A snapshot of bike and ATV industry share performance across key manufacturers and major global markets at the trading week closure on Friday 14 October 2022. BDN financial editor Roger Willis reports.
USA — IGNORING THE OBVIOUS
US investors kept on swerving around repeated Federal Reserve warnings that the central bank has a series of further interest rates in the pipeline. But their attempts to kickstart equity value were to no avail. So mid-October trading on Wall Street saw more extreme share-price volatility, with wild swings back and forth on an intra-session basis.
Market indices reflected this chaos. The blue-chip S&P 500 and S&P’s Midcap 400 ploughed an erratic furrow, finishing on respective 1.6% and 1% weekly losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, surged to a peak on Thursday before tumbling with all the rest on Friday — and still managed to hang onto a 1% gain. The NASDAQ Composite, afflicted by a sell-off in tech shares, closed 3.1% down.
Final nail in the optimism coffin had been September’s US consumer price index data, which showed annualised inflation running at 8.2% — a slight easing from 8.3% in August but above the Fed’s forecast of 8.1%. Core inflation, excluding food and energy prices, had actually risen to 6.6% from 6.3%, and exceeded a 6.5% expectation.
HOGOMETER
Harley-Davidson shares were busy going nowhere on this roller-coaster ride. Monday and Tuesday saw losses of 1.4% and 0.1%. Investor appetite then recovered with 0.4% and 1.6% gains on Wednesday and Thursday. A reversal of 0.3% followed on Friday, added up to a gestural weekly price increase of 0.3%.
Harley’s majority-owned LiveWire electric bike subsidiary suffered an altogether more torrid time in only its third week of stand-alone trading. Respective losses of 7.3%, 1.8% and 9.4% savaged company value through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Brief respite on Thursday delivered a 4.1% rise, before the price plunged again by 7.9% on Friday.
Prospects for the three electric biker stocks with New York listings — LiveWire on NYSE, plus Energica parent Ideanomics and Niu Technologies on NASDAQ — are all looking especially grim.
| Currency: dollar | Price | Week | Month |
| Harley-Davidson | 35.89 | +0.3% | -11.8% |
| Polaris Industries | 95.74 | -1.3% | -11.2% |
| Textron | 59.84 | -2.4% | -4.8% |
| Ideanomics (Energica) | 0.21 | -19.2% | -68.8% |
| Niu Technologies | 3.22 | -8.5% | -35.3% |
| LiveWire | 7.44 | -21.3% | N/A |
EUROPE — GERMAN CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME
A north-south divide is developing in European markets. Germany’s lavish energy bail-out for indigenous industrial titans, which has been described as “selfish” by other EU countries, is naturally very well-received on home turf. And its breadth helped to maintain positivity for Teutonic equity investors through October to date.
Frankfurt’s Xetra Dax made a second consecutive 1.3% weekly advance. However, motorcycle-related automotive stocks were mixed. Volkswagen, in particular, was menaced by trade union reps on its supervisory board rattling the company cage over threats to employment in domestic plants, from the huge input costs of a fast-track vehicle electrification programme.
Italian problems were purely political, with business nerves jangling in relation to Italy’s new proto-fascist government. In response, the FTSE MIB market index in Milan flatlined, staying shiny side up by the narrowest-possible margin of just 0.1%.
| Currency: euro | Price | Week | Month |
| BMW | 75.02 | +4.6% | +0.8% |
| Volkswagen | 162.85 | -4.2% | -17.1% |
| Pierer Mobility | 57.10 | -2.4% | -8.9% |
| Piaggio Group | 2.23 | +1.8% | -2.2% |
JAPAN — WEAK YEN ADDS TO RISK
A stand-off between the Bank of Japan and Japanese politicians over monetary policy came to the fore once again, as the yen plunged to its weakest level against the US dollar in 32 years. The previous week’s muscular 4.5% rebound for Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 completely dissolved and the index closed 0.1% in arrears. Japan’s big-four bike producers, all on the cusp of releasing quarterly corporate results, felt varying degrees of investor reserve.
| Currency: yen | Price | Week | Month |
| Honda | 3279 | -0.4% | -7% |
| Yamaha | 2935 | +3.2% | +1.5% |
| Suzuki | 4722 | -2.1% | -4.8% |
| Kawasaki | 2355 | +1.3% | -5.7% |
INDIA — LOSING THE PLOT
As the crescendo of India’s Diwali festive season approached, desultory equity trading highlighted that the party was in full swing, as the BSE Sensex 30 stock index in Mumbai posted yet another display of marginal activity, rising by just 0.3%. Festival of Lights fireworks were set to mark peak celebrations on 24 October.
But another back story was in play for the Indian motorcycle industry. Press reports have emerged suggesting that the country’s most eminent bike manufacturer Hero MotoCorp is on the verge of being overtaken in the sales charts by Honda’s local subsidiary HMSI. The shock this has engendered, given HMSI is an unlisted private company inaccessible to eager Indian investors, abruptly knocked the value of every indigenous bike maker, led by Hero’s loss.
| Currency: rupee | Price | Week | Month |
| Hero MotoCorp | 2535.90 | -3.4% | -5.6% |
| Bajaj Auto | 3570.50 | -0.9% | -3.2% |
| TVS Motor | 1078.35 | -0.6% | +5.2% |
| Eicher Motors | 3477.20 | -0.6% | -2% |
| Mahindra | 1230.30 | -0.7% | -1.6% |
CHINA — THE EAST IS RED
After a week-long public holiday, China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges reopened and it was almost business as usual, apart from Communist Party Congress proceedings casting a serious cloud over foreign perspectives of the Chinese economy and its impact on global trade.
Although the whole caboodle could have been staged to please Commie supremo Xi Jinping, markets rallied. Shanghai’s all-share SSE Composite and the blue-chip CSI 300 indices respectively finished 1.6% and 1% up. Biker stocks did well. A fortnight earlier, ten out of the eleven listings were negative. This time around, eight of them were positive.
| Currency: yuan | Price | Week | Month |
| Qianjiang | 21.80 | -3.1% | -12.4% |
| Zongshen | 6.21 | 4.2% | -3.1% |
| Sundiro | 2.52 | +3.7% | +3.3% |
| CETC (Jialing) | 13.23 | +3.8% | +4.2% |
| Lifan | 4.65 | -0.4% | -9.5% |
| Loncin | 5.06 | +12.2% | -0.8% |
| Linhai | 8.16 | +5.7% | -3% |
| Guangzhou Auto | 12.73 | +4.9% | -1.6% |
| CFMoto | 137.27 | +2.1% | -10.8% |
| Xinri E-Vehicle | 20.52 | +6% | -5.7% |
| Currency: HK dollar | Price | Week | Month |
| Jianshe | 5.14 | -1.2% | -0.6% |