All right, I think we can get started. So I'm Kyle Mengus, Citi's U.S. machinery analyst and I'm joined by the AGCO teams. I have Damon Audia, CFO and then Greg Peterson, head of IR. So why don't we just get started? Just tell us a little bit about AGCO and some of the key brands and just how the product portfolio has evolved just over the last decade or so. Let's start there.
Yeah. So I think for those of you that maybe aren't too familiar with AGCO, last year we finished at just around $12.7 billion in revenue. We are an agriculture and precision ag technology company. We sell with an array of brands across the world. So we sell under the Fendt brand which is our premium brand. But we have two more volume oriented brands in Massey Ferguson and Valtra that are our three primary equipment brands and then we have a technology umbrella which we call PTx.
So precision technologies multiplied and underneath that PTx technology portfolio is the PTx Trimble brand which is of the joint venture that we created with Trimble in 2024. In our Precision Planting brand which is our retrofit channel, really focused on farmers in a retrofit related to planters and now spraying technology along with a few other areas. So we go to market with an array of different brands. We are the largest pure play ag company in the world. Others have other ancillary businesses but we are solely focused on agriculture.
Several years ago we changed our strategy to really be the most farmer focused company and we said we're going to do that through an array of several areas. But we have three primary growth factors that help us achieve that. One is our Fendt market share aspirations. So Fendt is a very well known brand mainly in Europe, started as a tractor brand. In Germany we have added a full portfolio of products.
So a planter, a sprayer, the IDEAL combine to give our Fendt dealers the complete portfolio products. We've begun to bring that product here into North America and in South America seeing very good market share growth in both of those regions as the product performance really caters to the professional growers quite well and it delivers them better fuel efficiency, better technology and overall better performance versus the competitors' products.
So we've been seeing good Fendt market share growth. That's part of one, that's part of our growth strategy. The second one is our precision ag technology. So really growing out the technology stack, penetrating North America with other products but also entering into South America and Europe and growing that business. So last year our technology portfolio finished the year at just around $850 million in revenue.
Our goals by 2029 is we see that delivering at around $2 billion in revenue. And then the third part of our growth vector is our parts business. So we've made a concerted effort to really increase the fill rates. So from AGCO to the dealer, and the dealer to the farmer, leveraging the connected machines, leveraging technology more to drive increased fill rates, growing the parts business there.
And again, that's a nice stable high margin, you know, sort of a low mid single digits growth business and has really now been enhanced over the last one year with the introduction of FarmerCore. So again, one of the things that's a little bit more unique to AGCO is leveraging this new FarmerCore concept. And for those of you who aren't familiar with it, think of it in the most simple terms.
In our lives of how we used to go to the mall to go shopping for things and now we use Amazon. In our industry, we're still very much mall oriented. You know, we required our farmers for years to bring their equipment into the dealers to get service, having to bring the combines or the tractors down.
With FarmerCore, we've been able to demonstrate with the retail stores that we own in North America how we've been able to improve the efficiency for the farmer, improve the productivity by being on the farm, and so rather than having these big giant retail stores with lots of service bays, we've created a more brick and mortar light model with fewer service bays and mobile trucks, so the dealers who are leveraging this FarmerCore model are able to get a better coverage of white space.
They're able to reduce their investments because you're not building the big massive stores and you're able to get them up and running faster. And by doing that, you're able to leverage the technology and the machines, understanding what needs to be done on the equipment, leveraging the technology, doing it on the farm, making it more convenient for the farmer as well.
So for us with our retail stores, we can do over 85% of the service on the farm, so it makes it more convenient for the farmer. Because the brick and mortar light philosophy reduces the break even cost for the dealer, it makes them more profitable with better absorption, helping them weather the storms a lot better. Lots of different things that we're doing, trying to be much more farmer focused. All of these things help us on our next stage metrics, as we communicated to our investors of driving our operating margins up.
So in December we told our investors that we want to move our mid-cycle operating margins up from what were 12% up to the 14%-15% range by 2029. We want to get the free cash flow. We'll keep the conversion rate of 75%-100% of adjusted net income as we've had that. And then I touched on the precision ag revenue hitting $2 billion by 2029 as well.
