Martin H. Richenhagen
Analyst · Stephen Volkman with Jefferies
Yes. Well, first of all I think I'm not as concerned. People talk about farm bills in Europe and things like that. But it's nothing new for the European farmers. I think the big professional guys know how to handle it. And it could even generate some additional demand for smaller tractors in the small tractor -- for small farm segment. So overall, I'm pretty -- first of all, order books are still pretty strong. I'm pretty optimistic that also next year will be a good year. It's too early to talk about it. So everybody try to find out what's going on next year. We start at planning in October, and we will come to Wall Street in December and talk about it more in detail. But I think overall, the advantage of AGCO versus some of our other competitors is our very balanced global footprint. So that means due to the fact that we are so strong in South America this year, we can benefit from it. I personally believe that Europe will come back because some of the issues in Europe are very much related to bad weather conditions. I've been in -- I will be in England next week. So when you go to Ireland, Scotland, England, so they were really hit by a very rainy and cold spring. And so that also did hit them financially. Same a little bit for the Nordic countries. And then in Eastern Europe, some of the retail finance programs come in a little late and people, farmers, are sitting there and waiting before they place orders. So that means for the future, I would expect Europe to be up. I think that farm income in America, for American farmers, is very strong. So you recently certainly heard about a certain input cost going down in the area of fertilizers and also pesticides and chemicals. So therefore, what matters is not only commodity prices, which are still on a pretty high level, but also what [ph] factors in our lower cost for inputs. So that means overall, I think farmers will have another very good year in 2014, to me looks pretty stable. And you know, for me, I always make the statement that the farm business and our industry is not cyclical anymore. Because I'm in that business for more than 20 years, and I wasn't facing any cycle. And when the financial crisis came in, we did do much better than anybody else. So therefore, when you talk about cycles, rather talk to the car guys or the truck industry or people like that. Or maybe ski gear, they are very cyclical because they sell mainly in winter.