Moat
86.0/10
Very strong brand, dealer, service, financing, parts, resale, and precision-ag ecosystem advantages; right-to-repair pressure and cycle exposure prevent a perfect score.
DEQueued from the May 25, 2026 S&P 500 market-cap snapshot ranks 76-100; refreshed with public market, investor, product, right-to-repair, and open-source agriculture sources accessed on 2026-05-27.
Deere & Company
Deere & Company makes agricultural, construction, forestry, turf, and precision-technology equipment under the John Deere brand.
Metadata
Where this company sits
- Ticker
- DE
- Rank snapshot
- ≈ 88
- Sector
- Industrials
- Industry
- Construction & Farm Machinery
- Region
- United States
- Index
- S&P 500 · Top 100 by market cap
Metrics
Scoring view
Every metric is paired with a short rationale. The numbers are deliberate, not divine.
Decentralizability
34.0/10
Core high-horsepower agricultural and construction machinery is capital-intensive and service-heavy, but farm-data workflows, repair tooling, autonomy software, and smaller implements have credible open or cooperative substitutes.
Profitability
72.0/10
Fiscal 2025 net income attributable to Deere was about $5.0 billion on a down-cycle year, indicating durable profitability despite machinery-market cyclicality.
Price / Earnings
28.6x
Approximate market capitalization of $143.52 billion divided by fiscal 2025 net income attributable to Deere of about $5.027 billion; this is a rough trailing earnings multiple and not a live valuation feed.
Market cap
$143.5B
CompaniesMarketCap reported Deere & Company market capitalization of about $143.52 billion in May 2026.
Freed-up capital potential
$0.0
Derived from market cap, moat resistance, decentralizability, and profitability. It is a directional estimate of value capture that could come under pressure if open alternatives compound.
Narrative
Why the company matters
A short editorial overview plus the current thesis on moat strength and decentralization pressure.
Industrial machinery platform
Deere is a global machinery manufacturer organized around production and precision agriculture, small agriculture and turf, construction and forestry, and financial services. Its equipment footprint spans tractors, combines, sprayers, loaders, excavators, forestry machines, turf equipment, parts, dealer service, and equipment financing.
The company increasingly sells machinery as a connected operating stack. Precision-ag products such as John Deere Operations Center, connected displays, guidance, data tools, and dealer support deepen the relationship between the machine, the farm record, and the service channel.
Cycle exposure
Deere remains exposed to agricultural income, construction demand, equipment replacement cycles, credit conditions, and dealer inventory discipline. Fiscal 2025 revenue and net income declined from the peak cycle, but the company remained highly profitable and continued to report large global equipment franchises.
Moat reading
Deere's moat is strongest where brand trust, dealer density, parts availability, financing, machine reliability, resale values, and precision-ag software reinforce each other. The installed base matters because farmers and contractors cannot afford long downtime during narrow operating windows.
The moat is not purely physical. Data workflows, proprietary diagnostics, trained dealer technicians, embedded displays, and integrated agronomic tools can make the machine ecosystem harder to leave even when competing equipment is technically capable.
Decentralization reading
Deere is less decentralizable than a pure software company because heavy machinery needs capital-intensive manufacturing, compliance, durable parts, field service, and safety-critical engineering. However, portions of the stack are vulnerable to open alternatives: farm records, path planning, autonomy research, repair documentation, replacement parts, and small-scale machinery designs.
The most credible decentralizing pressure is not a single open tractor replacing a high-horsepower Deere fleet tomorrow. It is a layered ecosystem of open repair rights, open farm data tools, shared autonomy libraries, local fabrication for simpler implements, and cooperative service networks that reduce dependence on one vertically integrated equipment vendor.
Products
Where the moat actually touches users
These pages zoom into the products and services that matter most to each company, the alternatives already nibbling at them, and 4 structured disruption concepts across the current product set.
4 disruption concepts tracked0 documented exceptions
John Deere tractors
Agricultural equipment
2 conceptsJohn Deere tractors are the company's flagship agricultural machines, ranging from compact and utility tractors to high-horsepower row-crop and specialty tractors.
John Deere Operations Center
Precision agriculture software
2 conceptsJohn Deere Operations Center is Deere's online farm management platform for accessing, managing, and analyzing farm, field, machine, and operations data across web, tablet, and phone workflows.
Technology waves
Strategic lenses
These are the repo's explicit bias terms: the technologies expected to keep making incumbents less inevitable over time.
Microfactories and automated mini-home production
Small, software-defined manufacturing cells could make localized production less eccentric and more default.
- • Products with heavy branding but generic bill-of-materials profiles look increasingly vulnerable.
- • Logistics moats still matter, but their margin for arrogance should narrow.
- • Open-source production recipes can pressure both price and product differentiation.
Printed electronics and PCB tooling
PCB fabrication, chip packaging, and increasingly automated electronics assembly continue shrinking the distance between prototype and local production.
- • Incumbents with hardware lock-in should be evaluated against a future of much cheaper custom electronics.
- • Pick-and-place automation lowers the coordination cost for distributed manufacturing cells.
- • The most durable hardware moats may migrate toward fabs, ecosystems, and compliance rather than assembly itself.
Paper trail
Visible evidence trail
These sources shaped the scoring and writing. The site is opinionated, but it should not behave like it is improvising facts in a dark room.
Deere & Company 2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K
Deere & Company · annual report
Primary filing source for Deere's business segments, fiscal 2025 financials, operating context, and risk profile.
Reviewed 2026-05-27
John Deere Operations Center
John Deere · product page
Official product page describing Deere's online farm management and precision-agriculture data platform.
Reviewed 2026-05-27
Deere & Company (John Deere) Market Capitalization
CompaniesMarketCap · market data
Market-data source for Deere's May 2026 market capitalization used in snapshot metrics.
Reviewed 2026-05-27
AFBF Signs Right to Repair Memorandum of Understanding with John Deere
American Farm Bureau Federation · analysis
Source documenting the 2023 right-to-repair memorandum and the repair-access issue around Deere equipment.
Reviewed 2026-05-27