It’s not the sexiest news, but this week Kawasaki Heavy Industries made a rather large change to its corporate structure, spinning out its powersports and standalone motor business into a new company, Kawasaki Motors Ltd.
For KHI, its two-wheeled and motorsport endeavors are only a fraction of the company’s core business, and they serve more as a highlight and marketing call for what the Japanese conglomerate is capable of achieving in its large machine production facilities.
Swedish electric motorcycle/moped maker CAKE has just announced the closing of a $60 million funding round, which will help the company scale its production and bolster retail and service locations for the two-wheeled brand.
According to the company’s press release, the fundraising was done via two convertible notes (financial debt instruments that can be turned into equity stakes in the company, at a later time), totaling $14 million and $46 million each.
The bulk of the financing came from Swedish pension fund AMF, while the rest of the funding came from several investors, led by current CAKE shareholders Creandum and Headline.
Harley-Davidson has released its Q2 2021 earnings report, and the results are a bit mixed for the American brand. Compared to 2020’s numbers, Harley-Davidson is showing some unsurprising gains.
As such, the North American market is up 43% compared to last year, while worldwide results bounced to a 24% gain over 2020’s figures.
The story is the same for the first six months of sales for the Bar & Shield brand, with North America up 38% compared to last year, and worldwide sales getting an 18% increase.
All of this is to be expected, of course, not only because sales were down across the board in 2020, but also because the motorcycle industry is booming in 2021. In this regard, the bar of measurement for the Bar & Shield brand is rather low.
Big sales growth numbers are going to be all the rage this year, as the motorcycle industry recoups lost sales during the pandemic, and we see a resurgence of people getting outside on two wheels.
So while the headline that Ducati is boasting a 43% increase in sales for the first six months of 2021, compared to the same time period as last year, sounds pretty impressive, the bar is pretty low.
If a motorcycle company doesn’t post double-digit sales figures for Q1 or Q2, now that is something worth talking about.
The changes continue in Milwaukee, as Harley-Davidson will make a dedicated electric motorcycle brand under the LiveWire name (similar to what the American brand has done with its “Serial 1” brand of e-bikes).
Seeming forgetting about the original Harley-Davidson Livewire motorcycle, the Bar & Shield brand says that the first LiveWire motorcycle will debut on July 8th, 2021 and show at the International Motorcycle Show a day later.
As predicted, Audi has dropped its Q1 2021 financials report, which means we get a glimpse into Ducati’s first quarter results for the year – and more specifically, which segments in Ducati’s lineup are performing (or not).
As we teased earlier this week, sales are strong for the Italian brand. Ducati is posting a 33% gain over 2020’s dismal numbers, but more importantly, Ducati still managed to show a 2% gain against the first quarter of 2019.
MV Agusta announced today that it is relaunching its brand in the United States, and leading that charge will be the new CEO of MV Agusta USA, Christian Henderson.
Henderson’s marching orders are to expand the brand’s range of services in the United States, to enhance the customer experience, and to strengthen the dealer support network.
At the end of this week, Audi will release its official Q1 report for investors, which means that on Friday, we will get to see a fairly detailed view of how Ducati Motor Holding has fared in 2021 thus far.
Why wait until the end of the week though? A&R has an advanced look at those numbers now, with the Bologna brand touting a 33% increase in worldwide sales, compared to Q1 2020.
There is good news and bad news for MotoGP. The good news is that the VR46 team will, as expected, make the full-time leap to the premier class for 2022, replacing the departing Esponsorama team.
The VR46 team has signed a five-year deal with Dorna to compete in MotoGP during the next contract period, from 2022-2026.
Which bikes the VR46 team will use is still to be determined. The choice appears to be between Ducati and Aprilia, with a decision to be made in the next month or so.
Given that VR46 are already fielding Luca Marini in MotoGP via a collaboration agreement with the Esponsorama squad, alongside Enea Bastianini, the most logical step would be for the team to continue working with Ducati.
Call it braking news (sorry, sorry) as Italian brake manufacturer Brembo has just acquired the entirety of Spanish brake company J.Juan for a reported €70 million ($85 million) in cash.
The move is said to center around Brembo’s desire to invest more in the motorcycle sector of its business, where J.Juan has made an increasing number of inroads with OEM and aftermarket fitment.
We now take a break from our usual doom and gloom when it comes to Harley-Davidson motorcycle sales, to report that the Bar & Shield brand has reported a stellar first quarter to 2021.
What we expect will the first of many motorcycle manufacturers to see strong growth in the new year, Harley-Davidson saw a 9% increase in motorcycles sold in the first three months of this year. Boom goes the dynamite.