of a sum of the parts. Because now you're looking at a $2 billion high tech business with high double-digit EBITDA margin.
You look at our Fendt business, which is the most technology advanced platforms out there. Again, I would put that sort of a little bit less than tech, but above industrial margins. And then you have the rest of our industrial business, which is still doing quite well, profitability-wise, and we get very excited about the sum of those three parts coming together in long-term value for our shareholders.
That's very helpful. Thank you. If I could follow up, you do about $1.01 billion in grain and protein. Obviously, that's under strategic review, but I know you've done a lot of operational improvements there, probably ongoing facility consolidation. What's the reasonable EBITDA margin for that business as we're trying to assess the value of it?
Yeah, you know, I think, Larry, as you said, we've done a lot to strategically improve the profitability of that business. Last year, it was a little challenging due to some of the more macro-related events. This year, we're looking at the, you know, the EBIT or the operating margin, sort of in that low to mid-single digit, and you would sort of put a couple percent on top of that for the EBITDA margin. So definitely below the corporate average here, which will only further enhance the long-term margin potential. And again, back to Kristen's question, you know, as we think about that business under strategic review, it's gonna allow us to revisit our mid-cycle margin as well.
Our next question comes from Tami Zakaria with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you so much. So my first question is, can you remind us how much of geographic and product portfolio overlap do Trimble and AGCO's current precision ag revenues have? And going forward, do you plan to discontinue one of the overlapping products to continue with the other, or near term, you plan to continue the product offerings as is?
Yeah, I'll take that one. There's almost no redundant features between the two portfolios. We show the crop cycle wheel on one of our slides, and it shows you how, although there's a full portfolio for Trimble and a full portfolio for AGCO/Precision Planting, there's been different focus areas for each business. And so there's very, very minimal redundant activity. Even in the area where, in some cases, we've both been pursuing a given project, we've been pursuing different elements of that project. So we feel that this is almost entirely additive in terms of product portfolio. And similarly for geography, our strategies are so similar in that we're really the only two large ag equipment businesses or ag technology businesses that are focused on the mixed fleet.
And so both of us wake up in the morning thinking about how we serve all farmers, regardless of what brand of equipment they have, both through selling new equipment and selling retrofit solutions, as well as serving a large, long list of other OEM partners, other ag companies that would like to use utilize this technology to further enhance their machines. So the technology development has been created in the same platform. So this OEM activity will continue, retrofit will continue, and selling new equipment will continue. So there's very little redundant in either the product or the channel strategies.
Great. That's great color. Thank you. And, Damon, since you mentioned some of the parts valuations as an option going forward, how much of the joint venture revenues will be recurring once combined, and do you expect that to grow over time?
Yeah. So Tammy, today, if I look at the $535 million of the Trimble Ag revenue, I would tell you about 20% of that is software related. So not all of that is recurring, but things about unlocking fees for their displays, unlocking for guidance, and then there is some of the sustainability and communication connectivity that is more software-oriented. You know, a smaller portion is recurring. We do expect that to grow. As I mentioned in my remarks, there is a sharing of those positioning signals revenue. So as we bring on more products into the market, as existing Trimble farmers upgrade to new technology over the forthcoming years, you know, we see that correct...
that, excuse me, positioning signals growing as a percentage of the revenue, and then layering on some of their other recurring revenue streams related to sustainability and what we're doing with Radicle Agronomics, GrainVue, which are both subscription-oriented, businesses that AGCO currently has. We definitely see that becoming a bigger part of our revenue stream, but still in the grand scheme of things, right now, very small.
Our next question comes from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Good morning, everyone. Eric, I'm wondering if you could just talk about the opportunity that you folks have to sell Trimble through your distribution network and how the two aftermarket networks overlap at this point, given the transition that Trimble was going through with CNH dealers. Thanks.
Yeah, I mean, there's different channels going to market in a different way, and that's why I spent a minute talking about it in one of the slides there, describing that really the reason why AGCO has two separate channels today. We have our OEM channel. It's made up of very large dealers, multi-store operation, focused on selling new machines and some aftermarket sales onto those machines. But then we have this whole different Precision Planting channel that's built of very different kinds of dealers, going direct to customers, trying to upgrade or retrofit the farmer's existing machine of any brand. Trimble has also got some channels, but they're also different.
