LiveWire Group Inc (LVWR) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Harley-Davidson 2023 fourth quarter investor and analyst conference call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call -- I would now like to turn the call over to Shawn Collins.

Mr. Collins, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. This is Shawn Collins, the Director of Investor Relations at Harley-Davidson. Today, you can access the slides supporting the call on the internet at the Harley-Davidson Investor Relations website.

As you might expect, our comments will include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters we have noted in today's earnings release and in our latest filings with the SEC.

With that, joining me this morning for the first part of the call are Harley-Davidson, Chief Executive Officer, Jochen Zeitz; also Chief Financial Officer, Jonathan Root; and LiveWire Chief Executive Officer, Karim Donnez. In addition, for the Q&A portion of today's call, Harley-Davidson, Chief Commercial Officer, Edel O'Sullivan, will be joining us.

With that let me turn it over to our CEO, Jochen Zeitz. Jochen?

Thank you, Shawn. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining today's call. In 2023, the third year of our hardwired strategy we made progress in some key elements of our strategic plan. Despite premium discretionary products being significantly impacted by the continued high interest rate environment and consumer confidence and affordability concerns, we continue to emphasize our core products and markets and invested in key priorities for the future.

We expect that focusing on our most profitable categories and geographies, emphasizing innovation and evolving the customer experience with our dealers will continue to yield benefits to the business and have set us up for long-term value creation. As seen by our meaningful per unit profitability increase of $2,400 per unit or 185% since 2019.

Looking at retail performance for Q4, retail can be better than expected, but down 11% versus prior year. It is of note that we retailed more than we wholesale globally, even accounting for early release of 2024 units. This early shipping of 24 units for logistics purposes cleared the way for an aggressive shipment schedule of our new touring offering in Q1, which is needed to start the season force with the new models.

Through Q4, we continued to outperform the market with share gain in our core categories with for touring reaching over 75% market share in the US and with large cruiser coming in at over 80%. Despite perceptions to the country, we continue to have a commanding leadership position in these core profit focus segments, well ahead of all our competitors taken together and demonstrated for a strong gross margin performance.

Revenue was down slightly for the year as we navigate the macro conditions impacting retails and work to manage dealer inventory and production challenges. Despite this our combined benefits of pricing and mixed inclusive of incentive spend yielded [seven] points of top-line growth, leading to a 1% revenue decline driven by currency headwinds.

We continue to maintain our focus on profitability with operating income margin of 13.6% in '23 versus our stocking profitability of 6.3% in 2019 on 34,000 less motorcycle unit sales and 6% revenue growth over the period.

We believe this is the clearest proof point of our strategic orientation execution in the current environment. This is a function of our multiyear pricing and mix decisions across products and geographies with core products reaching 84% of our mix, up from 78% in 2019 and a significant increase in average profitability per unit, as mentioned earlier. But more on that from Jonathan later. I will briefly address the selection of our hardware strategic pillars and our delivery of them last year. Starting with Pillar one profit focus.

We continue to prioritize mix with growth globally in our core units of Trike, CVO, touring and Softail outpacing overall retail performance. Last year, we also launched our new generation of road and street light CVOs, with this transformational product we are delivering on our hardwire promise of innovation as part of our focus on core categories, setting the stage for this year's Grand American Touring launch.

Launching our icons and enthusiasts line to our profit focus. We've been building on our commitment to introduce motorcycles that align with our strategy to increase desirability by the legacy of Harley-Davidson. If you also continued our efforts to increase awareness of the King of the Baggers racing series with Moto America, now tapping into performance touring our new product offering.

Pillar two, selective expansion. We continued to make progress in our global partnership and our venture with Hero MotoCorp, there's a solid example of innovative participation models in geographies, that matter as part of our selective expansion strategy, we've been very pleased with the exceptional reception to the venture with over 30,000 reservations to date, we will continue to look at select markets for small displacement offerings.

Pillar three, lead in electric. LiveWire continue to pioneer the EV segment through the S2 platform with Del Mar as Karim will detail later. More than one year in our decision to focus LiveWire as a separate company in EV and focus Harley-Davidson and our traditional combustion segment is proving successful with clear focus on segmentation and execution for both brands while utilizing joint synergies.

