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Shake up at Harley Davidson, CEO/President steps down

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Sales have been declining for several years.

Dealerships have invested heavily in merchandising to wealthy but aging motorcycle riders and the 'culture' of H-D. New models are aimed at a different demographic, which is not in tune with the traditional motorcycle culture that had previously been dominated by H-D.

But the sales and the stock value have both been declining.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/c...-down-after-five-year-sales-slump/ar-BB10xf0Q

Harley-Davidson CEO Steps Down After Five-Year Sales Slump

(Bloomberg) -- Harley-Davidson Inc. is starting the week in search of a new boss, seeking someone who can stem years of declining sales at the iconic American motorcycle maker just as it’s starting to roll out some new products.

Chief Executive Officer Matt Levatich unexpectedly stepped down Friday, parting ways with the board after a 26-year career at Harley-Davidson -- including five years as CEO in which the company lost more than half its market value. Chairman Jochen Zeitz will fill the job for now, the company said after the close of business Feb. 28.

Harley shares fell as much as 2.3% to $29.77 shortly after the open of regular trading Monday as investors prepared for change at the Milwaukee-based manufacturer.

“An external hire that can look at the business with fresh and critical eyes is needed,” Joseph Spak, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote to investors. That said, “the stock could be in limbo until a new, permanent CEO is named.”

Levatich had been wrestling with several headwinds as CEO, including an aging customer base in the U.S., its biggest market, and heightened tariff costs from President Donald Trump’s trade wars. Harley’s first electric motorcycle, LiveWire, won positive reviews but has yet to kick-start sales or help it achieve greater market share abroad.

Harley was caught flat-footed by competition from more affordable, lightweight bikes as heavy motorcycles like the one Marlon Brando rode in the movie “The Wild One” went out of style, said David MacGregor, an analyst at Longbow Research in Independence, Ohio.

“They’re finally figuring it out, but they’re three years behind the curve,” he said by phone. “The board members and investors were just not willing to wait.”

The new CEO will come aboard as Harley is entering new segments with less expensive middleweight bikes, small displacement motorcycles for Asia, and a slew of electric bikes. It’s also been trying everything from tweaking its iconic logo to acquiring a kids e-bike company to attract younger riders.

Even with the yearslong slump in sales, “the timing of the leadership change ahead of major new product launches scheduled over the next few years” was a surprise, analysts Sharon Zackfia and Tania Anderson of William Blair & Co., wrote in a note.

Road to Recovery?

Harley’s shares have plunged 18% this year through the close Friday, and its $4.6 billion market capitalization is down by more than half from when Levatich took over.

U.S. sales dropped for a fifth straight year in 2019. That period covers most of Levatich’s tenure as CEO, which began in May 2015. Retail sales in the U.S. have risen only once in the past 21 quarters. That inability to spur growth presaged an earnings miss when Harley reported its latest quarterly results in January.

a close up of a piano: Harley Hurting © Bloomberg Harley Hurting
Levatich expressed confidence recently that the company was on the road to recovery. “Our return to growth is not in the distance -- it’s right around the corner, and 2020 is our pivotal year,” the CEO told investors on a Jan. 28 earnings call.

His departure comes after the company moved in January to grant long-term shareholders the power to directly nominate board members, a concession meant to boost investor influence.

Millennial Scooters

Harley’s effort to invest in new products to appeal to a younger demographic has added pressure to margins. To help find younger buyers, Levatich hired the company’s first-ever brand president last April, only to dismiss him six months later, citing unspecified conduct that didn’t align with its corporate culture.

The stock staged a recovery in late 2016 when a new engine briefly boosted U.S. sales volumes and Levatich, 55, announced a restructuring plan designed to save the company millions. But that boost proved short-lived.

“They had it, they lost it, they got it back and lost it again,” said Ken Harris, co-founder of Cadent Consulting Group, a Chicago-based marketing and sales consulting firm. “When people aged out, they had no one to replace those buyers.”

“A millennial would rather have a powered scooter than a Harley Davidson,” Harris said. “I’m not surprised that they had to make a change.”

...​
Go to the link above for the remainder of the story!
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
And what we know about the new ACTING chief operating officer at HD:

FULL story at link ==> https://advrider.com/jochen-sustain...utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=03_05_2020
What we know about the new H-D CEO Jochen ‘Sustainability’ Zeitz
Is the Motor Company dipping its collective toe into a brand-new future?



