I don't know if you've heard, but KTM is in some serious trouble. Aside from layoffs, insolvency hearings, MotoGP development pauses, and a culling of the board, it really hasn't sold all that many motorcycles over the last year. How many hasn't it sold you ask?
How does a year's worth sound? Or to put it into actual numbers, 265,000 unsold motorcycles. Low wolf whistle...
According to the German publication Der Standard, the number came out during the company's insolvency hearings, in which creditors, stakeholders, and an insolvency judge, decided on the future of the company's restructuring plan. In these proceedings, lawyers argued that the vast majority of the issues that led to KTM's insolvency were based on management decisions, including those around overproduction. "In his presentation, lawyer Vogl also went into the causes of insolvency and also worked out a number of management errors," reads Der Standard, adding, "In 2023, sales had increased; although demand had decreased, motorcycle production was not reduced. From the resulting storage structure, the liquidity requirement increased by around 440 million euros between January 2023 and October 2024. More than 265,000 motorcycles are now in stock – that's how many are usually sold in a year."
Nope, news to me. 🙃
With the lack of sales that could be a 2-3 year supply. Time to mothball the factory.
Pretty crazy we have to collapse of one of the main players but none of the media wants to talk about it! But hey we got a feature of moto moms go figure?
I'm just waiting to see how they pull off "the fire sale." Selling that many bikes quickly in this market is going to be tough.
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I think the notion of them being a full year behind on inventory might be a bit extreme. I’d expect them to have around 3-6 months of inventory available for sale at any given time, and in 2023 their worldwide units sold number was around 380,000. So you’d sort of expect them to have at least 150K units for sale, give or take, and that would mean that they might have 100K-125K ‘extra’ inventory units, or about 4 months or so. Not quite as drastic of an overstock situation as it sounds like if you start with 0 inventory as the target.
The worst part is half of them are a liability they have to move before they can collect a dime. $8.5K inc. fees for a ‘24 white 350.
That number of over a quarter-million un-sold KTM Group motorcycles sitting in a warehouse somewhere seems unrealistic. I'd like to see a verifiable source for their reporting.
They can't count bikes sitting on dealer floors, because the dealers have already purchased those bikes from KTM.
Are they counting the bikes they co produce with Bajaj? even then, that amount seems like click bait speculation to me.
A lot of the unsold bikes will not meet Euro V+ standards, so cannot be sold in Europe from 1 January 2025!
Yes, a Lot of those Motorcycles don't pass emission standards , as you wrote, Last2Stroke.
That's needed for real sales.
They may get a break on that, they may not. They are applying for such a thing, it's said.
If they don't, they are in even deep(er) trouble. Many markets, require similar / matching standards as Europe.
Where would you sell such large numbers of bikes, without cutting prices to that of a loss? - that will undermine their future sales and customer loyalty.
That it's now being written (well, at least here, I've not gone chasing verification) that it's 265,000 Unsold Bikes - cripes, that's a jump from the earlier 100,000/ 130,000 / 160,000 etc. Maybe that number Still includes the E Assist Bicycles?
Heck, trying to disassemble (some) bikes for parts stock, will be a cost, and at the volumes said, well, a heck of a lot of items will just go to some sort of recycling, or, a hole in the ground.
To keep on pumping out bikes is astounding. I know of things such as commitments to materials and outside suppliers, but heck, a fair few outside suppliers may just go belly up now, with Not being paid for their products and services.
I think the last time we've seen such an oversupply / over production is when Yamaha, decades ago, announced they would "Beat Honda", and become the Worlds biggest MC Manufacturer. That ended up with warehouses around the World, stocked with various Yamaha models, and, it's been said, The Crushers being put to use. Some pictures, purporting to be of Warehoused Stock of Yamahas at the time - well, shown Years later - , made the final warehouse scene of the Arc being stored away in Indian Jones look small..........But, Yamaha were big enough / strong enough to survive.
I so hope that KTM etc can survive this self induced Nightmare, but, in a way, I have very little sympathy for Stefan Pierer and his (mis)management and his (mis)managers.
I’m thinking they are going to look for some kind of bail-out ? They might get it, concerning how many employees will get laid off, if they don't step up to assist.
I read India was trying to help with cash to keep them going, but I don’t remember where I read it.
The article cites Bajaj as one of the three investors willing to add 700 million to the pot. Bajaj already owns a little over 37% of PMG.
It's also been discussed here in the other KTM threads.