Pillar five, customer experience. With our dedication to enhancing the customer experience in line with our mission in addition to our fuel program, we continue to invest in transforming our omnichannel capabilities in pre and post purchase journey for the customers.

Additionally, we continue the evolution of our marketing approach specifically to drive dealership traffic and engagement and to improve alignment on key messages with our dealer channel as exemplified by our open houses, dealer sweepstakes and in-store rewards, we've made good progress on the execution of our distribution system, modernization for the first milestones around product visibility and recommended orders coming online this year.

With our online platform, HD1 marketplace, we are now the leading marketplace for used Harley-Davidson in America. And lastly, we are pleased with the progress of our rejuvenated membership offering with over 700,000 members on the new platform to date, growing membership that had been declining for years by over 300,000 new members in just seven months.

We also successfully stood up homecoming as another core annual event to bring the brand closer to new and existing customers alike like no other brand can do in the motorcycle market.

Turning to '24, I would like to comment on our new model year launch and outlook for the year. The Grand American touring category was born out of the unique experience of the American highway that was invented by Harley-Davidson.

Few productized iconic and has connected to one specific brand, put simply doing is the heart of Harley Davidson, our mission of timeless pursuit of adventure. Back in 2020, there was no plan for touring. We quickly took the decision to change that, and it became the first and one of the most important priorities of our new hardwire plan.

As you saw from our launch in January, we are now excited to share what we believe is the most comprehensive product development in the touring platform in well over 30 years. The street lighting Road Glide models form the core of the Harley Davidson Grand American touring motorcycle portfolio for '24 and represent the future. of this segment.

Both models featuring the new Milwaukee 8117 are more powerful, comfortable and lighter intact with advanced technology, including a new infotainment system, all wrapped up in a dramatic new visual design that will redefine the Harley-Davidson Grand American touring experience for years to come. This latest lineup is not only the most advanced we've ever produced, but also has the most customization potential that we've ever offered in touring.

Additionally, for '24 to celebrate the 25 anniversary of our custom vehicle operations or CVO, we added the CVO Road Light ST and CVO Pan America to the lineup complementing our new road and street lights CVOs first introduced during homecoming last year. Starting with the CVO Road Light ST, the lightest, fastest and most sophisticated performance Bagger ever produced by Harley-Davidson is taking hot-rolled bagger performance to the next level while tapping into the performance trend that we fueled with the king of the Bagger racing series.

The CVO Road Light ST represents a unique collection of components providing high value of two performance minded riders combined with West Coast custom style as seen in our Low Rider ST offering. We also expanded the CVO family beyond Grand American touring for the first time to include the Pan America CVO, highlighting another touring segment that we continue to innovate in adventure touring.

We've prepared and are investing in the '24 model launch and have ensured that we are getting motorcycles out into the network at the right time for the riding season. And although it's still early, having launched only two weeks ago, we've already seen a very positive initial reaction from the network, media, influencers and consumers alike with strong collaboration on awareness and traffic driving activities.

As we look to the years ahead, we are excited about the potential of this lineup for the brand. We are fully focused on growing retails on the basis of the fantastic five, even in the current environment. That said, it is still early in the year and it is hard to predict the extent of the positive impact that our new touring models can have in the current high interest in overall industry macro-environment.

As such. While we are very excited by the early read of our new model year launch, we are providing broader guidance than usual to our outlook, given the continuing industry headwinds that affect our business. Furthermore, inventory management will continue to be a core part of our strategy to ensure that we have the right balance for both the network and customer.

And as we look to the year ahead, we will manage inventory cautiously, recognizing that we believe we are close to the right levels in the network. Our goal would be to ensure that we manage wholesale based on retail potential. So as to keep wholesales and retails in balance through a combination of retail levers and manufacturing adjustments, if as required.

To conclude, despite the challenges in the market, we believe that we have created the right product and solid foundations on which to deliver our future ambitions for the company.

Thank you, and now I'll hand it over to Karim to talk LiveWire. Karim, over to you.

