Fast Motorcycle Industry News

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Captain America Chopper. From $1.62 Million To No Sale.  This last weekend, friend of the industry Paul D’Orleans from “The Vintagent” states that the “buyer” of the Captain America bike auctioned in October for $1.62 million would have backed out. The reason? A series of tweets by Peter Fonda – who had previously endorsed the machine – casting doubts on the bike’s authenticity sold by Michael Eisenberg. D’Orleans claims that the seller went to great lengths to support the sale, hiring a forensic investigator and even subjecting Dan Haggerty, who restored the bike, to 3 polygraph tests which he passed. What was certified by Haggerty as genuine was only the “B” the bike frame used in the movie final stunt and built by Larry Marcus and Ben Hardy. The rest of Haggerty’s restoration would be only a reproduction of the ‘A’ (or hero) bike, long ago stolen and dispersed.

Royal Enfield Wants To Become The Worldwide Leader In the Mid-Sized Motorcycle Segment. The company is on an aggressive expansion mode. After shortening the waiting period for some of its models from around 10 months to five months, Royal Enfield is looking for new ways to ramp up production at its two current facilities in Indian and launched plans for a third plant construction. In 2013, the company produced over 170,000 motorcycles and in 2014 should manufacture a total 300,000. Royal Enfield reported a 47.45% increase in total sales in October 2014 at 26,039 units against 17,659 in the same month of last year. Royal Enfield also made it clear that the North American market is the main export market they have set their sights on. Royal Enfield Motors, which claims to be the world’s oldest motorcycle company in continuous production, is pursuing a comeback in the US with assistance from Rod Copes, who previously led Harley’s efforts in Asia and other emerging markets.

Harley-Davidson (CEO Keith E. Wandell Sold 50,000 Shares Of Harley-Davidson Stock. In a transaction dated Monday, November 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $69.32, for a total transaction of $3,466,000.00. Following the completion of the sale, Wandell now directly owns 34,908 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,419,823. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC.

16 Responses to “Fast Motorcycle Industry News”


  1. 1 paul Dec 2nd, 2014 at 10:40 am

    It would seem everyone here bashing Michael Madsen a few weeks back were wrong.

  2. 2 BobS Dec 2nd, 2014 at 10:58 am

    Does it strike anyone else as odd when a CEO unloads his stock in the company he is running?

  3. 3 CW Dec 2nd, 2014 at 11:21 am

    I think Royal Enfield would be smart to produce some kind of adventure platform in their engine class

  4. 4 Rodent Dec 2nd, 2014 at 1:36 pm

    BobS
    he still has 2 & half million worth of Harley. He probably invested the money from the sale into Polaris stock

  5. 5 BigWave916 Dec 2nd, 2014 at 3:20 pm

    Bob S. I don’t think its odd but if I owned a bunch of H-D stock, I’d be sure to search for other SEC Form 4 filings by other H-D executives. Could be that Wandell was taking a profit on stock he probably bought for about $55 a share. Maybe he’s building a 4 million dollar mansion and needed the cash.

    I ran into Earl Werner when he was VP of Engineering years ago. I asked how he was doing and he told me he was $200,000 over budget on his new house. Broke my heart. He was more over budget than my house cost me. It must be tough to knock down that kind of bucks.

    A lot of executive compensation is tied to stock options so I wouldn’t consider it odd unless there is significant acitivity by the senior management and its all going in the same direction and they are unloading all or most of their holdings. This is relatively easy to find out since form 4 filings are public record to prevent/discourage insider trading.

  6. 6 Rodent Dec 2nd, 2014 at 3:38 pm

    Maybe Wandell was hedging his bets and selling some HD stock to buy Polaris.

  7. 7 fuji Dec 2nd, 2014 at 4:10 pm

    Polaris and Eicher parent Royal Enfield of India to my understanding have joined hands to produce various vehicles including a middle weight motorcycle and possibly a V twin.

    Both company’s CEO’s have openly mentioned a joint venture. Talks go back as far as 2007 as I recall.

  8. 8 BigWave916 Dec 2nd, 2014 at 5:16 pm

    I looked up the form 4 that Keith Wandell filed and it was for stock option that allowed him to acquire 50,000 shares at $22.63 per share and sell at $69.32 all on November 24th. According to the form he still has over 120,000 shares that he currently owns. That’s about $2.3M profit.

  9. 9 1500TC Dec 2nd, 2014 at 5:29 pm

    The guy need some black friday/cyber monday cash and he probably invested the rest of money from the sale into Polaris stock, apple or for long tern oil stocks

  10. 10 BobS Dec 3rd, 2014 at 11:08 am

    All kidding aside I think it’s a bad sign. He makes 10mil or better a year so I doubt he needed the money for black friday shopping. From just a little guy perspective, why would a well paid CEO sell a huge chunk of stock in his company unless he thought his company was not going to perform well and the stock would lose value? If he thought his companies brightest days were ahead, wouldn’t he hold that stock? I’m sure there are other good reasons I’m not seeing but it just doesn’t look good from where I sit.

  11. 11 BCinSoCal Dec 3rd, 2014 at 11:41 am

    Do we know his age, that may have something to do with the sale. Hmmmm

  12. 12 richard Dec 3rd, 2014 at 11:54 am

    I just looked up HD (HOG) stock recommendation on buy, hold or sell. Fund analysts are recommending BUY!

  13. 13 BigWave916 Dec 3rd, 2014 at 1:27 pm

    BobS…not sure how you know he makes 10M per year. Executive compensation includes stock options, on top of base salary. All Wandell was doing was exercising an option to buy stock from the Motor Co. at $22.63 per share that could be sold immediately on the open market where he received on average $69.32 a share. He still retains 124,008 shares, plus some 34,000 restricted and he also has H-D stock in his 401K. I don’t know what he did with the $3.6M or why he decided to exercise his option on the 24th and immediately sell on the 24th. That’s what is on the form 4. If he’s worried the company is in trouble and the stock price is headed down, he sure held on to a huge chunk of stock in H-D.

  14. 14 Blackmax Dec 3rd, 2014 at 6:14 pm

    #1 Ok, we ALL pretty much thought it was a fake
    But the guy bought it anyway & that was his choice to make & his $$ to spend.
    Hey, it is what it is !!!!

    #3 Yes, that does sound very funny & I wonder what Mr Wandell
    knows that we don;t know (or have not found out yet ??)

  15. 15 fuji Dec 3rd, 2014 at 7:20 pm

    richard.

    If one bases their investments on what Fund analysts are recommending guess what ?

    They can sell you on the fact that hell has air conditioning and guess what again , you are still in hell.

  16. 16 Steve Hog Radio Show Producer Dec 4th, 2014 at 3:50 pm

    Don’t forget it wasn’t long ago when Polaris CEO sold a similar amount of stock. I am sure if you checked you would find that most if not all CEO’s who run publicly owned companies have sold off a portion of their stock in the past year or so.

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Cyril Huze