Yeah, I mean certainly a lot of possible jumping off points from what you just said. I think maybe just touch on, you know, I think the route you're going instead of that brick and mortar expansion in North America, buying the service trucks. Just when did you kind of start that initiative and just can you give some additional color on just early signs of success and you. No, further build out ahead?
Yeah, so we don't own a lot. We don't own most of our retail store. We do have one group of stores that we own here in the U.S. called Ag Revolution. We purchased them four or five years ago or so and think of it more as our incubator, so it's an ability for us to test things out, demo things and learn, and so we started doing the derivative of FarmerCore several years ago by leveraging those, the mobile fleet concept, and so after having a couple years of data where we were able to see the absorption, see how much white space, you know, we began to get ready to roll that out to our other dealers.
And so as you're approaching an independent third party dealer saying, hey, we want you to use this new technology, leveraging connected machines, obviously for a dealer who's been doing it more the traditional way for years, maybe with a competitor or different industry, you know, the uncertainty of what this could do is a little concerning.
So the fact that we've been able to demonstrate what Ag Revolution has done with its absorption and how it's servicing the farmers on farm, you know, gives us a lot of credibility to approach these new Fendt dealers as they're building out dealership networks saying here's the evidence of what you can get by leveraging the mobile fleets, here's how you can handle your absorption better. So giving them real dealership information helps build a lot of confidence.
And then when you layer on what it means for the farmer from a net promoter score for him or her being serviced on the farm when they wanted, when they need it or when they want it, versus having to stop their day and go to the dealership, you know, it's significant for both the farmer and the dealer, so we've been seeing great adoption. I happened to be in Brazil last week.
One of our large dealerships there, one of our large dealers, Vamos, is embracing this. You know, one of the facts, you know, they showed us they had one of their stores in the Paraná state, you know, 60% increase in their white space coverage. With that one store, they were 20% cheaper in building it out between the trucks and the bay, and they were up and running, I think 20% or 30% faster time.
And so you look at all of that. That's just for the dealer himself or herself. Then you layer on the benefits for the farmer, you know, and this is something for us we think is a little bit harder for the competition to replicate because then as it's growing and it's building out its white space opportunities, we're strategically placing the dealerships as we move forward. For someone who already has a well established dealer base who's covering say every 45 miles, it's much harder to put a mobile truck to either go into other white space or it makes it harder to cover the absorption on the store.
Because if I already have a massive store, I want to bring all of that into the mall where if I put a truck out there, that's less traffic into the mall; therefore it makes the absorption that much harder. So we feel like we're in a really good position. You know, we're catering to the farmers, how they want to be serviced, you know, and we're fortunate to be in a position where we can do it as we build out.
I mean, I think it's a great concept. I've heard good things about it so far from just people I talk to in the industry and just really quick. So you said 85% of all the maintenance essentially can be done on the farm. On the farm, and so my understanding that most farms have service bays already. Right? Yeah. Why don't we touch on a little bit the Trimble JV. Could we just talk a little bit about the rationale behind it, just how integration is going so far. Just lay out some of the key top line and cost synergies you see with the deal and maybe rough timeline over which you plan to capture some of those?
Yeah. So the integration is going, I'd say fairly well. If we think about the people, the technology, the products and then the go to market, I would say the first couple have gone quite well. If we think about the culture, we have not lost any of the people when they joined AGCO or part of this JV being part of an AG company versus what was more of a technology oriented company. If we look at the technology, we're making good progress integrating the JCA's, the old JCA team going into Trimble partnering with the broader AGCO. You know the technology development has continued to progress quite well.
You know the OutRun which is the autonomous system for the grain carts that we introduced earlier or late last year came out of PTx Trimble and that was a partnership with JCA, AGCO and Trimble coming together bringing all that to market. So we've seen very good performance with the team integrating the technology development and all of that is progressing quite well.
It's a cornerstone technology for us. Again when you look at where we are going with autonomy with the importance of being connected or having connected machines, AGCO was somewhat agnostic prior to Trimble. We were using an array of service providers.
