4/19/2016
By Charles Payne, CEO & Principal Analyst

Badass Harley, perhaps the most politically incorrect of all products, is the best living example of the best political approaches and policies.

Years ago, Harley Davidson was going through one of its periodic sales slump and management made a decision to widen its customer base.  That strategy paid off handsomely. 

Management focused on being a big-tent company making efforts to promote hogs beyond its traditional and aging customer base.  The move also meant finding buyers beyond the United States.

Company statement says it all:

In America, for the eighth straight year, Harley-Davidson was the number-one seller of new on-road motorcycles of all displacements to:

• Young Adults ages 18-34
• Women
• African Americans
• Hispanics
• Caucasian men ages 35

Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan implemented tariffs to slow the rapid growth of Japanese motorcycles that threatened to put Harley out of business.   A few years later, Harley asked for those tariffs to be removed because it needed to grow abroad without reciprocal tariffs.   Today’s earnings release underscores why the company would likely never want a trade war in the motorcycle space.

International sales +4.5% while domestic -0.5%

• US -0.5%
• Canada +16.35
• EMEA +8.8%
• Asia +6.6%

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Charles Payne
Wall Street Strategies

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