We see, although even being in the same area, much like Precision Planting is in the same area of our existing OEM dealer network, they're going after the market in different ways, catering to different customer needs. And so that's why we believe that these will be additive in terms of distribution channels. And really, we've not focused on selling guidance in any of the AGCO channels up till now. That's been something that's really been left to other folks. This is a feature that we can bring on to augment some of the equipment we already have. And now have the capability of guidance embedded in those products.
We see short-term sales opportunities, longer-term or medium-term technology integration opportunities to make some of the products that we sell also carry GNSS capabilities and on the path to autonomy. I think this is a great... You know, we didn't talk too much about the fact that Trimble has spent an enormous amount of time not only developing technology, but delving integration paths to 10,000 models of five-year-old brand X, ten-year-old brand Y... machines. So that now as new technologies become available, or that they may be available from Precision Planting today or autonomy solutions from JC in the future, there's already pathways to all of these retrofit opportunities, these 10,000 models out there, that can easily be leveraged to sell more equipment into the mixed fleet retrofit market.
So, how quickly should we see that driving opportunities for you folks? You mentioned on the OEM side with the receivers. What about here? Is it on day one, all the Precision Planting dealers are going to be able to sell the guidance solutions, and so we should see relative to the EBITDA bridge that you laid out, you know, some pretty significant contributions early on from an aftermarket standpoint towards the targets that you laid out on the EBITDA bridge?
Yeah, let me be cautious there. Our mindset on this is very much like we've talked to you about our mindset on growing our Fendt business. It's important for us to grow that business. We think customers like it a lot, and we want to give them access to it, but we've been very methodical about that. We've only been turning on dealers step by step by step, once the dealer has proven through a robust evaluation that they can do a great job of delivering the overall Fendt experience. We'll be going through that same exercise in the marketplace, evaluating each dealer location to say, what is the right answer here? Do you have the capabilities, and is there a market need in your area that warrants granting you the channel?
So to be clear, on day one, not every Precision Planting dealer will be selling Trimble technology. Not every Trimble dealer will be selling Precision Planting technology, just like not every AGCO dealer has been selling Fendt technology. So it'll be a step-by-step, very methodical approach, like we did with Fendt, to evaluate how to grow in a robust way so that we can deliver great customer experiences.
Our next question comes from Steven Fisher with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks, and congratulations. Just from an R&D perspective, how should we think about this, going forward? Does this maybe reduce our R&D needs that you would have done, needed to do, or does it maybe actually increase the amount that you might need to do, given a broader product set?
Well, I would say that, we're not going to slow down any engineering spend, but we'll probably redeploy some of that to a couple areas. One is we're gonna. Now that you have these two giant teams coming together, there's certainly synergies in that we are working on elements of a certain pain point in a same way. We can look for those opportunities to redeploy resources and accelerate results. There will be some investment to integrate this this Trimble technology more fully, both on AGCO machines and on Precision Planting modules. And so that will be a new opportunity that will consume some of our engineering spend, but it'll generate also exciting market value for our farmers. So we don't expect to take engineering spend down.
We've got some internal activities, but we expect net-net will accelerate and have more precision ag projects coming out the pipe on the back end, and acceleration of autonomy.
Okay. And then Greg gave a number of disclosures at the start of the call, and including integration considerations. I guess, what do you think is going to be the heaviest lift on the integration, and how are you planning to address that?
Well, you know, you've seen what we've done with the tech acquisitions so far, where we've had a bit of a light hand. We look for quickly synergizing and getting on one page, what are the customer pain points, prioritizing those, and how do we optimize our product portfolio? What are the engineers working on to make sure we're making the max progress on the biggest opportunity projects? We'll need to do that again, of reorienting the product portfolio to some extent, to make sure that the entire team is working on the biggest opportunity projects. We won't get into a lot of change. We wanna not mess with the secret sauce of the innovation engine that has made Trimble successful.