Thank you, Jochen. Good morning, everyone. We are happy to report that after a strong fourth quarter, LiveWire delivered a 21% increase in LiveWire branded annual unit 10 versus 2022. We finished the year with both units and operating loss in line with our revised guidance. Considering the ramp-up required for all new in-house developed products, we are pleased with the stabilizing supply base as well as the production of the F2 powertrain at Harley-Davidson's operations in Wisconsin and the assembly of the Del Mar in Pennsylvania.

With a positive perception of the newly developed platform from the ground up from both early customers and the media 2024 promises to be an exciting year for LiveWire. Our development team at both StaCyc and LiveWire continue to work to expand our portfolio and bring more options to more writers.

We believe these new products, along with our entry into new segments position LiveWire to increase our unit sales without increasing spend over 2023 to accelerate the path to profitability. We plan to drive down the cost of our products and continue to carefully manage cash, which is reflected in our guidance.

Thank you, and now I'll hand it over to Jonathan.

Thank you, Karim, and good morning, everyone. I plan to start on page 5 of the presentation where I will briefly summarize the financial results for the fourth quarter of 2023. And subsequently, I will go into further detail on each. At HDMC, in Q4, global wholesale motorcycle shipments decreased by 13% as we remain mindful of dealer inventory and market conditions.

In Q4, HDMC revenue was down 14% due to lower volumes were improved mix was offset by pricing and incentive spend. In Q4 and in 2023, as Jochen said, we continued to prioritize our focus on core motorcycle mix of touring and cruiser motorcycles.

We will cover further details of revenue when we turn to page 8. Turning to our consolidated results in the fourth quarter, total consolidated HDI revenue of $1.1 billion was down 8% compared to this quarter last year. The breakdown was at HDMC, as I mentioned, revenue declined by 14%. At HDFS, revenue grew by 15%. And at LiveWire revenue grew from $9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 to $15 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Total consolidated HDI operating income was a loss of $21 million, which compares to operating income of $4 million in the Q4 prior year period. The breakdown for 2023 was at HDMC, operating income was a loss of $44 million, which is markedly lower than the profitable first three quarters of the year, where Q4 is a quarter with significantly fewer wholesale units compared to the remaining quarters in the year.

Results were adversely impacted by lower wholesale volumes and higher expense incentive spend in the quarter, at HDFS operating income of $58 million declined by 10% on a year-over-year basis. And LiveWire an operating loss of $35 million was in line with expectations. Fourth quarter earnings per share was $0.18.

Turning to full year 2023 results, total consolidated revenue of just over $5.8 billion was 1% higher compared to last year. While total operating income of $779 million was 14% lower than last year. Full year earnings per share was $4.87 in 2023 and compares to $4.96 in 2022.

We will talk further about each business segment's specific profit and loss drivers in greater detail in the next section. In Q4, global retail sales of new motorcycles, as mentioned earlier, were down 11% versus the prior year. In North America, Q4 retail sales declined by 9%, driven by the continued impact of a high interest rate environment on consumer discretionary purchase decisions.

In addition, the discontinuation of legacy Sportster bikes at the end of 2022 continued to have an adverse impact on non-core unit sales. In EMEA, Q4 retail sales declined by 22%, driven by weakness in France and Germany. Overall, EMEA continues to be adversely impacted by overall macro conditions and sluggish economic growth.

In Asia Pacific, Q4 retail sales declined by 10%, driven by weakness in Australia and New Zealand, partially offset by strength in Japan and Thailand. This is a market improvement from what we covered last quarter. In Latin America, Q4 retail sales increased by 46%, driven by growth in both Brazil and Mexico. As the manufacturing environment continues to get back to a more normalized operation, product availability is much improved compared to the exceptionally tight levels of 2021 and 2022.

As touched on earlier, dealer inventory at the end of Q4 was up approximately 50% from the end of Q4 in 2022. We believe current dealer inventory is in an appropriate position overall as we approach the spring '24 riding season and with the recent launch of new model-year '24 motorcycles.

Especially our new Street Glide and Road Glide touring models, looking at revenue, total HDMC revenue decreased 14% in Q4 and decreased by 1% for the full year. In Q4, HDMC revenue declined largely due to lower wholesale units shift.

