Well, Harley's 2015 final quarter and full year results are out, and while on face value at least it can be argued that they are not as bad as might have been feared (and some analysts have indeed tried to argue that), there is nonetheless still much to be feared.
Many a learned treatise has been published down the years trying to figure out just what exactly it is that markets really do measure through the mechanism of share price.
On a simplistic level share price is a measure of the value that a stock market places on a corporation - its market capitalization (or market 'cap' as it is known colloquially).
This conventional wisdom presupposes that there is some kind of quantifiable umbilical cord between share price performance and the performance of a given individual company.
So, as a second tier of analysis, the share price is traded in the context of the performance of other shares relative to the available capital being invested in shares on any given day, week, month or year.
If all else fails, markets fall back on what is euphemistically called "market sentiment" - which is code for "don't ask me, I've no idea what is going on"!
Analysts who are heard blaming overall market performance in the context of a foolishly claimed understanding of what is going on with so-called "macro economic" issues are fooling nobody except themselves.
In reaching for "macro economic issues" as part of the explanation for what is happening to Harley's business fortunes, is Harley's senior management saying that they don't understand what has happened to them?
Has complacency and arrogance blindsided them to the changes that have taken place around them?
The investor issues they are trying to grapple with are robbing them of the resources they need to be able to kick-start the selling of more metal. Simple. The company is so fixated on being a performing stock that it has lost sight of what has happened in its own eco-sphere of the motorcycle industry this past decade.
Avoiding this conundrum is not easy. It is a problem that often affects many top performing corporations - indeed in the post Steve Jobs era, maybe Apple is about to succumb to the same psychosis.
Addressing the concerns of investors often militates directly against being able to address long-term core business needs. One way or another, satisfying investors is all about sending money out of the company. In Harley's case this is clearly happening as an alternate to spending it on equipping the balance sheet to survive - to survive in the context of a motorcycle market that just could not be more different to the one Harley grew fat on.
'too fixated on being a performing stock'
In that market investors were quite happy to see dividends driven by sales of low grade Asian made riding leathers and aftershave.
However, at that stage Harley sat back and assumed that being able to gouge brand loyalists for premium prices was a safe foundation for the future. It may have been a safe foundation for management share options, but clearly was fool’s gold in the long-term motorcycle industry context.
The first law of business opportunity tells us that if demand has gotten to the point where consumers are future trading wait-list options on your products, then it isn't going to be long before someone comes along and offers a better cheese grater, or worse, that your cheese falls out of favor altogether. Other snack foods are available.
The 35 percent increase in product development spending is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the nature of product that Harley needs to be fielding. In that context, what sense does it make to increase the marketing spend by 65 percent on products that customers are clearly saying are past top-dead-center?
The fixation with investor value has left Harley in a fix. We can now see why the board has been so obsessed with trying to return share holder value through the mechanism of share buy-back schemes. Even though it has involved loading the balance sheet with medium and long-term debt, it has been deemed a necessary pre-emptive strike to the declining earnings per share that were headed down the pike.
With cash-flow, balance sheet, margin and earnings squeezed, the wiggle room left to be able to either raise the money needed for decisive and convincing rapid new product development or acquisitions of other people's cheese graters is hugely diminished.
The word "vulnerable" doesn't begin to cut it where Harley is concerned at this time.
In the three months between the third quarter 2015 filing and the January 29th unveiling of its final quarter and full year fiscals, Harley's share price had lost over 33 percent of its value; in the 12 months since the 2014 fiscals were released it lost over 40 percent; in the less than 20 months since its five year high it has lost nearly 50 percent of its value.
Harley's results, as released, were not in fact as scary as the background mood music of the markets might have suggested. Indeed the initial release was greeted by an almost instantaneous $3 spike - what Reuters reported at the time as being a "surge" in response to the better than expected profits.
However, that lasted all of a nano-second once the surface was scratched and the hard reality of there needing to be sustainability to those profits hit home. As this edition went to press, the Harley share price looked set to tank.
In fact, these results could indeed have been way worse, but there's no question that there has been some "smoke and mirrors," copious use of exotic massage oils and blatant misdirection in the forms of words and data selected.
But, regardless, they at least don't show a company irretrievably headed in the wrong direction, but they do show a company in need of help.
I think we have now transitioned from a position of outside involvement in Harley's fortunes being a threat, to it potentially being an advantage.
