Quote:
Originally Posted by Efthreeoh
Just reading the tea leaves. Motorcycle sales are way down across the industry. Even Harley is closing dealerships.
Reference: Polaris spun off Indian as a new independent corporation late in 2025. Indian was bought by a private equity company. Polaris' press release said Indian was just 7% of its overall corporate revenue, which prompted the sale. If Indian was making a profit for Polaris, why dump the brand? Why was 7% not enough to keep interest in a powersports brand? Polaris created Victory from the ground up, which made great bikes that were competitive with the Metrics, only to kill it after it resurrected Indian. I get that, not enough buyers to keep two American motorcycle brands. But the original Indian company was defunct by the mid 1950's and barely any riders by the mid 2000's (2011) were old enough to really appreciate the nostalgia of the Indian brand. It never made sense to me that Polaris resurrected Indian when Victory in the mid-2000's was doing well and making competitive bikes against the Metrics and Harely. At least Harley has been in continuous operation since its inception, but its customers are aging out now as well.
If Indian wasn't generating profit for Polaris how will a private equity company make it profitable? Logic would pose that keeping a powersports motorcycle company within the corporate umbrella of a powersports company as large as Polaris to share management, engineering, manufacturing and supply chain resources makes financial sense.
In the mid to late 2010's if my then 15-year-old Valkyrie wasn't still competitive within the market, I would have bought a Victory touring bike, I liked many of their models. They were fresh and different from Harley.
In my view, spinning off Indian is not a good sign. IMO of course.
|
Carolwood LP is now the private equity owner of Indian. Carolwood has a number of portfolio companies that have nothing to do with motorcycles, vehicles or industrial machinery. To them it's just business. Strip Indian expenses down, engineer cost out of the product, shut off capital investment, reduce the workforce with emphasis on white collar reductions, and try to make a go of it. Private equity 101 for a manufacturing investment.
If Indian doesn't work out for Carolwood, they will sell what remains of the company, which is usually the brand (trademarks) and intellectual property (engineering drawings). Factories and real estate often get sold-leased back shortly after an ownership change to generate liquidity (cash), so post-Polaris, fixed assets like these would likely be worth close to zero.
Production machinery is not special in most industries and much of the componentry is outsourced to third parties anyway. Car, truck and motorcycle companies are simply bolting bits together and putting a few decals on. Frame welding and painting is kindergarten-level technology and anyone can do it, and can be outsourced.
A new buyer, likely Asian, will buy it and pump in new capital investment and the story continues.
Separately - what a poor strategy and marketing decision of Polaris to engage in the waste of shareholder resources to support two overlapping motorcycle brands. Especially when they did one "the hard [expensive] way" which was the ground-up genesis of Victory. I have some special knowledge of PII and it is not flattering from a business point of view.