The general business climate index for the agricultural machinery industry in Europe has dropped slightly again after slight increases. In October, the index decreased from +11 points to +4 points (on a scale of -100 to +100).
Overall, the total index has now been moving relatively little in the slightly positive range for several months, without any narrowing of the spread between negative current business evaluations and positive future expectations. In many segments the upturn has still not materialized in business. Broken down by segments, business climate for harvesting machinery and tractors has improved this time, while arable equipment, transportation and components have been downgraded.
With a view to the European market side, the confidence index remains low for France, especially when broken down into the large segments of tractors, arable and harvesting equipment. Germany is not ranking particularly well for these segments either but has improved again in recent months. By contrast, confidence remains strong for other important markets, like Spain, Italy, the UK and Poland, whereby the latter appear to be losing some of their momentum again.
With regard to the direct customers of the manufacturers, the dealers, the survey has confirmed the results from April and July, that significant amounts of stock have meanwhile been sold off, resulting in stocks being below the average of the past three years across all considered European markets.