Looking closer at the key drivers for Q4, 14 points of decline came from decreased volume at HDMC as we reacted to the current market conditions supported prudent dealer inventory levels and prepared for the 2024 model year launch of the street glide, road glide, new CBO models and more seven points of decline came from pricing and incentive spend, where, given existing market conditions, we selectively promoted high-margin products to support our customers in the higher rate environment that they are facing.

In addition, we made the decision to implement incentives, which resulted in a reduction to revenue of approximately $40 million in Q4, which will support model year 2023 carryover motorcycles into calendar year 2024, as enhanced dealer support. We expect this will help drive retail performance in 2024.

Next contributed seven points of growth, as we continue to prioritize our most profitable models and markets. And finally, foreign exchange contributed one point in Q4. For the full year of 2023, HDMC revenue declined by 1%, where the key drivers for the full year included seven points of decline, which came from decreased volume at HDMC driven by an overall decrease in wholesale motorcycle unit shipments.

Three points of increase, which came from pricing net of incentives through both global motorcycle MSRP increases and price increases across the parts and accessories and apparel businesses and the aforementioned actions help support retail in the 2024 calendar year for the remaining 2023 model year dealer inventory, mix, which contributed four points of growth as we continued to prioritize our most profitable models and markets.

And finally, foreign exchange, which resulted in one point of negative impact as the dollar strengthened for the full year. In Q4, typically our lowest gross margin quarter of the year. Gross margin of 22.9% was down 360 basis points behind the impacts of lower volumes, pricing and incentive spend, which I covered in my earlier comments and manufacturing costs more than offsetting the benefits, our shipment mix and lower raw material cost.

Operating income margin fell by 210 basis points due to the factors above. In addition to operating expense favourability of 18% in the quarter, we continue to experience more moderate cost inflation relative to what we experienced in 2022. In Q4, cost inflation came in at a rate between 1% and 2% for the full year 2023. HDMC gross margin came in at 32.3%, which was 110 basis points better than a year ago, despite lower volumes.

Mix and pricing were positive for the year and were partially offset by lower volumes, supply chain and manufacturing costs and foreign currency. For the full year 2023 HDMC. operating margin came in at 13.6% and compared to 13.9% in full year 2022, which is approximately 20 basis points lower after accounting for rounding. The small decrease in operating margin was due to the factors just mentioned and largely due to higher operating expenses from earlier in the year.

At Harley-Davidson Financial Services in Q4, revenue increased by 15%, driven by higher commercial finance receivables and higher interest income. HDFS operating income was $58 million, down 10% compared to last year and an improvement trend seen earlier in the year. Q4 decline was driven by higher borrowing costs, a higher provision for credit losses and higher operating expenses. These increased costs were partially offset by higher interest income.

Total interest expense was up $22 million or 32% versus the prior year. The increase was driven by a higher cost of funds as lower interest rate debt matured and was replaced with current market rates. The provision for credit loss expense increased $6 million in the fourth quarter, as a result of higher realized credit losses, partially offset by a favorable reserve change in absolute dollars.

For the full year 2023, HDFS annualized retail credit loss ratio came in at 3%, which compares to 2.7% through Q3 '23. These levels compare to an annualized loss of 1.9% in full year 2022. The increase in credit losses was driven by several factors relating to the current macroeconomic environment and the related customer and industry dynamics.

In addition, the allowance rate for credit losses for Q4 remained flat at 5.4% from Q3, but up from 5.1% during fiscal 2022. As we prudently calculate our loan loss reserves in accordance with CECL methodology, total retail loan originations in Q4 were down slightly by 1%, while commercial lending receivables were up 42% to $1.06 billion behind stronger product availability compared to the prior year.

Total quarter end net financing receivables, including both retail loans and commercial lending receivables were $7.5 billion, which was up 5% versus prior year. For the full year 2023, operating income at HDFS came in at $235 million or down 26% relative to full year 2022, which compares to our financial guidance of down 20% to 25% for the year.

Through the end of Q4, we raised approximately $2.5 billion in the capital markets for all of 2023. Cash and committed bank and conduit facilities resulted in an HDFS liquidity position of $2.2 billion as of year-end. This approach has put HDFS in a very strong position from both a funding and liquidity perspective.