Dealers have until Dec 2025 to move stock.
Any left, they will register in Dec, sell to themselves, and re-sell in 2026 as used bikes.
Most will be gone long before then however, for cashflow reasons.
Already 12months ago KTM were predicting weakened consumer demand, yet they carried on producing at full tilt. Creditors may well question why.
Thanks. I’ve lost track. There’s been so many articles on it.
Euro 5+ applies to brand new road legal motorcycles sold after 1st January 2025 in EU.
Sure it adds to the pain, Europe was at 44% of PMG sales in H1 2024. Then substract non-homologated bikes, road/off-road ratio of 60/40 but part of off-road bikes are still homologated so a rough estimate could be that road-homologated bikes sold in Europe account for a third of PMG global production. Now at every such change in emissions regulations, dealers plate a lot of bikes before the end of the year and then sell them as "used 0 km" under previous regulations, expect this to happen on an industrial scale this year!
I wonder if some of the problems have been created by the demand for better product, bikes used to be every 1-2 years I would sell to buy a new one. They were affordable and by then pretty well worn out to try another season. Fast forward to around 2008 - 2010 the KTM 4 strokes as well as some other brands became super reliable and you could run them hard for several seasons. Now getting into the last 4-5 years these bikes have gotten even better and probably on the level of a works bike 15-20 years ago. Now the prices keep getting higher but the same time the bikes keep getting better, the common man now I think buys a bike every 4-5 years and some when they spend 14K think this may be my last one. So the overstock are bikes a lot of us have no interest in because the bikes we currently ride are still great. Of course to Pro's get new ones but really not enough Pro's to sell hundreds of thousands of bikes.....just a thought.
Your avg broke dick dirt bike purchaser can’t afford a $500/mo DB payment plus a $800/mo F-150 to haul it in. And everything else that is sky high right now. All toys are hurting…
Ultimately inflation has outpaced performance gains. The Fed say’s no more free money.
The time has come for the MFG’s to tighten their belts. Unfortunately KTM’s pants have already fallen down and it turns out they went commando.
KTM is toast, those nunbers are insurmountable. It's time to face the music.
Pit Row
If you build your house of cards big enough an ant fart can bring it down.
I got a 17 350 brand new off the floor for 7800. If that deal comes back I’m buying two.
The problem is this 265k aren’t the bikes that people want. I would be really surprised if there are many 350sxf or 300xcw in that inventory list
I'd sure like to see a breakdown by model on that. I'm betting thats a bunch of 390's and other street stuff and not dirt bikes. My local dealers are all mostly sold out of 24's now with all the deals. Will be interesting to see when they start the fire sale on 25's but there really isn't a ton on the floor that I've seen. I wish I was in the market for a freshie, the deals I've seen are incredibly hard to resist.
I agree, even if they could find a buyer for all of the assets, I think they would still be 1 or 2 bl. short.
I did read the average cost/unit is $10K retail with a build of $6K. The bigger issue is moving the bikes they already got paid for.
Yes,once again I agree, the only way I would buy one would be if it was just to cheap to pass up. I don't think we will see a 5k fe, but that would do it for me.
Not sure if that's what you meant but this is a very good argument for restructuring instead of bankruptcy.
The face value of assets and what people would be willing to pay for aren't the same thing. For instance who would buy 100s thousands of unsold 2024 bikes? How much would it cost to move and sell them? Through which dealer network? And the list goes on.
A lot of unsold 2024 street models listed here with reduced price. Not so much dirt bikes
https://www.nettimoto.com/en/listAdvSearchResult.php?id=32184519&tb=tmp…
The problem for Pierer is if it's worth 2 Bil to somebody without the debt you do the math. Are the creditors going to take 1Bil or 2Bil? If he was trying for 1Bil cash injection with it C' Mon Man.
BajaJ would be better off letting it fail and buy it on the cheap. They only own 37% of a bunch of debt now and are going to put in how much more? Maybe they think there would be other bidders?
Evidently somebody likes something. They ran the stock up 40% on Friday. Maybe the fact they didn't say the doors where closing was enough to do it.
I can’t believe the number of people frothing at the mouth hoping for KTM to fail. I don’t understand why? There was an older guy on another forum gleefully talking about how KTMaction is going to be have to start liking other bikes now.
I agree with you some people bleed the brand of bike they ride and if you don't have that same brand you suck! To want a company like KTM to fail is like wanting motorsports to fail - just ridiculous mentality
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