https://www.barrons.com/articles/har...of2&yptr=yahoo

I trust Barron's reporting/opinion more than I do the Motley Fool and this looks bad for The Motor Company.
I know...yet ANOTHER gloom and doom post that will make some say, "We've heard this BS 1000 times before".
Still...it's an interesting article.

Here are the main points from the Barron's article:

"Mighty bike maker Harley-Davidson will continue to struggle with sputtering demand, and mounting problems lie ahead, says RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak. He fears that retail sales in the U.S. will decline 10% in the March quarter, when the Milwaukee-based company reports on April 23. That would be the ninth consecutive drop.

Harley stock (HOG) has careened down a five-year downslope from its 2014 peak near $74. This (yesterday) morning, it was up 1.4% to $36.The company’s revenue reflects its shipments to dealers, and Spak expects a year-over-year 20% drop in March-quarter shipments—steeper still than the retail drop, as Harley attempts to destock its dealers’ inventories. The troubling question, says Spak, is whether March retail sales will be even worse than expected.

RBC has been wary about Harley’s stock for years, and Spak rates the shares at Sector Perform, equivalent to a Hold, with a $34 price target. The target is 10-times the earnings he expects the company to make in 2020.

The RBC analyst is not impressed with Harley management’s plans to revive demand, including their investment of company cost-savings into the development of electric bikes.
“We continue to believe that Harley-Davidson would be better suited to let more of the savings drop down to the bottom line,” Spak writes, “and become a smaller, yet more profitable company.”

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My wife and I have bought four new Harley-Davidson Motorcycles since 2015, a 1200 Custom. a Forty-Eight, a Softail Slim, and a Heritage Softail Classic after years of riding metric cruisers. Since 2015...if we're gonna have a cruiser, it's gonna be a Harley. I still love metric sport bikes and I have a new Yamaha 600 in my garage.

I'll admit that my degrees from college are in history and religion, but I still scratch my head and wonder how people with an MBA hanging on the wall can manage to screw-up such a well established brand like Harley-Davidson so much lately.

 

HD has been screwed for years, the last thing they did right on their own was the mid 1980's Heritage Softail, that pretty much saved the company ( along with the "Honda tax on imports over 700CC's)

Other than that it has been sheer luck... the "biker build off"/OCC/Jesse James shows on TV at the same time banks were handing out home equity loans like Halloween candy

After that there was the financial meltdown that had discretionary income vaporize and a glut of low mileage used bikes hitting the market.

They managed to tread water, and sell at levels probably in the same amount they did in 2000. Overall there are half the motorcycle sales overall ( under 500K nationwide)than there were in 2007 when the economy tanked.

But they have been their own worst enemy, the Rushmores and the twin cooling were problematic, with bikes going back to the dealerships with problems before they made it to the buyers garage.

The M8 and the sumping issue is giving the core buyer reason to keep their older bikes.

Which brings us to their core buyer in the US, an aging white male, probably a Vietnam War Era Vet or in that age group.
HD has done ZERO to build a product to compete with Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki , and Honda. They have nothing that attracts anyone under 50.
Even if HD had a product it would not be cost effective. 12K buys you more Kawasaki than you will ever be able to use, and there is no water leakage, sumping, compensator issues, etc etc etc.

And even the Asian makers and others are suffering from a lack of new buyers.... there is not the enthusiasm for motorsports or motorcycles that there was even 20 years ago.

So now that HD is decades behind , they are looking to go into emerging markets and electric motorcycles where they have ZERO chance of making a dent in the sales of the existing Asian makers, or HERO, or the Korean knock offs of Japanese bikes,

Electric? A LiveWire costs more than a Ultra limited at 30K, and there are many other manufacturers that are making better product ( speed, range, time to charge to 80%) for less than half the money Lightning Motorcycle -- home to the world's fastest production motorcycle, the electric LS-218 -- knows a thing or two about high-performance bikes, and it is teasing yet another electric model that surpasses the LiveWire on virtually every metric.

Though details are still light, the new Lightning Strike promises a 150-mile range, 150 mph top speed, and a 35-minute charge to 80% at a DC fast-charge station -- and will do it all for under $13,000.

I owned a bit of HD stock at one point, and sold it off at a nice profit. I would not want to have a position in that company today.