For the LiveWire segment fourth quarter revenue increased from $9 million in the fourth quarter of '22 to $15 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 due in part to higher unit sales of Del Mar electric motorcycles. As Karim mentioned, in Q3 LiveWire began shipping Delmar the first motorcycle on their F2 platform, and they are pleased with the successful rollout in Q4 with 482 units shipped.

LiveWire operating loss of $35 million in Q4 was in line with expectations and driven by planned development costs to advance EV systems and activities around Del Mar. For full year 2023, the operating loss of $117 million was in line with guidance, given the early-stage nature of the business and the electric motorcycle market as a whole.

Wrapping up with consolidated Harley-Davidson, Inc., full year financial results, we delivered $755 million of operating cash flow, which was up $207 million from the prior year. The increase in operating cash flow was due to positive working capital activity at HDMC driven by a decrease in inventory in 2023 as compared to an increase in inventory in 2022.

Total cash and cash equivalents ended at $1.5 billion, which was $100 million higher than at the end of 2022. This consolidated cash number includes $168 million from LiveWire. During the whole year 2023, as part of our capital allocation strategy. We bought back 10.2 million shares of our stock at a value of $350 million.

This was greater than the $324 million we repurchased in 2022 and these years combined amounted to nearly $675 million worth of share buybacks in the last two years. This represents 12% of our shares outstanding. We have also paid out $189 million in dividends over the last two years. These combined actions both demonstrate the strong cash flow generated by Harley-Davidson, Inc, as well as the commitment we have to returning capital to shareholders.

As we look to our financial outlook for 2024, as Jochen discussed, we are excited about our new 2024 motorcycles, but we recognize that the overall macro environment, including high interest rates, add complexity to our customers' decisions to purchase discretionary product.

At HDMC, we expect the retail units to be flat to up 9%, which results in 163,000 to 178,000 retail unit. Currently, we believe dealers are appropriately positioned from an inventory standpoint. That's we expect that retail unit sold and wholesale unit shipments will move together on a balanced basis in 2024.

This range would result in wholesale unit shipments to be down between 1% and 10% versus 2023, which equates to 163,000 to 178,000 wholesale unit. This results in ATM fee revenue coming in flat to down 9%. We expect HPMC operating income margin of 12.6% to 13.6% in 2024.

This is flat to down 100 basis points from the 2023 level. The drivers of margin include negative operating leverage due to lower wholesale volumes. Foreign currency, which is expected to be a headwind. Mix is expected to be slightly favorable pricing, which will be slightly down as we eliminated the surcharge and fine-tune our pricing strategy.

Lastly, we expect some additional manufacturing costs as we realign factory processes in the initial year of production of the new street glide and road glide motorcycles. At HDFS, we expect HDFS operating income to be flat to up 5%.

We expect the business to stabilize as it comes to the higher interest rate environment that began in 2022 with our borrowing cost moderating based upon the anticipated Fed actions, we also expect the retail and wholesale portfolios to come into balance and more in line with the higher rate environment as the retail portfolio resets that's driving greater revenue, and we expect consumers to settle into the existing macro backdrop.

And therefore, we expect the loss rate will begin to moderate in the second half of 2024 as compared to the second half of 2023.

At LiveWire, LiveWire is forecasting unit sales between 2,500 units and an operating loss in the range of $115 million to $125 million. This is consistent with the 2023 guidance range while delivering between 50% and 125% more motorcycles.

And lastly, for total HDI, we expect capital investments in the range of $225 million to $250 million. This is the same forecast as in 2023, where we plan to continue to invest behind product development and capability enhancements.

Our investment focus remains driven by core product innovation, investments in manufacturing to automate and reduce costs as part of our productivity journey as well as planned investment in for LiveWire. One of our initiatives identified as part of the hardwire strategy, driving productivity to eliminate the $400 million of incremental supply chain costs incurred in 2020.

In 2022, we delivered approximately $50 million toward that goal. In 2023, we delivered approximately $70 million additional towards that goal, where we focused on reducing expedited costs. Among other actions, 2024 is expected to deliver approximately $100 million of incremental cost productivity towards this goal with a focus on production efficiency, logistics, network optimization and supplier cost optimization through consolidation and regionalization.

