We congratulate Bettendorf City Administrator Decker Ploehn for being selected by QCBJ readers as the Most Influential leader in the Quad Cities. His positive energy and boisterous personality have been an unmistakable force for good for Bettendorf and the entire region.
Our editorial board, however, also picks someone as the Most Influential person in the Quad Cities, and for 2024 that person is John May, CEO and chairman of Deere & Co.
Running the largest employer in the region and one of the largest companies in the world, Mr. May wields enormous influence; perhaps unlike few other people in the Midwest.
Mr. May might not be the most popular person right now because of numerous rounds of layoffs at the company over the past 12 months, which have totaled into the thousands depending on the news source.
But running a 187-year-old Fortune 100 company that is primarily tied to a cyclical industry like agriculture requires making tough decisions. That is especially true during a cyclical downturn, which the farm economy has been experiencing for the past couple of years. Combine that with an increase in interest rates and it is remarkable that Deere’s profitability remains as robust as it has been.
Deere & Co. reported net income of $1.245 billion for the fourth quarter that ended Oct. 27, 2024, or $4.55 per share, compared with net income of $2.369 billion, or $8.26 per share, for the quarter that ended Oct. 29, 2023. For fiscal-year 2024, net income attributable to Deere & Co. was $7.100 billion, or $25.62 per share, compared with $10.166 billion, or $34.63 per share, in fiscal 2023.
“Amid significant market challenges this year, we proactively adjusted our business operations to better align with the current environment,” said Mr. May in a news release. “Together with the structural improvements made over the past several years, these adjustments enable us to serve our customers more effectively and achieve strong results across the business cycle.”
The biggest criticism of Mr. May in 2024 was the incessant drip, drip, drip of layoffs rather than making a single painful cut. The anxiety of layoffs cast a pall over the Quad Cities and much of John Deere’s international footprint for part of 2024.
But like it or not, CEOs of publicly traded companies are judged primarily on how their company’s financial performance (i.e. the stock price) has fared during their tenure.
Under this metric Mr. May has done an exceptional job. When he became CEO in November of 2019 the stock was sitting around $165 and it currently sits near a 52-week high of $465, a nearly three-fold increase. By comparison, the widely cited and respected Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 stock index only doubled during that same five-year period.
We are confident that Mr. May will continue to operate Deere in a prudent manner, and we are hopeful that the farm economy will improve in 2025 so that he will not only be the most influential, but also return to one of the most admired.
