Based in Australia. The philosophy, at first it was a small handful of dealerships, but then, Dave and Peter, kind of got together and started working on a vision to help consolidate the CNH network. And we're a leader in that space, and we are the largest, CNH dealer in the world. So the thought process was, buy the neighboring, dealerships, and then let's move back office support functions and consolidate that. Today, that's in West Fargo, North Dakota, so that we can handle the accounting, HR, finance, marketing, kind of the behind-the-scenes ops stuff, so that at the dealership they can focus on, you know, what they do best, and that is, serving the customer. So that model is what has been deployed over time, and then, of course, we've grown to add on, Europe and, most recently, Australia.
A big part of that support function is parts and service, so maybe also kind of frame out you sell equipment, but you're doing that for a purpose.
Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, from a revenue split perspective, again, on an average year, about 75% of revenue is equipment, just under 25% would be parts and service, but that parts and service provides, you know, on the low end, about 50% of gross profit dollars. And when we get into the down cycles and equipment margins tend to compress, that parts and service business, you know, can be two-thirds or higher of our profitability. You know, we certainly sell equipment, right, and you have to do that efficiently and manage that through the highs and lows of the cycle. Ultimately, that affords us the opportunity to provide customers with parts and service. We have a whole customer care strategy around that, and not to get ahead of myself on the M&A side, but it also leans into kind of the density of our footprint.
And that's an area, you know, that I do get excited about. There are a lot of initiatives in terms of continuing to move that parts and service business forward. Higher margin opportunity, of course. You know, on the service side, think, you know, low 60s%. On the parts side, think low 30s% in terms of gross profitability, you know, relative to equipment, which is going to be in the, you know, single-digit range.
Maybe talk about footprint density more specifically as it relates to the service offering out there in, you know, kind of rural America, and how does that kind of dovetail with your M&A strategy over time?
Yeah. So, you know, density allows us to be as efficient as possible and yet provide our customers with the best possible service. You know, a lot of our customers today with farm consolidation span a larger footprint, and if we own the dealerships in that area, right, we have multiple touch points that we can get to them faster, you know, with the right tech or the right part, etc. So, you know, that has been part of the M&A strategy, right, is we want to be within our footprint. You know, we want the density. We want to be the owner of both the Case IH and the New Holland brands, ideally under one roof, and then just have those rooftops, you know, strategically placed throughout the region. So again, it allows us efficiencies, but it allows us to provide them better parts and service.
That's ultimately where we win and what the differentiator can be is how well we serve the customer, how much we ensure that they have uptime as opposed to expensive downtime, and really how we can do that in a timely and efficient manner.
M&A naturally has, you know, kind of fits and starts, whether that's cycle-related or just, you know, kind of the give and take of the opportunity that the seller sees. Maybe just how do you guys source M&A? How does the cycle impact your ability to execute transactions? How has that looked over time and maybe, you know, put it in perspective today, with today's cycle?
Yeah. So, you know, first of all, it is relationships, right, and across our leadership team, we know, you know, just about every other Case IH or New Holland dealer in the region, whether it's through advisory boards or conferences or otherwise. And it's something that we, you know, proactively try to do. We have people that are focused on, you know, as we're doing other business, going out, stopping by the neighboring dealer, visiting them, you know, letting them know we'd be interested in a conversation when the time comes. Ultimately, you know, the timing is dictated by a seller. The geographics, you know, obviously neighboring, they tend to be more familiar with us, and then when you get into the demographic side of things, there is an aging population of owner- principals. They don't all have succession plans. Many of them don't have succession plans.
When you think about their appetite or willingness to sell in the best of times, you know, it's not always the easiest, right, because they're out there, they're really profitable, they're having a good time, their customers are happy. In the down cycle, and especially further removed from the best of times, it can be more, you know, it's more frustrating for them. They're not as profitable. Their customers aren't necessarily as happy either. So you tend to see those shifts as you go through a cycle. You know, obviously we're a couple of years into a down cycle and further removed from the best of times. And I would expect that, you know, bodes well in terms of the volume of incoming calls and people saying that they're interested in selling. There's still plenty of consolidation to do both within our footprint and outside of our footprint.