As we look at capital allocation in 2024, our priorities remain to fund the profitable growth of the hardwire initiatives, which includes the capital expenditures mentioned previously paying dividends and continuing to execute discretionary share repurchases. As covered previously, in 2022 and 2023, we returned nearly $865 million in capital to our shareholders. In 2024, at this point in time, we are planning to buy back a similar dollar amount of our common shares as we did in 2023.

And with that, we'll open it up Q&A.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions)

Craig Kennison, Robert W. Baird. Your line is live.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. And Jonathan, thanks for the additional commentary, those are very helpful.

My question goes to dealer sentiment. It's a tough time to be a dealer. It's got skinny margin and high floorplan interest rates.

You all have had success with Project Fuel in some cases but that capital investment is a very big ask for dealers that are struggling with cash flow. So I'm just wondering, with the leadership change, like how might you reimagine your relationship with the dealer and other opportunities, too, we partner with them in different ways.

Thank you, Craig. And well, as you said, we have to recognize that last year has been a tough year for dealers and the overall interest rate rise that affected the demand has certainly led to much lower profitability.

If you look at '21, '22, we had record profitability in our network of which is what's great and at least it helps many of our dealers to buffer the decline that we had seen. But we obviously take that into consideration with all actions and decisions we take in terms of new product launch in terms of pricing, in terms of fuel and all the projects that we are putting into the into the network.

That said, I would say the dealer sentiment overall has improved significantly, and that is very much a result of a new product launch model year launch that excites the network and the dealers. And as I had mentioned that it's already led to quite positive feedback from the media from influencers from customers that have come in early to buy the product.

So we are trying to find the right balance here of making sure that the facilities are being upgraded, recognizing that there are many facilities have not been upgraded for 20, sometimes even 30 years. And there's never a perfect time to do this. But we certainly take financial difficulties into consideration as much as we can comes to the fuel facility and our upgrade.

Overall, we've completed 20 facilities so far, we expect about 75 to be completed by the end of '25. We have over 100 dealerships in process across all levels of completion from agreement to full build in North America alone.

So overall, you could say, you know, good success and please recognize that this program will be in place for over 10 years. So we don't expect all of this to happen. So some dealers are ready and want to go and they come certainly first in line, some might have a tougher time to do that, and we would take that into consideration.

And it's a 10-year program. So we expect dealer profitability should be improving. And overall, the sentiment has improved. I think the model year launch certainly has helped and now we are in or preparing and ready for the riding season.

Thank you.

Thanks for your question.

Alex Perry, Bank of America. Your line is live.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question here. I just wanted to ask on how we should be thinking about mix in '24, do you expect to be heavier on inventory and trade shipments this year and lower on Sportsters?

And how long do you expect the promo and sales headwinds that you saw in 4Q impacting motorcycle gross margins? Thank you.

But we've adjusted our pricing according to our new model year launch, in particular in touring, it's important that to make sure that the carryover products that our dealers have in inventory are priced competitively to our new products, which is why we've taken the action that Jonathan laid out in his presentation.

We feel good about what we have taken in terms of actions so far. And we just have to recognize that the consumer environment in our industry with discretionary premium products has been challenged due to the high interest rates, and we've taken action accordingly.

So we feel the right, you know, the right pricing at this point in time, but obviously, we will be flexible to adjust whatever is required in the current environment.

In terms of mix, our priorities, as you know, as you known, we have emphasized as part of The Hardwire Stage two strategy was to shift more towards the high value products from cruiser to drive to Turing and the new product or the new model year launch.

I think is a clear indication of that sports that we still had a decent amount of sports is in the network in '23. We didn't ship any sports as a until the end also of after '22. So those should anniversary themselves out of the network pretty quickly. But we feel that with the pricing that we have in our entry price point products such as the Nightstar and moving all the way up to our new touring models.

We are competitively priced and have an exciting product offering pocket right now. But as I said, it's still early in the season. We'll have to see how things go. We want to make sure that the network can move to through the '23 as quickly as possible because we want to reduce the inventory in the deal in the dealer network, which is why we've emphasized that. And we've taken according to actions and we'll continue to do so if necessary.

Thank you. That's very helpful, all the best for going forward.

Thank you.

Fred Wightman, Wolfe Research. Your line is live.