Leverage of good ideas back and forth, tools, processes, things like that, but it's not gonna be a, like a heavy integration in that regard. I would say probably the biggest work effort is on the distribution channel. There's a dynamic environment in front of us in terms of, you know, who Trimble serves, and we got to figure out, like I spoke to with Jerry, figuring out step by step what makes most sense for each geography, each dealer in each geography, given their capabilities and the market opportunity, to figure out what the best footprint is going forward. That's probably the biggest opportunity. Rob, would you add anything to that?
I think that's well said, the focus and the opportunity on, on, on distribution. You know, hey, the, the thing I want to add is, this is a transformational, opportunity. It's a generational partnership, that's coming together, and I, I'm proud to be part of this. And, you know, in the coming months, we have the unique opportunity to, to plan for, for day one. Over the last, months, the teams have gotten to know each other pretty well, and I can tell you that the, the energy level and the enthusiasm and the inspiration is there to go transform this, market digitally.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Mig Dobre with Baird. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the question, and congratulations. I just wanna follow up on a couple of questions that have been asked already. Going back to that growth bridge. If I interpret your comment, your comments correctly, the majority of that growth is really kind of coming from retrofit, aftermarket type initiatives. Just looking to maybe clarify that if you kinda have, like, a breakdown, 80/20 or whatever that percentage might be. And also related to growth, I, for one, was a little bit surprised to see that Europe, Middle East and South America were such a big portion of Trimble Ag's business.
I guess related to this, I'm curious, as you think about growth, do you think the mix is gonna look different five years from now for Trimble Ag? Do you see certain regions in which potentially you might have higher growth potential than others?
Yeah, I think, you know, maybe I'll cover the first part, and then I'll let Eric and maybe Rob cover the second part. But when you think about the growth bridge here, you know, as we think about the different channels where we're seeing growth, there is the direct OEM channel. So if you think about that, is going into a brand-new Fendt tractor, you know, we, as Eric alludes to, we have the ability to convert that very quickly here. But I think the bigger opportunity is a lot of this equipment is installed at the dealer. So when that new Fendt tractor arrives, that farmer comes in, he's looking, or she's looking for that positioning signal system.
They're choosing the Trimble Ag system at that point in time, and that is where we see the biggest growth potential as those dealers of AGCO and others will be able to offer that sort of installed at the dealer base. So do we see growth in all the different channels? But I'd tell you, that's the biggest one. I don't wanna put a percentage on that, but I would say, again, that's the biggest growth driver for us.
Well, the other growth driver we talked about, as a reminder, is today, AGCO uses two different providers for our GPS systems, and now with this joint venture, it's gonna be pretty clear who we're gonna focus on. It's gonna be on Trimble technology, and we can make that conversion happen very, very quickly, which is what we intend to do. So the growth... One of the main growth drivers is totally in our hands, already designed in, already integrated, and it's just a matter of us making the commercial switch. So that one is clear, and then future growth opportunities are a mixture of distribution, evolution, and product innovation. But a lot of this is largely in our control.
The geography mix?
Yeah, geography mix. So in precision ag, and Rob and I'll tag-team this because we probably have good insights from both perspectives. But in precision ag, I mean, the three big markets are gonna be North America, Europe, and South America. Trimble, you know, one of your surprises of Trimble being so strong in Europe, you have to remember, there's this business called Müller that has already created essentially a common user experience, a common electronics platform for most of the ag companies that participate in Europe. A lot of the, I'll call them mid-sized players, that I would say didn't have probably the scale or chose not to have the scale to develop their own unique system. They Müller provided a system that they can adopt and then customize for their own particular needs.
But they've got a common platform all throughout Europe, and in total, Trimble has something like 100 OEM partners already today. A lot of that comes from the European Müller business that's very successful and strong. So that's one of the reasons why Europe is maybe a larger proportion than you might have expected. We aim to grow that. We've got a strong European business. We wanna nurture, cultivate, and continue to grow those relationships. As far as future opportunity, I think South America is a big one. It's probably the least penetrated for precision ag. It's one of the biggest growth markets for just farming in general.
And so although North America is usually the earliest adopter of ag tech technology, with large farms and thirst for technology, South America, we feel, has got a tremendous amount of opportunity. Rob, what else would you add to that?
