Deere & Co. is spending billions of dollars a year to buy its own equipment for a leasing program, which boosts sales of new farm tractors and construction machinery but adds financial complexity and weighs on the used-equipment market, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Deere, the world’s largest manufacturer of farm equipment, has leaned on its financing business in recent years to combat declining demand for new machinery at a time of unprecedented stress in the U.S. Farm Belt because of the trade war and bad weather, the publication reported.
Transaction records show more than one-third of the financed purchases of Deere high-horsepower tractors and construction equipment is being leased to farmers and builders, the Wall Street Journal reported. Deere’s financing business is the owner of roughly 90 percent of that leased equipment. Leasing levels are about double the rate in 2012.
Read more here.