Hey, guys. I just wanted to follow-up from a dealer inventory commentary. I understand that you feel like you're in pretty good shape at this point in the year. But can you just talk about the mix of sort of current versus noncurrent products and how you see that unwinding in the face of the more meaningful TOR refresh for this model year?

Good morning. Thank you for your question. As you say, we have, we believe, largely the appropriate level of inventory in our network, and that is even accounting for some of the early release driven by the logistics considerations in Q1 as we ramped up the major product launch of our three gliding Road Glide and touring platform in general.

And that is also accounting for some delays in the arrival of the product in 2023, which we have referenced in our previous conversation.

Exactly. As you note, we believe that that inventory is important in Q1 to support retails. Obviously, as we ramp up, there is a period of time until we reach complete dealer fill. So the inventory of '23, which is the majority at this time of the inventory in the network and is appropriately used to support retails as we ramp up '24.

And then exactly as you also note and for us as we move through the early part of the season and more of those '24 come online, the priority for us and where we have directed our financial support. And as Jonathan has mentioned is and working down those levels of '23, how to create more and more volume for '24.

We think that '23 will serve as an interesting an entry price point also for customers that prefer some of the features of the older technology has that they have a role to play and going forward. And of course, in general we are watching the levels of inventory.

We think as we work through '24, we want to keep it roughly in a one to one balance and also accounting for floor plan costs in our dealerships as an overall, ensuring we keep a balance and that we work through those 2023 as more of the 2024 is such an important category for us as Grand American touring come online.

Perfect. Thank you.

Joe Altobello, Raymond James. Your line is live.

Thanks, good morning. So you did mention several [HDMC] margin puts and takes in 2024. I assume that the negative operating leverage you're expecting is the biggest driver of that. So if you could quantify how much of a drag that is on margins this year? And how much is the greater dealer support that you're expecting this year as well, which I guess is included in pricing?

Sure. Thanks, Joe. So I think as we as we take a look at what we saw for 2023, as we've talked about, we've put programs in place that that certainly were a bit of a drag on what we saw from an overall margin perspective.

So obviously, we called that out through the script and the details of that. So we have about $40 million that that hit 2023 that really benefits us as we work through kind of clearing the retails in 2024. And so obviously, as we look forward with some of the actions that we have in the marketplace to drive retail in 2024, we made sure that we that we kind of matched up, but the revenue associated with delivering those bikes in the marketplace to moving them in 2024.

The other piece that I think is worth noting, too, is that as you take a look, I think Adele touched on this a little bit. But as you take a look at where we are from a retail perspective, I think Adele covered that nicely too in terms of the model year mix and what's in dealer inventory today. So obviously, more '23 are in the network today and then we're shipping '24, as we go.

That's very hopeful Jonathan, maybe just a follow-up on that. In terms of promotions and discounts, how much elasticity that you see in retail wanting as auditors do increase, but the amount of spending?

Well, we if you look at the fourth quarter in particular, we saw a nice a positive retail increase in the month of December, while an sequential improvement from October, November through December. And that is, I would say, partly correlated to the amount of promotions we had in the market.

So we will see a reaction in the market when we are putting these promotions and the key will be to have the right mix between carryover and new products, which we tried to accomplish and achieve as quickly as possible in already towards the end of January with the new model year launch.

So that there's a good mix because not everyone is going to buy new, some will buy a new urban use or a carryover product. So I think the dealer network is certainly well stocked too, to fulfill any request from our customers. And we hope to move, as we said, through those '23 year carry-overs quickly as possible.

And we have an aggressive shipping schedule for '24, so very early in the year at this point in time, which is, as I mentioned earlier, why guide why our guidance is much broader than it usually would be. And you know, the year started relatively modest for the industry as a whole, not just for us.

But since we've shipped our new '24, we've seen a nice and a significant improvement, which is testament to the new product and to our customers being excited about what we have to offer in the room with the new model year.

Got it, thank you.

James Hardiman, Citigroup. Your line is live.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So a follow up on the guidance. And Jonathan, really appreciate the added color on sort of the wholesale versus retail. I think you said for retail in '24 flat to up 9%, maybe help us with the major drivers here.

