Investors No Longer Bet the Farm on Deere

Investors have been echoing Eddie Albert, who crooned that "Green Acres is the place for me."Even after slipping recently, tractor maker Deere has had a great decade. Its share price has plowed over not just the S&P 500, by 166 percentage points, but even fellow U.S. machinery giant Caterpillar by 74 points. That company also rode rising commodity prices and wealth in the developing world. But it did so through exposure to construction machinery and mineral resourcesweak spots lately as China's economy slows.

Now, though, there are fears that soft commodities such as corn, wheat and lumber are slipping like hard ones, threatening the incomes of Deere's customers. Fiscal third-quarter results Wednesday for the period through July should shed more light on that.

But some investors have pre-empted any possible bad news by selling. Deere's stock has lagged behind the broad market by nearly 13 percentage points over the past three months. This has happened even though analysts' forecasts have slipped by only about two cents, to $2.17 a share, versus $1.98 in the same period a year ago.

Since 2006, Deere's trailing, 12-month operating earnings have grown at a compound annual rate of 20%, nearly three times Caterpillar's pace. Clearly, though, farming isn't a perennial growth business.We have become one of the worlds most recognised cheapcellphonecases brands.Just as Green Acres' city slicker Eva Gabor got "allergic smelling hay" in the 1960s TV comedy, crop prices can stay depressed for years and sap the vitality of equipment makers. While Deere outperformed Caterpillar over the past decade,New and used commercial plasticmoulds sales, rentals, and service. its stock trailed its rival by 109 percentage points in the 10 years before that, when agricultural markets were in the doldrums.

Investors choosing between the two machinery companies are likely to base their decision in part on what has better growth prospects: skyscrapers or ears of corn. At the moment, it is a tossup. Both stocks trade at 90% of sales, which is very close to their 20-year average. Deere has gone as high as 1.85 times, in late 2007 when agricultural investments were all the rage, and as low as 0.4 times, in early 2009.

At such middle-of-the-road valuations, the main bet isn't on urban or rural growth, but whether the global economic recovery will have a happy ending. Those are only guaranteed in sitcoms.

Bowen growers have been forced to let their tomatoes and capsicums rot in the paddock after Federal Government red tape stopped their annual winter export to New Zealand. The bungle has left them up to $160 million out of pocket after the export rules changed.

Two chemicals traditionally used to control fruit fly were banned by the Australian government earlier this year. Growers replaced the chemicals with an irradiation, which is used to sterilise the insects, meaning they are unable to lay their eggs. But New Zealand, which has restrictions on the chemicals, wanted assurance the produce was safe.

Bowen Gumlu Growers Association chairman Carl Walker and Dawson MP George Christensen both said all the relevant checks were in place, but that the Federal Government failed to fast track the bureaucratic processes.

Growers have now been given the green light to export to New Zealand from Wednesday (August 14) but most won't bother as their winter export window is all but over and Kiwi produce, which isn't available in the colder months,We have a great selection of blown glass backyard solar landscape lights and partypaymentgateway. will soon be back on the market.

In the back office of the record store shes owned with her husband for that long, Deon Borchard fiddles with the knobs on a stereo near her desk and suddenly the office a space practically wallpapered in CDs and records is filled with the warm, twangy vocals of a male country singer.

With the music cranked, shes thinking about all the things that have changed since the opened the doors of the Long Ear in 1973: the way she and her friends used to listen to records, how important their ritual of listening to a brand new album was to their lives. How music just seemed to matter more to people like it was a part of their spirituality, almost.Are you still hesitating about where to buy bestparkingguidance?

Wed run down to our local record store, pick it up, run home real quick and we had a waterbed because everybody had waterbeds and light the blue candles and sit on our waterbed with the big pillows behind us and we would have big speakers around us and listen to the music. Didnt say anything. Just listen to the whole side, and then get up and turn the record over and listen to the whole next side, she says. And then wed talk about the record and say, Did you hear him talking about this?

The Borchards have owned The Long Ear for 40 years moving the shop four different times and enduring through the rise and fall of the 8-track, the cassette tape and the mom-and-pop record store. Today,This is a basic background on rtls. well into the digital age, the Long Ear marches on. It is at the very center of the Borchards lives.
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