We're really focused on our core footprint and adding the density there as opposed to further expanding borders.
How do you balance that against your own desire to be an active buyer through the cycle, right? I mean, are you concerned about multiple compression or not, or how do you guys think about that from a transaction perspective?
Yeah, so certainly, valuations are impacted through a cycle and ultimately profitability. You know, generally we're looking at things, what are the tangible assets that you're buying? It's such a capital-intensive business, right? So really sizing up what are the tangible assets that you're buying and then understanding, you know, what that profitability profile of a dealership looks like. Historically speaking, as we've executed on a lot of M&A in the U.S. side, it's really, you know, what's fair value for tangible assets. There can be some goodwill. Oftentimes, there's none or limited goodwill, but it still makes sense for those that are looking for an exit. They've built a lot of equity into their inventory or their buildings or otherwise, and that's a way for them to liquidate, and it's, you know, also a way that helps us out.
Kind of looping back to footprint density a little bit, right? Recently, you guys announced some divestitures, overseas in Germany specifically. Maybe just talk about some of the thought process behind that and what, you know, how that kind of feeds into the broader strategy internationally.
Sure. So first of all, I would say, you know, it's not just about Europe. It's about our strategy and focus on driving more sustained levels of profitability through a cycle. Bryan stepped into his role about two years ago on the CEO seat. He's been with the company for a couple of decades now. But something we spent some time doing is sizing that up. You know, where can we play to our strengths? Where have we struggled the most? And where do we want to continue to focus in the future, as we execute on this plan to drive higher levels of efficiency, to drive higher levels of profitability? Germany was an area that didn't check many of those boxes for us as we look forward. You know, it's an area that we struggled the most.
It was the country that we operate in that had the lowest CNH market share, not just us, but for them, and thinking about the path forward, ultimately, you know, we thought that those dealerships ending up as dual-branded was the best chance of success for dealers. We ultimately worked with CNH and sold them to local New Holland dealers. So not unlike a lot of the acquisitions we've done in the U.S. So we're about one-third dual-branded in the U.S. side. And then just in October, we were able to execute on an acquisition that gave us the New Holland contract in six of our 15 locations as well. So we feel strongly about dual-branded, what it does for a dealer's profitability, what it does for the OEM in strengthening the network.
Certainly, we're happy to see, you know, CNH kind of leverage that in a bigger way as they had their investor day last spring. It's definitely been something we've been executing on for a while.
Great. Maybe help us just understand this cycle, right? We see the kind of broader commodities, you know, under sustained pressure, but I think the context of this cycle is quite a bit different than what we experienced, through the last cycle. Maybe just put that into perspective for folks, and then maybe, you know, if you can kind of put a point on where you think we're at presently.
Sure. Yeah. And certainly, you know, done a lot of studying of history in the prior cycles, and no cycle is the same. If we go back to the teens, really, you know, there were no supply chain constraints. It was pretty open. They were able to ramp up production significantly, you know. Ethanol mandates were gaining a lot of traction and other forms of government support. There was really a spike in farmer profitability, a significant increase in production, which then was followed by a significant decrease and kind of a prolonged down cycle in, you know, 2015 through kind of the 2019 timeframe. More recently, you know, COVID had significant implications from a production perspective and really limited production. So in this last up cycle, while we did see record net farm income, given supply chain disruptions, we didn't see nearly the spike in industry volume.
And in fact, you know, on average over the last five years, we've been below kind of what that longer-term average has been. Where are we at today? As everybody reports on Q4, we'll kind of get more consensus across the OEMs and ourselves in terms of, you know, what we think industry volume in the U.S. looks like this next year. Deere was kind of the first one to come out right before Thanksgiving, suggesting large ag down 15%-20%, this next year. If you apply that to where we were at, you know, in the current year, it's really suggesting, industry volumes, to be about 50% or half of what that average has been from the year 2000 to the year 2025. And it's also implying, you know, the lowest point for the last several decades, maybe going back to the 1970s.
So a pretty low point as we're navigating kind of a new bottom in this trough. One of the reasons why I think you know a general thought process would be that okay then 2026 is sort of the bottom and then we work up from there. And what does that look like?
