Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) is set to report its fiscal third-quarter financial results before the markets open on Friday. There are consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters that call for $1.44 in earnings per share (EPS) on $7.17 billion in revenue. The same period from the previous year had $2.33 in EPS on $8.72 in revenue.

This company has seen some headwinds from the strong dollar, but it remains a very solid long-term buy. Deere manufactures and distributes agriculture, construction and forestry equipment worldwide. The company’s Agriculture and Turf segment provides agriculture and turf equipment, and related service parts, including large, medium and utility tractors; loaders; combines, corn pickers, cotton and sugarcane harvesters, and related front-end equipment and sugarcane loaders; and tillage, seeding and application equipment, including sprayers, nutrient management and soil preparation machinery.

Deere’s Construction and Forestry segment provides backhoe loaders; crawler dozers and loaders; four-wheel-drive loaders; excavators; motor graders; articulated dump trucks; landscape loaders; skid-steer loaders; and log skidders, feller bunchers, log loaders, log forwarders, log harvesters and related attachments that are used in construction, earth moving, material handling and timber harvesting applications.

It also has a financial services division that helps with product financing, and any pickup in domestic and foreign growth would be a huge tailwind for the company.

When Warren Buffett released his holdings a week ago he still maintained his sizable investment in Deere. Buffett owns approximately 17.3 million shares which is valued in the area of $1.57 billion.

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A few analysts weighed in on Deere ahead of earnings:

• William Blair reiterated a Sell rating with a $80 price target.
• Goldman Sachs upgraded the company to a Neutral rating from Sell and raised the price target to $94 from $78.
• Global Hunter Securities raised its price target to $94 from $88.

So far in 2015 Deere shares have outperformed the market; the stock is up just over 5% year to date and up over 10% in the past 52-weeks.

Shares of Deere were down 1.3% at $90.83 on Thursday afternoon. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $89.06 and a 52-week trading range of $78.88 to $98.23.

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