AGCO have just announced their sales figures for the second quarter (Q2) of 2025 and the good news is that the news is not as bad as in Q1.

The reported net sales for Q2, ending June 30 2025, were of $2.6 billion, a decrease of 18.8% compared to Q2 2024.

This compares to the Q1 2025 decline of 30% reported back in April.

However, the comparison is distorted somewhat by the one-off sale of AGCO majority stake in its Grain & Protein business, which raised $490m in the spring of 2024, thus exaggerating the decline.

The decline in sales was most marked in North America, which showed a near 33% drop, while here in Europe the fall was just 5.1%. South America performed least badly of all, with just a 4.0% drop.

The picture for regional operating margins performance was not quite so bleak, with Europe and the Middle East achieving a 14.7% increase.

North America showed only a decline of 5.3 and South America was up 7.8%, with a 6.9% boost for Asia, Pacific and Africa.

Eric Hansotia, chairman, president and CEO of AGCO put this somewhat less glum margin performance down to a strong earnings and cashflow generation.

He also mentioned the progress being made in reducing dealer and company inventories through aggressive production cuts.

This included the reported suspension of production at Beauvais for a month over last Christmas and New Year, with workers returning to partial employment only.

The company also announced last October that there would be a 6% reduction in the factory's workforce in 2025.

AGCO noted in their statement that in Western Europe, retail tractor sales declined 12% during the first six months of 2025 with double digit percentage decreases across most markets except Spain and Italy, which both saw modest growth.

The company might also have mentioned that Ireland also saw a modest growth of 3% in total tractor sales for the first six months of this year, yet this was overlooked.

AGCO itself notes that it suffered an 11.2% decrease in tractor sales during this period.

AGCO's board of directors have also authorised a new share re-purchase programme allowing the company to buy up to $1 billion of its common stock.

How much of this will be directed to reducing the shareholding of TAFE in AGCO after the settlement of their differences in June was not disclosed.