 

Riding a Harley-Davidson is not cool anymore. That's what kept Harley in business for the last 30 years. It was cool to own a Harley. Now, it's not cool, not to mention they cost too damn much for someone with not much disposable income. I'm near a tourist town. I often take a ride there on weekends and I park my bike on the main drag. The drag is about 8-10 blocks in total. There are usually 5-10 other motorcycles parked along the street, too, with a majority of them being Harley. Then, I'll sit down at one of the tables lining the sidewalks and people-watch while drinking a cold one. I watch hundreds of people of all ages walk by where mine and other bikes are parked and I rarely see anyone even glance at the bikes. It's like they're invisible. Oh, occasionally, some guy will walk by me and say, "Nice bike", but that's about it. That tells me a lot about how much interest people have in motorcycles these days. They're just not as cool as they used to be.

 

I own a Rushmore twin-cooled Harley and have been very satisfied with the product. I've owned it for five years now and it still looks new and is a delight to take out for a spin. It did have two recalls to get a small rubber part in the clutch master cylinder but if that gets your shorts in a wad you should thank you never rode a BSA or Triumph. I traded in a Gold Wing for the Ultra Limited, but could of bought another Gold Wing, a BMW, Ducati, Triumph, etc. As a long time motorcyclist I was very aware of what the various manufacturers had to offer. I wrote a check for the Harley. Regarding Japanese bike reliability, yes that is something good to discuss. Should we discuss the footpeg that fell off the Gold Wing going down the highway because of an incomplete weld? How about the stuck reverse lock-out switch that wouldn't let it start? Maybe the braking system that would let air into the hydraulics requiring the brakes to be bleed 2 or 3 times a season. Because the rear master cylinder wasn't accessible. Or we could discuss my daughter's Honda Accord that has had the air bags recalled how many times?
I concur with the ideas that the market has changed and shrunk, and that Harley will have to figure out how to be a smaller successful company. As for Vietnam Vets and boomers timing out, yes we are. So before we go remember you still have a chance to say 'thanks' for all those times you were laying there in **** and we changed your diaper.

 

Another doom and gloom thread? Really?

 

That's funny as hell.

 

If you all are so gloom n doom on Harley's, sell you bike and be done with it instead of sharing all of your grief, hate and discontent on the rest of us that still ride and enjoy the good times of riding and such.

You all are probably a bunch of panty wearing bytches wearing HD T's with garage queens that only ride to the bar and back anyway

 

1) I don't drink, and if I did alcohol and motorcycles don't mix in my world.

2) I own TWO baggers, a TC88 and a TC103.

3) I have, as many of you have, sunk a ton of money into them. Some of that money was to fix what HD screwed up, like the chain tensioners on my TC88. Some of it was to fix what HD got wrong, namely the suspension. It is amazing how well my 03 handles with Progressive Suspension front and rear. Even my HD guru agrees my 03 handles much better than my 13 that still has stock suspension.

I also own a Kawasaki.... and I have tweaked that one to fix what I perceive to be shortfalls in the ECM,

My gripe is not so much with the bikes, the aftermarket eventually fixes what the MoCO refuses to, but again IMHO Harley as a company is in a world of hurt domestically, and they are ill equipped to compete on the world stage outside of the niche market they already have, or possibly HAD because of the tariffs being imposed upon imported HD products in other countries.

Look at GM, domestically they are in tough shape,but after they dumped some European divisions ( Saab, Opel, ...) they ( so long as the Chinese economy doesn't tank) are doing pretty well for themselves overseas. That required planning and forethought, and execution.

I have probably bought my last motorcycle.... When I move to Florida full time in the near future I'd rather have a fractional ownership position in an aircraft, or a late life crisis car like a high end Mustang of a mid level Vette. Having 3 motorcycles in Florida is impractical as after riding in New England for the last 45 years, Florida is just long, flat and boring from behind handlebars.

Harley is IE in a Chrome or Firefox world

 

You're a dimwit. How many Happy Meals did you serve today?

 

Harley has either not supervised or over-supervised their retail network of Stealerships.

In the case of the former, they allowed shoddy practices to insult, **** off and other alienate otherwise loyal customers.
In the case of he latter, they pushed out mom and pop dealerships that were cool, friendly, helpful and fostered enhanced customer loyalty and forced huge capital investments into these mega showcase dealerships that have understandably high overhead perhaps pushing them into becoming Stealerships that rape, rob and pillage at every opportunity. Be it the former or the latter - the customer looses and it has caught up with them ... on top of the other problems already referenced in this thread.

Oh, and while no machine is perfect and the MoCo has no monopoly on screwing customers when it comes to design or manufacturing defects - they just seem to have the synergistic medley of defects and customer screwing policies simultaneously ...; e.g. "they all do that" and "that's acceptable and not covered" and " .... "