Harley (HOG) Buyers Go Down Scale

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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HOG

Over the past week, the 24/7 Wall St.–The Channel Checkers poll surveyed Harley Davidson dealers.  We asked the following questions:

1. What is the best selling motorcycle model right now?

2. Are they sold out of any models right now?

3. How is business compared to this time last year?

4. Has there been an increase in sales in the past month?

• 36% of respondents cited some version of the Sportster as the top selling model right now. The 09 FLXH Street Glide was seen as the top seller by 16% and 12% see the Night Train Softtail.

• 87% of respondents said they were not sold out of any models. 13% cited some models that were out of stock.

• 52% of respondents say that business is the same as a year ago. 36% say business is worse while 12% say it is better.

• 57% of respondents said that sales had not increased in the past month. 43% said they had. This mix of responses is a significant deviation from the trend we have seen across many of our covered companies in the past.

Conclusion of Channel Check:  Harley dealers continue to see demand focused on their lower end models (from a price point perspective).  Inventories appear to be sufficient to match demand.  Business appears to be the same or lower according to 88% of respondents. The 57% citing lower sales in the past month should be a concern for investors as it is a sharp deviation in this answer set versus the past few months.

For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or [email protected]

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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