By bringing Trimble into the fold or this joint venture now and creating PTx Trimble, it's given us the ability to build around that technology and it really becomes one of the two cornerstone technologies we have alongside Precision Planting to really drive the next generation of technology development, and as we think about things like autonomy, that will be a critical thing for us.
Making sure that the machines are connected and the precision of where they are from a guidance standpoint is going to be incredibly important, so we feel great again if we think about what we have, what we'll have five years from now. We love it. It was the largest ag tech deal ever, and so all of that is still true for I think the one challenge that we're seeing is in the market.
You know, obviously the industry has gone down a lot in 2024. We've already given outlooks as the industry is our competitors are have that 2025 is going to be another challenging outlook. And so the volume of products that we would be selling is a lot less than what we were hoping when we bought or did the joint venture.
The second facet to that is one of the prior large customers, you know had done a large purchase at the end of 2023. And again given what they had bought at the point of time when that industry was versus where the industry is now, that last time buy is getting elongated through the system.
And so even though we're seeing great sign up by the dealers again we have over 200 CNH dealers who have signed up to be PTx Trimble dealers. The volume again is not flowing through them at this pace or at the pace we like just yet. So, you know, we're ramping that up. We're doing a lot of sales blitzes.
We're trying to make sure as we talk about the full-line dealers understanding what's expected from them, what are they getting both in PTx Trimble product portfolio, what are they getting as the Precision Planting portfolio and how do we make sure that they're, they're able to sell that to the farmers and whether that's a CNH farmer, whether that's an AGCO farmer, understanding, you know, what's in the, what's there for the farmer and how do we make sure the dealers can articulate that as well as we can articulate that.
Could you just walk through maybe quickly some of the key top line synergies you see with the deal, you know, longer term and just what you think you can do this year and next year.
When we announced the joint venture, we said that we expected around $100 million in synergies by the third full year of operations. Still feel good about that. If we break that down, we said about two thirds of that was going to come from sales synergies.
So that was cross selling through the different channels. That's cross selling with Precision Planting equipment going into the Trimble or the Vantage dealers and that's Vantage or Trimble products coming into the Precision Planting. We're making good progress on that. Again, I think that we feel comfortable. That's going to be a couple of years down the road. We had about a third of it coming from cost synergies. I think we're well ahead of schedule on that one.
We've done, given the industry, we've been very disciplined in revisiting the cost structure. We've really tried to take advantage of this window to create a, call it one more common core of the back office. So we've accelerated the cost synergies and I think we'll get close to that number, you know, by the end of 2025. So what we're controlling, I feel really good about the markets. It's taking a little bit longer just given the current environment that we're in.
And could you touch on too? So understand that you want to bring together your tech stack. You have a few different tech platforms that you want to bring together kind of into one, I think over the next 18 to 24 months. So, maybe just discuss how that's going so far and just level of confidence in doing that. Yeah, can be, you know, easier said than done.
Sure. No, I think it's, I mean it's critical as farmers are becoming more and more technology savvy as they're getting more and more data. You know, the usability of this data, the ability to process it, store it. You know, we're very fortunate that we have a lot of different systems out there. Trimble had its ag software system, which was a great system.
We had our FendtONE system, which is dynamic, but it's mainly only for Fendt. We did an acquisition shortly after Trimble called NEXT, which is a FarmFacts, which is more of a German or Germanic system. A lot of it for filing for government, for the subsidies. And then we have the Panorama with our Precision Planting.
So we have lots of different systems out there which today for a farmer is probably not the most user friendly because he or she's got a login with different login IDs, different systems. So what we're doing is sort of a three step approach. Step one is with all these different systems, let's get the farmer one common login ID so he or she can log in. They can access all the different systems. They may look and feel a little bit different, but let's make it at least easy to get into the system to be able to maneuver through the different farm management systems and other software.
Has that been done?
That will happen likely in 2025. That'll come to, that'll come here in 2025, and then about another year, maybe 18 months is creating more of a common user interface. So think about, the four pipes will still be going, but the user interface will generally start to look and feel the same.
