Polaris Industries Inc. declared a regular quarterly $0.60 per share cash dividend payable on December 17, 2018 to shareholders of record at the close of business on December 3, 2018.
Eric Cagle left Tucker after two years as President, being temporarily replaced by interim MAG CEO Mike Buettner. “The change in direction represents a shift in philosophy with a focus on better serving Tucker dealers and vendors.” Cagle’s departure came in September, some weeks before Greg Blackwell’s appointment to Tucker as Snr Sales & Marketing VP and Hugh Charvat as the new MAG CEO.
Harley has announced that it is selling apparel and riding gear on Amazon. Harley is blaming the annoying habit that Boomers have started to develop of, you know, kind of dying out, as forcing them to have to explore new channels and find new audiences and buyers - “we live in an on-demand, anywhere, anytime business environment where success depends on the ability to meet consumers on their terms and on their turf” (so not under the turf then!).
EU motorcycle registrations by month for 2018 Q3 were 108,874 units in July (100,029 in 2017), 77,488 units in August (68,086 in 2017) and 82,897 units in September (76,611 in 2017).
BMW Motorrad’s worldwide sales were down by -0.8% (126,793 units) for the first 9 months of 2018; September sales were +0.2% (14,124 units).
Mentor, Ohio based Race Winning Brands (RWB), the vehicle established by New Your based equity investor Kinderhook to hold and operate its acquisitions in the powersports and motorsports markets (Wiseco, JE Piston, Rekluse, ProX etc), has announced the acquisition of Falicon Crankshaft Components of Clearwater, Florida. Founded in 1977, Falicon offers both off-the-shelf and custom-made race engine components. Former owner, Glenn Salpaka, will continue to play a technical and operations consultancy role.
Brembo will be the exclusive ‘Official Brake Supplier’ for all the Energica bikes in the inaugural MotoE Championship. The fully electric single brand competition will be staged at five European circuits for the 2019 World Championship, together with MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3.
Giovanni Castiglioni has been ousted as MV Agusta Chairman and CEO, with Russian oligarch’s son Timur Sardarov taking the reins following an additional £35m capital injection by ComSar Invest and its parent Black Ocean Group - the private equity investment vehicle operated by multi-billionaire oil and gas magnate Rashid Sardarov. Castiglioni has been appointed as company president.
For those looking for underlying ‘tells’ that presaged the October and November uncertainty on Wall Street - the S&P 500 didn’t record a single move up or down of more than 1% during the third quarter of 2018. That hasn’t happened since 1963, according to LPL Financial, and marked a slide for the index from growth to stable. Harley is in the prestigious S&P 500.
Indian Motorcycle was 11th in market share terms in Switzerland (home to its European corporate headquarters) for the first eight months of 2018, having sold 363 units there (up from 268 for the year ago period).
Sources: AMD, IDN, FT, Reuters, PSB, MPN, B&B, BDN, MCN, AP, Bloomberg, MNW