There’s blood in the water in Milwaukee. As ex-president and CEO Matt Levatich disappears beneath the wine-red waves, mortally wounded by the Great White Shark of the stock market, the Motor Company is looking for a bigger boat. In fact, they may already have found it in Levatich’s so-far ‘acting’ replacement, Jochen Zeitz.

My first encounter with Matt Levatich was at a press conference at the then-H-D owned MV Agusta factory in Varese, northern Italy. Levatich, who was The Man From Milwaukee, shared the podium with the legendary, not necessarily in a good way, Giovanni Castiglioni and the body language was astounding. The two men faced noticeably away from each other and each refused to acknowledge the other. Castiglioni interrupted and contradicted Levatich, who bore the, in my opinion, boorish behavior, without acknowledging it. Castiglioni would later buy MV Agusta back from H-D.

I formed a high opinion of Matt Levatich, and although even he couldn’t effectively manage the local legend on his home turf, he clearly gave it the ol’ team try. Speaking to him recently when he visited Australia, I saw no reason to change that opinion. In the speech he gave at the press conference, he struck just the right note by asking the attending journalists to encourage people, especially young people, to consider motorcycling by making more of its fun, recreational elements than the decline of the industry.

Levatich had been president and CEO since May 2015 and was president and COO before that. He had paid his dues, and the Board clearly felt that he was on the right track with ‘More Roads to Harley-Davidson’. Unfortunately, the stock market disagreed.

With Harley’s bike sales in the USA last year being the lowest in 16 years, Levatich was fighting an uphill battle with changing demographics and young riders demanding bikes that are very different from H-D’s traditional large cruisers and touring motorcycles.

Harley-Davidson share price has nearly halved during Levatich’s tenure, but that was not entirely on his plate. The Motor Company had been ignoring the growing trends in the motorcycle industry for decades. In fact, it was Levatich’s outreach to younger riders, the creation of non-cruiser motorcycle offerings, and the introduction of a full-sized electric motorcycle that seemed to be pointing to a successful future. But falling sales figures, and a similarly fated balance sheet, have raised concerns amongst investors, and that is always a terminal blow for CEOs at publicly traded companies.

“The Board and Matt mutually agreed that now is the time for new leadership at Harley-Davidson,” said Harley-Davidson board member Jochen Zeitz in HD’s press release. “Matt was instrumental in defining the More Roads to Harley-Davidson accelerated plan for growth, and we will look to new leadership to recharge our business.” The implication is clear – Levatich was yesterday’s man.

Zeitz will take on the title of acting president and CEO, while Harley-Davidson begins a talent search for a permanent posting. According to Wired.co.uk, who late last year published a lengthy article about him and his work with H-D, he used to be known as the ‘Sustainability Taliban’, an apparent reference to his devotion to the sustainability cause. (An aside: The article’s timing is interesting).

The same article stated that Zeitz was the driving force behinds Levatich’s pivot to sustainability …

When Zeitz was encouraging Levatich to think about sustainability, for example, he focused not just on the moral justification for electric engines, but on the needs of Harley-Davidson customers to have healthy natural landscapes in which to ride. Levatich remembers talking about “what every rider loves about the ride – it’s the environment they’re riding in, isn’t it? After that, it was easy to get brand alignment, and then you’re right into using that argument to support [sustainability] as part of the brand.” Eventually, Harley-Davidson devised a new mission, turning the brand’s historic celebration of freedom into a desire “to preserve and renew the freedom to ride”.

Zeitz has an incredible track record. Now in his mid-50s, he became the CEO of Puma in 1994 at the age of 30. The brand went from near bankruptcy to one of the world’s largest sporting brands. More recently he co-founded a charitable foundation with Richard Branson to promote sustainable business practices and written a book with a Benedictine monk: ‘The Manager and the Monk: A Discourse on Prayer, Profit and Principles”. Could he bring the same success to H-D?
....
 

Bannedjoe

Well-known member
IMO, Harley once had a definition of it's own, but maybe even then it was an experiment.
Harley appears to keep reinventing itself eternally.
It once represented rough, tough, dirty drug dealing gangs all the way up to corporate AMF, to employee owned, to now the PC electric green ecology minded millennial dweebs.

I have never wanted an oil drippy, ear piercing, spend every extra minute turning a wrench Icon of a bike.
I have never understood the attraction, nor the marketing mystique gobbled by the masses.

Then again, I own a Victory.
Harley engines have over 60 some odd seals, and gaskets.
Victory's have about 8.

The Victory has been put to sleep.

The Harley, is still almost alive, but on respirator holding its last breath before God know what.

Nothing makes sense.
 
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