They won't be perfect, it won't be completely done, but it'll sort of look and feel a lot more similar across those platforms, and so that'll be maybe call it 12 to 18 months after we get to the common login. And then the third one is sort of a reboot of a brand of the whole new farm management system with all the data, and that's probably 12 to 18 months after that.
And that's taking the best of all these different systems based on what we're hearing from the farmers, what do they need, what do they want and how do we create sort of one cohesive farm management system for them. And again, the key for us is in keeping with who AGCO is, it's got to work across the mixed fleet. It's not just for Fendt, it's not just for Massey, it's not just for PTx Trimble.
But we want to be able to provide the farmers this unified system that even if they're using competitive products, it works across all of that as well. And so that's sort of the focus that we're working on. But that'll be a couple years down the road.
That's probably a good segue. I just would love to hear you touch on your positioning within precision ag and maybe discuss your strategy and distribution model is a little bit different, I'd say from the competition, a little bit more geared towards that retrofit mixed fleet approach. So maybe elaborate on that a little bit. It certainly does from my vantage point feel like the retrofit precision ag market has become more competitive I think just in the last year or two. So just maybe talk a little bit about that and how you think you can continue to win in that market.
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think technology is at the core of what we're doing, and we know it for the, for us as a company, for the industry to do what we need to do for farmers to produce more grain with lower input cost. Technology is the only answer.
You know, we've taken a slightly different approach than our competitors is we do have a separate go to market channel under the Precision Planting and now the PTx portfolio where we start with the retrofit first mindset. And when we think about retrofit we talk about retrofit for all makes, all models. So again we're somewhat OEM or we're brand agnostic and our idea is to put this new technology into the aftermarket first to let farmers sort of test it, learn from it.
And then as we work with the farmers on improving the technology, we then bring it into the OE equipment usually a couple years later. And our value proposition for the farmers is again in this retrofit mindset is it's usually a one- to two-year payback for him or her.
So again you're not having to do the super large purchase of a brand new planter, instead buy a couple modules, you know, bolt them onto your existing iron, your existing planter frame, see the difference over the planting cycle, add more technology the next year and keep building as you get much more comfortable with the different technologies and it reduces your entry point hopefully lets you see either lower input or better cost or better yield. All building the momentum there. That hasn't really changed.
Again, you're hearing the industry talk about retrofit more as AGCO and as Precision Planting is gaining more and more momentum, I think it's important to understand there's two things. A few things different is one, this is a separate channel for AGCO. So when you think about how AGCO sells a new piece of equipment, we have new equipment dealers who are selling a brand new planter, brand new tractor.
Most of the Precision Planting or PTx Trimble dealers are not selling new equipment. You know, they're agronomists, they're seed sales people. They're usually dealing with lower price point type transactions. They're usually on the field or on the farm more with the farmer trying to help solve his or her problems. No one else has a separate go to market channel.
So when you hear people talk about retrofit outside of AGCO, they're selling their retrofitted products through their new equipment sales channel. And so you have a dealer who can either sell you a $450,000 planter or sell you a retrofit module for your planter for $30,000-$50,000. You know, it seems, you know, the priority is going to be new first and maybe only retro after. The second one is worth OEM agnostic. So if you look at the largest customers who are buying Precision Planting equipment in North America, they're not putting it on AGCO equipment.
Right.
Our competitors who offer retrofit offer it for their products, and it's usually a more newer version of their product. So a very different perspective of how you deal with retrofit, how we're approaching it. And for us it's how we enter the market. Where I think others start with the new equipment, that's where we put the new product, the new technology out there first, get it to the new, to the early adopters who want to understand the technology. Let's learn from them in an array of different field conditions. Let's hone that and then let's bring it into our new equipment a year or two afterwards when we perfect it in the field.
Yeah, and would be great I think for you to touch on some of the latest Precision Ag retrofit products that you're bringing to market. I mean I think Symphony stands out. The OutRun product as well. I mean, I was at your Precision Planting winter conference and heard generally good things about it. Sounds like at least the limited runs of those products have gone well. So maybe touch on that a little bit, I think.