So naturally, inventory becomes like the focus. But you're kind of working with an OEM too that's trying to manage production, and you guys are kind of trying to pull inventory through the system. Where are we at in that process? Do we feel good about kind of the current state? Maybe you can just kind of shape the progress we've made as a dealership and then kind of what some of the near-intermediate-term goals are with respect to inventory specifically.
Yeah. And that's, you know, in the down cycle, I would say that's been one of the points of execution that I'm the most proud of. Took a lot of focus. You know, going back to March of 2024, we were sort of laying out exactly what we thought was going to be happening. We were going to be receiving orders that we had placed a while ago as OEMs catch up on production. Inventory was going to peak in July of 2024. And then we said from that point forward, there'd be about an 18-month journey where we really got after it to get down to targeted levels. Our fiscal year ends in January. Feel really good about where we're going to be ending there in January and that 18-month process that's happened.
Now that we're, you know, kind of in that range of from an absolute dollar perspective, it's really just continuing to perfect the mix. Certainly there's still areas of some seasonal products that we'd have more of than we'd want. And we're pretty lean and mean on some of the higher horsepower categories. So we'll continue to work through that this year. We're wanting to operate within a tighter range of two and a half times turn, at any point in the cycle. And there's some initiatives, around what we're doing there in order to achieve that.
For example, on high horsepower categories, focusing on driving higher presale rates and then really rolling out our plan on regionalized stock inventory, which just for today's purposes is really getting leaner, leveraging our footprint to get leaner on stock inventory, lean into the presale on those higher horsepower categories that lend themselves to it, and again, just operate within that tighter range, providing us a lot of benefit and really protecting us on the downside when you do see kind of a switch in the cycle.
More specifically, can you quantify, you know, peak inventory to two and a half times turn? What is the delta there? Give folks just some perspective on that.
Yeah. So, you know, from a global perspective, we peaked equipment inventories at about $1.3 billion. As we, our guidance that we provided an update on in Thanksgiving would suggest that we'll be down about $550 million from there as we close the books on January. Again, that total dollars amount is about right when you think about it across our regions, but just perfecting that mix a bit, yeah, a lot of good work thus far, and a lot of initiatives around how we kind of maintain closer to that dollar range.
Are you having to kind of go out there on the street and, you know, knock on farm doors and try to catalyze demand, or is it a cooperative effort with your OEM to try to tackle this issue which you both share?
Yeah. No, it's certainly a little bit of both, but I mean, we lead, right? That's, we're the tip of the spear, from a selling perspective. We obviously have a lot of relationships, and a lot of our relationships are longstanding. These are large, you know, consolidated farms. They have business plans. They have a general schedule on when they would like to refresh equipment, but then you layer on, you know, profitability, and that can impact that. But I would say in general, right, it's our in the United States, our 240-ish equipment sales consultants that are working with growers, constantly looking for new relationships, but understanding their needs and what they're trying to accomplish. We know where we're at from a pricing perspective, and then certainly, you know, the OEMs can get involved too in terms of incremental programming to try to win deals.
Simply put, low commodity prices pressured farmer profitability or lack thereof, that's leading to kind of the lower demand environment that we're in.
It's also pressured, you know, the equipment margin that you guys report against, which, you know, just recently in the most recent quarter, you know, showed some signs of life, which I thought was really encouraging. Maybe take us through, you know, kind of the P&L impact of an improving inventory balances and how that affects things like margin.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, that's another important factor. We've talked about, you know, a historical range for domestic, and this is mostly domestic ag. This is the area where we have the largest, exposure to used equipment, which is a big variable in margins. But from that perspective, historical ranges outside of some outlier low years has been kind of that 8% to upwards of that 11%-12% range. You know, in the first half of fiscal 2026 for us, which is ending here in January, we were down at 3%. That third quarter went up to 7%. So if you think about as we get closer, you know, what are some of those reasons? There's a lot of factors there.
