Is DE a good stock to buy? We stumbled upon a bullish thesis for Deere & Company on Trevor Young’s Substack. In this article, we will summarize the bulls’ thesis on DE. Deere & Company stock was trading at $594.52 on April 20. DE’s trailing and forward P/E were 33.53 and 33.44 respectively according to Yahoo Finance.
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Deere & Company is engaged in the manufacturing and distribution of various equipment throughout the world. DE entered 2026 at the bottom of a challenging cycle, following a 2025 net revenue decline of nearly 30% to $5.03 billion. While sales of traditional, so-called “iron,” machinery face cyclical headwinds, Deere’s transition to “smart” through software, autonomy and precision farming technologies is beginning to break away from the boom-and-bust pattern.
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The first quarter 2026 results highlight this shift, with net sales increasing 13% year-over-year to $9.61 billion, driven by small agricultural and construction equipment, while net income declined to $656 million from $869 million in 1Q25 due to ongoing cyclical compression. Deere raised its full-year 2026 earnings guidance to between $4.5 billion and $5 billion, indicating that inventory pressures and high interest rates may be easing, and the stock reflects a quality premium with a P/E of ~32.5x.
The company is adopting a “Smart Industrial” platform, introducing autonomy-ready 8R and 8RX tractors capable of managing full-field operations with minimal human supervision, and expanding adoption of See & Spray™ to more than 90% in new combines, improving yields by up to 20% and reducing input costs. Deere is also generating recurring revenue streams through subscription-based and per-acre software models, providing resilience against commodity price swings.
Strategic challenges remain, including a $1.2 billion tariff hurdle and a still weak agricultural segment that is expected to decline 15% to 20% in 2026, but growth in construction and forestry equipment, supported by infrastructure spending, offers valuable protection. With a stable dividend of $1.62 per share (1.1% yield), a payout ratio of 37% and an ROE of approximately 20%, Deere presents a classic “bottom line” investment: short-term cyclical pain coupled with long-term technological leadership, positioning the stock as an attractive entry point into the evolving operating system of global food production.
Previously, we covered a bullish thesis in Deere & Company (DE) by Best Anchor Stocks in May 2025, which highlighted strong quarterly results, margin resilience near the bottom of the cycle, and expansion of its agtech stack to SaaS. The DE share price has appreciated approximately 17.03% since our coverage. Trevor Young shares a similar view, but emphasizes Deere’s pivot toward “smart,” focusing on autonomy-ready tractors, See & Spray™, and subscription-based software that generates recurring revenue.