And you were at the field day in the summer as well, if I remember. So, I mean, there's no better time in the ag industry, right, than from a technology standpoint than we are right now. And it's only getting bigger and better again. I will come to the Symphony in a minute, but go back to the tech field day. You know, when we introduce the OutRun for the grain cart. You know what, for those of you, there was a combine operator harvesting who was able to run two grain carts simultaneously. Both of those grain carts, different makes of companies, both running in an autonomous fashion.
Whereas today that operator, he or she's got to have two people each running those carts, where that operator, he was able to run his combine, have one green cart come up to the combine to be unloading at the same time, the other one going off to the road to being unloaded. So you think about from an efficiency standpoint, a cost standpoint, productivity.
You had one operator running three massive machines at the same time. You know, that's the power of technology. And again, for us, that's a bolt on, so you don't have to buy a new tractor. You know, that equipment bolts onto your existing tractor. Didn't matter what the brand was because we showed different brands there.
So that farmer can bolt on that autonomous technology and based on his or her comfort zone, they can decide how much to use that, you know, how many hours to purchase, whether to have someone in the cab or not. But literally running three machines with one operator. So we also demonstrated the tillage, the autonomous tillage there at the tech field day.
So our plan is to offer autonomy around the crop cycle by 2030. Now we've introduced two more to come, but that's a huge game changer for the farmers as they get more and more familiar at winter conference. You're right. We brought out the Symphony Vision system. So think of that more as targeted spraying identifying a weed versus a plant and only spraying the weed versus the crop. Again, very similar retrofit mindset first.
So for these farmers, they can bolt on this vision system onto their sprayer and depending on how many cameras they want to buy, they get different level of accuracy. So again, for the farmer who may be a little bit reluctant or doesn't have a lot of cash this year, only buys a couple of them, test it out. But then the more you add on to your boom, the better accuracy and the more you're going to be able to save.
So we've got that rolling out this year, the Cornerstone Planting System. Again, a lot of these farmers will buy a brand new planter, they'll strip it down and they'll put components. They can now buy the Cornerstone module which is pretty much giving them all of that in a much more simpler fashion. So, you know, that's ramping up production in this.
Then we layer on Radical Agronomics. It doesn't get a lot of press in our industry because we sell a lot of equipment. But for the farmers who need to maximize their yield, understanding the soil and how you're going to plant what seeds, that information that we can now provide them within 24 hours with a lot more accuracy helps build the foundation.
And when we talk about being the most farmer first company, that's one of those things where the farmers get tremendous value in making their fields more productive based on that information. And again, it's not a new piece of equipment, but it's a recurring revenue stream for us because every test has a cost to it. And so the more data that we can provide the farmers, the better they're going to be as they get ready for their planting.
It helps us connect better with them. You know, lots of different technology coming out and all of it driving productivity for the farmers, hopefully improving yield and driving down their cost per acre for sure.
Yap. Why don't we shift gears a little bit. Talk a little bit about dealer inventory levels by region, just any specific brands to touch on perhaps, and then just. Are you feeling more or less confident in producing in line with retail demand in the second half of this year? Just how are things, you know. Trending so far in 2020?
Sure. I mean, let's go around the world, start with Europe again. You know, more than half of our business is based in Europe. At the end of the year we were just over four months of inventory in Europe. So very close to our target of four months. If we look at that Fendt was a little bit below that four month target.
Massey and Valtra were slightly above, but nothing to be worried about. So we have that industry down 0%-5% this year. So we feel pretty good about the European market, about the dealer inventory levels. You know, dairy farmers are doing quite well in Europe. Row crop farmers are a little bit more challenged with seed price, with commodity prices.
Overall that part of our business seems like it's in pretty good shape and we don't see any challenges hopefully in producing to retail here as we move through 2025, especially in the second half. If we go down to South America, dealer inventory levels were just around five months. And I think it's important there to point out, you know, when we talk about the months of supply, we talk about a 12-month forward look.
And I think maybe, I'm not sure everyone in the industry talks about forward. I think some may look 12 months retrospectively. And so we still sit with five months of inventory. As I said on the fourth quarter call, we reduced the number of units at the dealers by around 8%. So we're making good progress.