From a Trimble Ag perspective, years ago, we were a majority North America business, and we intentionally wanted to geographically diversify the business. We fast-forward in time, as Eric mentioned, Müller is part of that geographic diversity in Europe. The other factor that we see in Europe, is, more leaning in towards sustainability, and the green nature, greener, let's say, nature of the farming in that market. And the value proposition of the technology driving that productivity efficiency, has an outcome of sustainability. And there's been, and there's often... Actually, the overall market has more subsidies in general than the North American market, which is a catalyst to technology adoption. We take the Brazil market, that's fundamentally a penetration play.
And so you take low penetration into a secular growth of a market, and we've all seen the trade dynamics around the world and what's moving there. So that's been a very large catalyst of growth for us, where we have a highly differentiated business and offering from a full stack perspective. So add that together, and you get the change in mix over time, which maps really nicely to the AGCO's precision business.
...Last question comes from Miguel Marquez with Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Sitting in for Chad Dillard this morning, so thanks for taking the questions. Eric and Damon, just a two-parter for me. The first being, you guys talked a lot about there being little redundancies in product portfolios, but is there anything specific you guys would cite on product gaps that are being filled?
Well, I would talk to a few of them. One is AGCO. Up to this point, AGCO hasn't really focused on water management. Trimble brings that to the table. Clearly, the guidance system isn't something AGCO had focused on, so that's being brought. Data platforms is something that both Trimble and AGCO have, but I think together, we're going to be much, much stronger. So the amount of data generated on the farm, the amount of potential from putting analytics on top of that data, helping the farmer make better decisions, is becoming a bigger and bigger deal for farmers. They care a lot about their equipment. They want their equipment to be productive.
But this value proposition of also having an off-board back office system that can help them really be efficient with managing their data and making good choices is a pretty big deal. And so I would say that's another additive area. And then finally, sustainability. Some of the work that Trimble's been doing on carbon trading platforms and things like that fit really nicely. You know, AGCO's purpose, as I mentioned, is sustainability embedded into it, and this gives us a nice accelerant on sustainability.
Thanks for that. And just lastly, in regards to the strategic review for grain and protein, any kind of guidance on why now, and do you see this creating any dis-synergy risk going forward?
Yeah. Why now? I think there's a couple reasons. One is, there's been a lot of work. We knew that we needed to do some work to improve the performance of the business, and so we've been sharing that with you along the way. Started back in 2019, went from 56 business segments down to 20, grouped those into a club of five. Went from 22 facilities down to 15. You know, a number of these complexity reduction-focusing efforts. When we went from 56 down to 20, we exited a lot of these kinda distractor businesses that weren't really high growth, high margin. And so an enormous amount of work has gone into simplifying the business, getting it focused, getting it performing. We've doubled the margin over that time horizon.
We knew we had to do that regardless of its future. We feel like that has played out and been successful. So now we've earned the right to say, "What's the best next chapter? How do these assets find their highest chance for success?" So those are the questions we'll ask now that we've finished the chapter we were in, and we're entering a new chapter. Are there dis-synergies? We have no factories that build machinery products and protein products. They're all separate. The systems are separate. Fundamentally, the people are separate. So the entanglement is not very high, and so we expect kind of a low risk on dis-synergies if some changes were to be made.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Eric Hansotia for any closing remarks.
Very good. Well, thanks for your participation. As all of us have said, this is a very exciting day. It's the biggest ag tech deal in history. It's a really big deal for Rob's Trimble team. It's a really big deal for the entire AGCO team. But most importantly, we think it's a really, really big deal for the ag industry and farmers. Our whole mission of going through the effort to put this team together is to advance the innovation engine and capacity of these two separate teams into one. Rob coined the phrase early on, and all of those working on it latched on to it strongly, and that's better together. There's no question we are better together. We're better together for innovation. We're better together for a stronger distribution.
We're better together for the spirit that we'll build within the employees, and we're clearly better together for the investment results that will be generated. Thanks for your participation. We'll be keeping you up to speed with the results as they, as they play out over time. Thank you.
Thank you for joining the AGCO and Trimble joint venture announcement call. The call has concluded. Have a nice day.