NOW
IN OUR
™
27 EA th
R
Y
T H E L E A D I N G B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E F O R T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C U S T O M M O T O R C Y C L E A N D PA RT S I N D U S T RY
Harley Share Price Hits Seven Year
Low; Nearly 40% of Market Value
Lost in 2018, Market Cap Below $6bn
he recent instability on
Wall Street hasn’t
helped
H a rley-
Davidson’s cause. The
volatility seen in its share price
since the start of October has
seen the company looking at
starting 2019 with its share price
in the mid to upper $30.00 range
from a 2018 high of $56.50.
This represents a loss in its Market Value
of around -17 percent in less than three
months and nearly 40 percent in less
than a year (the 2018 high was $56.50
in January). A year that has seen Harley-
Davidson break cover on the most
detailed and ambitious long-term
strategic plan any motorcycle
manufacturer has ever disclosed to its
investors. A year in which Harley
continues to maintain shareholder
dividend growth and a dividend rate
that has seen it comfortably outperform
the S&P 500 investor return average for
several consecutive years.
At the time of writing, the Harley share
price had plummeted as low as to
$34.79, a seven year low. By mid-
December 2018 Harley’s Market
T
Capitalization (“Market Cap” – the real
measure of the value of a publicly
traded business) had been dragged
down to a low of $5.69bn, a drop of
over $4.6bn (nearly -45 percent) since
its March 2017 two-year high of
10.32bn; it has more than halved with
a loss of nearly -60 percent (-$8.31bn)
since its April 2014 five-year high of
$
?
2019
over $14bn.
Its all-time Market Cap high came in
November 2006, before the financial
crisis started to erode all stock price
values, at $15.34bn, when its share
price was trading at close to $74.00; the
highest its share price has been since
then was around $70.70 in May 2014.
Harley’s share price dropped to below
$8.50 in March 2009, the recessionary
low-point for most of the shares of the
then listed corporations who are
currently still in the S&P 500; at that time
Harley’s Market Cap dipped as low as
$1.62bn.
There is no question that the volatility
seen on Wall Street since the start of
October, as markets appear to lurch
unsteadily between Bear and Bull, has
been a major factor in the instability of
Harley-Davidson’s own market fortunes.
But it is far from being the only factor.
Harley-Davidson has been more
exposed than many to the wider
economic and geo-political concerns
that are also creating an environment of
unease and uncertainty – tariffs
especially.
In the course of 2018 successive short-
term Harley share price rallies have
proven to be just exactly that, short-
term. Quarterly shipment/retail
numbers have overshadowed the EPS
news, and the ‘More Roads’ strategic
plan, and then later in the year, the
MY2019 announcement also failed to
move Harley’s needle in any
meaningful sense.
Continues on page 6 >>>
‘SPEEDSTER KING’
Widely admired for it 'swoopy' 1930s retro meets science
fiction, gallery grade avant-garde stying, Orkonyi Károly
(Hungary) pulled third place in the 2018 'AMD' - making it
three out of the top four for Eastern and Central European
custom builds! See pages 32/33
JAN 2019
ISSUE #234
2018
HOW WAS
IT FOR YOU?
J&P CYCLES
ULTIMATE BUILDER
IMS NEW YORK
MOTO BEACH
CLASSIC