So we've been reducing the number of units from Q3 to Q4, sorry, from Q2 to Q3 and then again from Q3 to Q4. But because of the industry outlook, the months of supply is staying flat right now. So we're planning a significant amount of underproduction again. We've been doing it now five quarters in a row in South America, under producing quite a bit.
We're going to be under producing again heavily here in the first half, trying to get that dealer inventory down a couple more months here, you know, and at least right now we feel like we're in a good shape to get that by the end of the first half of this year and get more into more normalized product versus retail in the back half of the year.
So, a little bit of work to do there, but you know, definitely feels manageable. North America, we finished the year with nine months of inventory, so we were. Our target is around six. We finished at nine. Similar to South America, we did reduce the number of units on hand. So we have, you know, we reduced it by around 7%.
We reduced it in Q3, we reduced it again in Q4. But the months of supply, given the industry outlook, where we see the large ag industry down around 25% this year, you know, when you look at that forward industry, that months of supply is holding flat at around nine, around nine months. So again, a lot of underproduction heavily weighted here in North America in the first half of the year. You know, I think that's going to be the, probably the most challenging one.
We feel like there's a path to get there. But if there's any change in the industry outlook, you know, that could put a little bit more pressure on our production, but you know, it'll linger a little bit into the third quarter. But that's the one we're pushing the hardest on just given the industry outlook right now and where we stand with the number of months on hand at the end of the year.
Are you, I guess, in North America, starting to see any green shoots? And you just look at the farmer sentiments starting to pick up crop prices, farm incomes going to be higher this year. I guess it's all government payments. But just. But I think what are you seeing?
Yeah, I think if we go around the world, you know, over the last couple weeks, I'd say there's been a little bit more of a positive. It's positive sentiment. If you look at the CEMA index, which is the European, you know, index, if you look at what just came out last week, you saw quite a significant growth in the index into more optimistic tone.
Now, that doesn't change today, but if you look at that as a sort of a proxy for what could happen six months, nine months from now, it's a good sign. There's an increasing level of optimism coming out of Europe. If you look at the Ag index here, you know, I think it jumped up to 141 on the last reading. So again, a higher level of confidence coming out of North America corn futures just over $5.
So, you know, not great, but not where it was six or nine months ago. So a slightly increased level of confidence coming at least out of the indexes that what we're hearing. And I think you were, again, at the winter conference with us, and I think what you heard from the team there is, you know, more cautious optimism, you know, coming from the farmers.
And I think they had said at the meeting, you know, over the last couple months, they've seen a heightened level of confidence coming. I was just in Brazil last week, had a chance to meet with a couple of our dealers, couple of the farmers, and I would sense a more optimism coming from them as well.
You know, we're at the harvest season up in the, in Brazil right now in the Cerrado region. They're expecting some very good yields. The commodity prices aren't great, but they're expecting some very strong yields. The second corn planting went quite well. Overall I think there's a little bit more optimism stemming from the yields. Then you think about the geopolitical challenges right now, some of the question or comments coming out of the U.S. related to tariffs.
Brazil is likely a beneficiary. If anything that happens with the U.S. tariffs, any counter tariffs or counteractions from other countries, Brazil may likely be a beneficiary. I think the dealers and the farmers down there feel that that could be, you know, a positive for them. I'd say no real changes to our outlook from what we're seeing in 2025. But you know, if I had to, I'd say a little bit more optimism coming on what we're seeing with some of the surveys and some of the general feedback.
Maybe if we could touch on margins this year as well, like the FY '24 guide. I think the first half you might see some negative margins in certain regions, but then just maybe talk about how you see margins progressing.
Yeah.
As you get into the back half o f the year.
Our outlook for the full year is in that 7-7.5% range. You know, this first half of the year, especially the first quarter where we are cutting production significantly. That's putting all the pressure and I think about like the gross margins of the products that I'm selling. You know, we're not getting heavily, we're not adding a lot of incremental discounts. We're not into, you know, our pricing outlook for the total company is 0% to +1%. So we're not putting a lot of incremental pricing or discounting in the marketplace. We're trying to address the dealer inventories through production cuts.
