John May

John May has served as Chairman and CEO of Deere & Company since 2019, leading the world's most iconic agricultural equipment manufacturer through a technology-driven transformation. Deere makes tractors, combines, sprayers, planters, and construction equipment under the John Deere brand, with approximately 60% of US cropland farmed using John Deere equipment. The company has annual revenues exceeding $50 billion. May's strategic vision centers on transforming Deere from an equipment manufacturer into a precision agriculture technology company. Key technology investments include autonomous tractors (the fully autonomous 8R tractor launched in 2022), See & Spray technology (computer vision systems that identify individual weeds and spray them precisely, reducing herbicide use by up to 77%), GPS-guided planting and harvesting, and the John Deere Operations Center (a cloud platform where farmers analyze field data to optimize decisions). The agricultural equipment market is cyclical, driven by crop prices, farm incomes, and weather. But Deere's technology strategy aims to create recurring revenue streams through precision agriculture subscriptions and software, reducing cyclicality over time. Key stock drivers include US farm income projections, corn and soybean prices, crop planting acreage, construction equipment demand, technology adoption rates, competitive dynamics with CNH Industrial (Case IH, New Holland) and AGCO, interest rates (affecting farmer financing), and the global food security imperative driving agricultural productivity investment.