Deere & Company

Intangible assets and brand: 90/100. Deere’s premium brand, product breadth, and trusted residual values in high-horsepower tractors and combines create customer preference and pricing latitude vs peers. Distribution and service coverage are industry-leading, especially in North America.

Switching costs: 80/100. Deep integration of guidance, JDLink connectivity, Operations Center data, and now retrofit autonomy kits increases lock-in across seasons and machines, while parts catalogs and dealer workflows reduce appetite to switch.

The leap toward autonomy-enabled tillage and expanded combine automation adds software entanglement that accumulates value with use. Network effects: 55/100. Agronomic data sharing and cloud tools have some network effects at the field and fleet level, but the benefits are mostly private to each operator rather than multi-sided at Visa scale.

Cost advantage: 75/100. Scale procurement, manufacturing footprint, and Wirtgen-enabled content in construction drive lower unit costs and better absorption through cycles. Efficient scale: 70/100. Large-ag equipment markets have limited credible global entrants, and dealer territories and installed-base dynamics discourage fragmentation.

Offsetting forces include AGCO’s PTx Trimble mixed-fleet precision platform that lowers vendor lock-in across brands.

Weighted moat view: Multiple moats led by brand/dealers/parts and rising switching costs in precision ag and autonomy support an overall durable but not impregnable position, given right-to-repair and mixed-fleet tech competition risks.