And when, you know, when you're shutting your factories down, you know, 35%-40% incremental year over year and they were already down significantly last year, you know, there's a lot of fixed costs that's flowing through the P& L on a relatively low level of sales, you know, and that's driving the margins down in places like North America, South America where you're seeing the highest amount of production cuts.
And then as we start to get back more in line with retail and production matched in the back half of the year, we sort of see that production and that margin picking back up, then you start to lap some of the negative pricing that we're seeing mainly in Europe as we're doing some model year changeovers. We'll get through that here in the first half of the year and get back to more positive pricing in the back half of the year with better volumes.
Yeah, got it. That's helpful. And sticking on the margin subjects, I mean, going to do about 7% this year. Understand we're below that mid-cycle level. At your investor day recently put out new targets for 14%-15% mid-cycle margins. So maybe just help us understand just how, how do we get to that 14%-15% mid-cycle margin? How does it compare to the prior mid-cycle margins for AGCO. Yeah, if you could expand on that.
Yeah, sure. No, I think there's a lot going on for us to deliver on these and I think the key for us is, you know, if you look at where we were last year, we finished just under 9% and we would say that the industry was right around 9%. And when you look at our value creation line that we've showed our investors, you know, generally, you know, every 5% of the market is around 50 basis points to your operating margin on the value creation line. So if you think about where we were, you know, our original outlook was 12%.
You know, as we think about some of the structural changes we've made to the business, so selling the grain and protein business, which was a low or below average margin business, adding in the PTx Trimble business, which we know has been a high 20-plus% margin business, you know, those drive about 150 basis points of accretion of margin improvement.
You know, at the mid-cycle. When we think about the Fendt market share rollout again taking those revenues of these high margin Fendt products growing in North America and South America, coupled with our parts growth, you know, we see all of that driving incremental margins.
We also layer on the restructuring actions, you know. We've announced this late last year, middle of last year. We announced our restructuring actions to improve our operating costs in the range of $100 million-$125 million. You know, given the timing of some of the conversations with our European workers councils, we'll monetize probably around half of that here in 2025. But our run rate at the end of this year should be in that $100 million-$125 million of cost savings coming out of the system.
And then as we've started to really better understand centers of excellence, things like shared service centers, leveraging more technology, generative AI, we see further opportunities and we see about another $75 million coming out of the cost system by the end of 2026.
As we have to go through some, you know, some of the conversations and we'll do some things here in the U.S., but you know, those two cost actions, the current one and then the other $75 million, that'll improve the operating margin by another 150 basis points. And so when you look at what's already done, so grain and protein gone, PTx Trimble added in, you know, that's 150 basis points there.
When you look at what we're doing, cost structure wise, another 150 basis points there. And then you look at Fendt Parts, Precision Ag, all growing about another 150 basis points there. And again when you bring my last year number of around 9% up to mid-cycle, that 9 goes to 10. And that's sort of how you see us getting to that 14%-15%.
Got it. That's helpful, I guess. Just what do you think it would take to get the PTx business back to that? Well, I guess PTx Trimble back to that like high 20s, low 30s margin. I understand it's high fixed costs.
So yeah, I mean it's volume.
Right.
At the end of the day, the team has done a really good job integrating from a cost standpoint or the cost structure. They've done a lot late last year to really consolidate one team even though these are two separate legal entities. We've tried to work as much as possible to create one PTx team even though PTx Trimble is still a joint venture. We've tried to reduce the overlap and we always knew there would be some overlap.
But given the environment, we've tried to, working with Trimble, find ways where we consolidate and streamline versus having two people doing the same thing because one's an AGCO, one's in the JV. But how do we cost share better? So we've done a lot to accelerate the cost side of the house. I feel great about where the team is.
The key is going to be to get the volume. Because when I look at the gross margins of the products of what PTx Trimble is selling, the gross margins are still very good. But you have such a high incremental, decremental margin right now that volume is the key. So we've got to see the industry stabilize. You know, we've got to get the dealer confidence that the industry's picking back up, volume's going to pick up.