Some of it is the devaluation of used equipment, which has stabilized, but a lot of it is us leading with price in order to get to where we want to be. Now that we've done a lot of that work, you know, in the direction of where that normalized range is, not only from an equipment margin perspective, but also a reduction of floor plan interest. Those are two big levers that we'll see the benefit of. You know, if the industry volume is going to be sort of what's been suggested in the conversation, it's not to say that we'd get all the way, excuse me, to that historical range, but certainly a lot closer to it relative to where we were in the first half of this past year.
You know, we're pleased with where we're positioned to kind of work through this next year, and really poised for when conditions improve. You know, we have those strong relationships. We lead with parts and service. We've cleaned up the balance sheet. You know, we're ready for M&A opportunity. We're investing a lot of time and energy into what I would call the digitization and automation of certain processes. We're a little over a year into our new ERP system. There's other initiatives around AI to help harness, you know, the knowledge across our tech workforce to help make our techs more efficient.
Just a lot of good things going on behind the scenes that you're not necessarily seeing right now given what the P&L looks like, but just continually positioning ourselves to perform stronger through a cycle and really flex our muscle when things do improve here.
And we also have the component of floor plan interest, right, which has really constrained EPS generation currently. How big is that? Where is it, you know, on average, kind of midpoint of a cycle? And kind of where are we on that kind of improvement trajectory?
Yeah. So, you know, on average, call it, you know, midpoint cycle-ish, you know, 25% of inventory being interest-bearing. Certainly we've been as low as essentially zero and then more recently, you know, higher than 50%, 56%. We're on the way back down. We'll continue to see a benefit of that this year. You know, there's a lot that goes into that, but focusing on those turns, focusing on presales, you know, that's one area, that's one expense that we talk about. There's a lot of expenses, right? And you try to be efficient there, but when it comes to floor plan interest, that's not really adding value to anybody. So that's definitely the first one that we want to take out, but those are sort of the targets and we, we've seen a lot of progress there and we'll continue to see benefit next year.
Do you get relief? Is that something you can negotiate with the OEM or are they providing programming to help you as a dealer, in the field, experience some relief there? Or is it just you kind of have what you have and you just have to battle through with the balance sheet to get to the other side of the cycle?
So yeah, from a floor plan perspective, and we have the bank syndicate as well as an option. But in terms of interest-free alternatives, it really starts with the OEMs. It does, you know, flex and change a bit, as, you know, it should based on the kind of underlying factors there. When we were in a supply chain constraint and there was, you know, you couldn't get your hands on equipment, there was really no need for it. That's normalized again. You know, typically speaking, depending on product category, you can get interest-free terms from OEMs from a couple of months to a year. And we've gotten back to those normal times. You know, CNH specifically, which is our single largest provider, we have a great relationship with Capital, competitive interest rates.
So I'd say, you know, that's all been working, you know, as well as it can. And really the bigger benefit here is higher turns in getting that stuff moving before it becomes interest-bearing.
Great. We have two minutes left. Maybe I'll just canvass the audience here. Any questions? No? Bo, maybe the just last thing, open-ended softball, but I mean, I think one of the hallmarks of the executive team's execution this go-round is it was really an extremely proactive stance and identifying the issue, which was cycle-related, but then doing something about it. Just help kind of shape that a little bit because, I mean, I think you guys deserve some credit for not waiting around.
Yeah. Again, yeah, that point of execution is definitely one of the things that we're most proud of recently. You know, we've got a great leadership team in place that has a lot of industry experience, going back to really before 2024. But you know, in 2023 and kind of seeing the winds changing, what was the direction we needed to take first that started with pulling back on purchasing. You know, next it was, hey, we have some equipment coming. What is it going to take? I'm really proud of the continued conversations that we've been having as we're refining, right? We're not sitting back in waiting six months to definitively know what an answer should be. We're not afraid to make a call and adjust along the way. That's on the inventory side of things.
I'm just as excited about all of the initiatives that we're taking on, again, that you're not seeing a lot of benefit of right now that are really going to move the business forward in a big way as well. Yeah, no, proud of how proactive we have been and wanting to kind of lead the industry in terms of getting you know right-sized on the inventory front and has been paying dividends, will continue to pay dividends and really excited about the same type of execution on other important initiatives for us as we look forward.
Awesome. Well, we're at time. Thank you so much for joining us again today at ICR Conference and, wish.