First quarter numbers for the powersports industry are coming in, and they don’t look good. New unit sales were down more than 30% compared to Q1 of 2008. This drop is attributed to both the economic slowdown, as well as the ban on youth-designed ATVs and motorcycles with lead paint.
Dani Pedrosa has confirmed that he will be racing at Qatar for the opener of the MotoGP season. Pedrosa has been sidelined since a crash while testing, which led to him needing surgery on his leg and arm. Speaking on his blog at repsol.com, the Spaniard announced that he had decided at the last minute to head to Losail, and to risk further injury by riding.
About half of KTM’s 1,500 full-time employees will be shifting to part-time positions between May and August of this year says the . KTM said the measure would apply to all categories of employees, including white-collar employees as well as manual laborers. The move effectively eliminates two months of production, but retains the company’s workforce and manufacturing capacity in hopes of an economic rebound next year.
The move comes after KTM’s announcement a few months ago in January, which said the Austrian company would lay off 150 workers in its leasing division, and 150 core employees by April this year. KTM chief Stefan Pierer added that the company was planning to decrease production by 25 %, but said he expected business to get slightly better next year. On the positive side of the news, Pierer also claimed the motorcycle industry was in better shape to survive the recession than the car industry since more people would opt for motorcycles during a recession.
Source: Austrian Time via Hell for Leather
Supermoto Online recently . This comes just as the 2009 season is set to start on, March 22nd.
It would appear that nobody is immune from the wrath of the recession. Senior management at previously-healthy Ducati have just swallowed a ‘voluntary’10% pay decrease, and have agreed to give up their future bonuses.
It’s the Mission One. It’s the electric motorcycle the blogsphere is buzzing about. It’s green (in energy, not color…although there are a lot of earth tones going on in its design).
It’s electric. It will hit 150mph, go 150 miles, make 100 ft lbs of torque, and take 8hrs to charge on a standard home outlet. Oh, and it’s also going to cost $68,995. That’s the bike in a nutshell, but digging deeper finds there is much more to it.
Harley-Davidson has announced that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway group will invest $300 million in the motorcycle maker through a purchasee of senior unsecured notes that will mature in 2014. These funds match a similar investment by Davis Selected Advisers, L.P., which is already the largest shareholder of the company’s stock. Harley-Davidson will use the money to bolster its lending services, hopefully making it easier for the troubled motorcycle maker to lend cash to consumers. In exchange, Berkshire Hathaway will reportedly receive a lucrative 15% annual interest rate on the cash infusion.
The markets have responded to the news rather favorably, with Harley shares hitting $13.56 in trading yesterday afternoon – a 14% increase from where they started yesterday. Just about a week ago, Harley-Davidson announced a plan to shed 10% of its workforce. This move marks the first time that Buffett has ever invested in the company.
Yamaha is reporting its first quarterly loss in over 4 years, with a fourth-quarter loss of $467 million (compare that to its profit of $41 million in the fourth-quarter of 2007). Since Yamaha gets nearly 90% of its revenue outside of Japan, the strong yen doesn’t help matters much either. The yen gained 17% against the U.S. dollar in the fourth quarter, thus eroding the value of overseas sales from their usually fat margins.
It should shock few people at that is point that in 2008, Yamaha lost customers in North America and Europe as would-be buyers cut recreational toys like motorcycles out of their budgets due to the…you guessed it…credit crisis and falling home values. In response to this, Yamaha is expected to cut the salaries of its executives by as much as 20% from February to December in order to hedge cut-costs and as a sign of unification within the corporation (a common act in Japanese corporations, GM take note).
Despite this litany of bad news, Yamaha’s shares were seemingly unaffected, and closed at 880 yen at the end of trading yesterday. Also, the stock has only dropped 5.6%t so far this year. Investors are either hopefully of Yamaha’s ability to weather the financial storm or saw this coming a mile away. We’re guessing the latter.
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The 2008 financial for BMW Motorrad are in, and the verdict is CH-CHING! Despite what the economies around the world are saying, BMW sold 101,685 bikes in 2008, just .8% off of last year’s numbers. Continue reading to see the full sales breakdown, and win a free kitten.
After aquiring Indian firm JV KBX from Bosch last October, Brembo has opened the doors of its brand new plant in India this week. The plant will be dedicated to the production of disc brake systems for scooters and motorcycles between the displacement of 125cc and 250cc’s in the Indian market.
The move positions Brembo to challenge the Lombard Group, which currently holds over 50% of the market share for disk brakes of motor vehicles in India. In case you didn’t know, the Indian market is mainly composed motorcycles between 50cc’s and 350cc’s. This makes the acquisition and new factory a huge strategic move for Brembo in a rapidly developing nation.
Brembo is selling the brake products under the name Breco, which is their mark specifically dedicated for motorcycles and scooters with small and medium displacements in developing countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and in the other nations of Southeast Asia.
Brembo’s activities in India began in 1998 through a license of its technology for the production of brake discs for motorcycles to the Indian Kalayani Brakes, later acquired by Bosch Chassis Systems India Ltd., the Indian subsidiary of the German multinational of a similar name. In 2006 it was turned into KBX, the Joint Venture Joint between Brembo and Bosch.
Today is a day of waiting if your a MotoGP fan, particularly a Kawasaki MotoGP fan. With all the drama that has been surrounding the Team in Green, a meeting in Japan may define how the rest of the season shapes up. Michael Bartholemy is in Japan today for talks with Kawasaki about the level of support they can/will provide to a potential privateer team.
Support has become a major issue since Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta revealed that Kawasaki only had enough parts to see out 25% of the 2009 season, and would not be able to handle engine development or maintenance.
This issue was alleviated partially by Bartholemy announcing that he has found a French company, which could handle at least some of that support work for the racing spares. It is speculated that if he can persuade Kawasaki to hand over the entire MotoGP operation to this French company, then there is a possibility that the team could be saved.
Lastly, there is still the issue of Jorge “Aspar” Martinez, and whether he would direct and fund the operation. A have wheeled out the jump to conclusions mat on this topic, saying that he will not be involved in a Kawasaki privateer team, but the only basis for this assertion seems to be Aspar’s statement that he’d want at least one Spanish rider. To us, this issue has not come out as a deal breaker.