So we can start to stock the dealer channel and we can start to get that out to the farmers. That's the key. And again, 2025 is going to be a challenging year, industry wise. But the product technology, the pricing of the technology, the way that we're servicing it inside, we've got to get the dealership really focused on what they're getting.
Because if you were a PTx Trimble dealer and you're now getting Precision Planting, understanding that technology, how do you value sell that to the farmer? And if you were a Precision Planting dealer, getting PTx Trimble technology, got to learn that stuff as well because it's slightly different. But how do you value sell that to those farmers, making sure they understand the value of that precision, that guidance system, why it's better than what you may have had before?
How do you complement it with some of your other core product portfolio stuff that we offer them? And to me, that's the key. As Eric said on the call, it's one of his top priorities this year. He's actively working with them because we know that the opportunity is huge for us.
Yep.
We just got to get the volume flowing and again, it's more market driven and we'll get there.
Makes sense. Probably have time for one or maybe two more questions. Trying to ask all my companies that's just about tariffs. Certainly a hot, hot topic right now. Just, you know, how are you guys thinking about impacts from potential tariffs? What's your strategy to mitigate any potential impacts and maybe walk us through your steel aluminum exposure? And just how do you plan to respond to Trump's 25% tariffs on those?
Yeah, so, you know, if you think about, it's a dynamic situation, I think, and we're saying, I say, equally dynamic in all the scenarios and iterations that we're running. You know, there's the direct effect to us, then there's the indirect effect to our farmers, which I think has a bigger effect if I think about what he's announced thus far, tariffs related to Mexico, Canada and China, steel, aluminum, not a huge negative effect for AGCO, given where we source our products here in North America.
I'd say it's something that we could manage without having a significant change to our financial outlook that we've provided this year. If I think about what happened when he announced the tariffs, there was announced retaliatory tariffs.
You know, Canada, for example, announced that they would be putting a retaliatory tariff that would have had a, that if that does come to fruition, that have a little bit more of a financial effect on us because of what we ship from the U.S. you know, sprayers, track tractors, certain types of combines, you know, head into Canada. So, you know, that would create, that would force us to revisit some things.
N ow, could we ship things from Europe, smaller tractors, directly into Canada instead of the U.S. to mitigate that? Those are some of the scenarios we're looking at to the extent we couldn't. If we make them here, like in Jackson or Hesston, we'd have to figure out what we could price for based on what the competition's doing and try to pass as much as we could. So we're watching those.
I think the bigger question is if he was to put other, I'll call it a worldwide tariff, our biggest exposure would be if something was taxed related to Western Europe coming to the U.S. So in North America, I think our revenues were just under $2.9 billion last year. About 35% of that product is imported into the U.S. 25% comes from Western Europe.
And so for us, that's Fendt high horsepower Massey Ferguson, the IDEAL combine out of Italy. You know, that would have a more meaningful effect for us. And we're working through the different scenarios of how do we dampen that, r ight. Could we do things differently of what we import? You know, do you not import tires? Do you buy them here? You know, what could you do to reduce the.
And then also assessing what the competition is going to deal with there. Right. Because if all of us are equally affected, you know, that may mean a pricing opportunity. But if we're disproportionately affected negatively, then we have to find an offset within our supply chain and mitigate or we may have to either accept lower margin or shorter or less share. But we're running all those scenarios. I mean, there's hundreds of scenarios.
Do this, do that, ship here, don't ship there. I think the bigger effect or the bigger concern for us is how does it, it affect the farmers and their, some, their demand or their sentiment, r ight. Because given the uncertainty, the last time this happened, some of the farmers were negatively affected because they found that, you know, China ramped up its, its production or its purchases from Brazil.
If that is the case, what happens with Mexico? Do they find an alternative source of supply for their corn? And how does it affect the U.S. farmers? I think that's the thing we're watching a lot because that has a bigger effect than the financials of the tariffs on our products today.
AGCO team, thanks for joining us today. We're up on time.
Thank you.
Thank you.