BMW announced the sale of Husqvarna to KTM to dealers

[ldcleve]

I heard this morning that BMW had announced the sale of the Husqvarna brand to the president of KTM. My understanding is that there were few details regarding the change and it's effects on dealerships and owners.

[racer7]

Apparently true- plenty on the web at Bloomberg, other business sites, Cycle News, etc

BMW said they want to focus on "urban mobility and e" stuff-meaning scooters and electrics, I guess, plus they usual fare of the brand rather than Husky's type of machines.

Dirt bike sales have been in the toilet for several years now and aren't recovering well and BMW itself doesn't do a good job at plying in the pricepoint range of such machines- at their core they are a car company that survives selling high priced cages which are under increasing competition primarily from a rapidly improving VW-Audi line as well as some from Mercedes. Its easy to see why a low priced bike line with modest profit potential doesn't run up a big bunch of fans at corporate headquarters.

BMW has made a very good contribution to the Husky brand by recent models and prototype work and it will be interesting to see what happens when this is mixed in with KTM's approach to the game.

A ore immediate issue for the now substantial number of BMW dealers who have taken on the Husky line is what happens to their interest and support- I suspect most will ultimately choose to drop the brand unless somehow some of the KTM stuff comes over also. One can see a reoccurence of the prior Husky parts problems and many related issues in the future unless the transition is managed very well.

[HexST]

Not sold to KTM but the CEO of KTM who if rumors are correct is divesting KTM to even more Indian ownership.

[mika]

BMW PressClub Release: Strategic realignment at BMW Motorrad

The sale is to Pierer Industrie AG which is eponymous for principal owner is Stephan Pierer who's day job is CEO of KTM. All the speculation about KTM divesting more to Bajaj and Piere leaving may turn out to be true but European companies seem to allow for this type of thing in ways the US does not.

BMW Motorrad will take its dings form shareholders and the community for how it ran Husqvarna and its lack of performance. In many ways they deserve it. What will generally be forgotten is they most likely passed on a chance to buy it in the mid 2005 range, Husqvarna then owned by Claudio Castiglioni took a trip through Italian bankruptcy courts - Malaysian ownership - back to a Italian court supervised purchased by a group led by Castiglioni only to be sold to BMW for an undisclosed price. Regulator approval of the sale to BMW went quickly but unraveling Husqvarna from MV Agusta and labor problems took a lot longer and cost a lot more than BMW planned.

However the ownership/back of the house business works out I hope the front of the house goes better. They have some interesting products and rumors of more to be released later this year.

[BC1100S]

Its about time. Dirt bike market was, in my opinion, a bad one to try to get into.

I'd expect a slight bump in stock price.

[greenwald]

That venture didn't last long.