I know it's sometimes not very helpful to think about an industry number because you're such a big part of the industry in certain segments, but just trying to tease out the overall sort of how you're thinking about the demand backdrop relative to the benefit from what sounds like an impressive unprecedented new product, and then maybe help us with some of the below-the-line items as well.

Obviously, you don't guide to an EPS number, but you know, tax and share count and maybe interest expense I mean, I think we should be getting to an EPS number in the low to mid-$4 range. But I don't know if that's quite right based on how you're thinking about the below-the-line? Thanks.

Okay, great. Thanks, James. I'll start with sort of some of your questions on what we saw from below the line may be helpful for Jochen to create a little bit of commentary in terms of their perspective on retail for 2024. I think if we if we just start with the little line. Obviously, we saw a lot of favourability in 2023 relative to some pension adjustments and things of that nature.

So that's the primary driver in terms of what you see from that standpoint. Obviously, shareholders are benefiting from an EPS perspective with the focus that we have on share buybacks that we kind of walked through a little bit earlier today.

So certainly for us, a pretty big jump, a pretty big consideration point, I think for how we reward shareholders relative to retail, as you said, the flat to up nine kind of equates to [163,000 to 178,000].

Jochen, you know, James, as you reflect back kind of touched a little bit on the fact that that is a wider range than what we normally see for a variety of reasons. But Jochen, do you want to comment any further on that?

Well, not much to add to what I already indicated earlier, it's early in the year. We really need to get closer and into the riding season. At this point in time, we believe we have an extraordinary product. Early reception is great, but the overall environment in terms of interest rates is certainly a headwind, which we experienced very much throughout the entire year of '23. And we'll just have to see how it works, how it all works out.

And our retail guidance is a global guidance. It's not just the US or North America guidance touring why we've been able to shift the mix in the international markets, including profitability more towards our profit focus categories. It has the most significance in the North American market.

So that that requires the US market to pull a lot of weight when it comes to retail growth in '24. And we just have to see what's possible early indications right now with our new model year launch are positive, but it's way too early to really give more concrete guidance than what we've said.

That's really helpful. If I could just sneak in a clarification, Jonathan, is there any way to just think about the tax rate and the share count for 2024 obviously those and so it could be some swing factors and just want to make sure everybody's on the same page?

Yeah, great question. And I think as we think about share count, obviously, we've talked through our commitment to looking at share buybacks consistent with what we looked at in 2023. So obviously, that cadence will come down over time.

So from a from a share buyback perspective, we'll probably buyback throughout the quarters, obviously, not in one big block of time, but I think that's the piece that's worth factoring in is looking at share price movement looking in the $1 target that we've set? And then just thinking through how that will impact across the year?

James, I've given Jonathan and the finance team, the challenge to be able to give guidance on EPS as of next year. So mark your calendar will hopefully be able to achieve that?

Will report that.

Thanks, Jonathan.

Thanks, James.

Tristan Thomas-Martin, BMO Capital Markets. Your line is live.

Good morning. I just wanted to kind of get your thoughts on the model year '24 touring the pricing. If I look at, for example, '24 Street Glide, it's more expensive than a base three glide for '23. But I think the features are much more comparable to, let's say, like a Street Glide special we're at '23 is more expensive than a '24.

So just kind of wanted to get your thoughts on kind of some of the changes, the model consolidation is just an overall way to address affordability without just straight up lowering MSRPs are getting too promotional?

Well, we wanted to make sure that our new products are competitive, and we believe that we've accomplished that for sure, given the early reactions that we've seen in the market and as you rightly said, we included several key features and benefits that we previously had in our ST and special models in our mid-levels now and increased the price from the base level to raise of our base models to reflect the additional content that now comes as a standard equipment. In addition, we are offering a lot of P&A packages that allow a customer to essentially get up to a product that is at ST and special pricing level and features level.

And that's what we've tried to achieve by route reducing at this point overall complexity of our touring setup. So I think it's the best of all worlds that we are achieving with our new pricing. It's competitive, but you know, it's still '24 [999] and that's while higher than our base models. It's lower than our STs and special. And again, if you look at the pricing actions that we've taken in the fourth quarter and our carryover products that needed to consider the new pricing for new models.

So STs and special needs to we need to be needed to give support and continue to need, give the dealer support to price them accordingly in order to move them out and sell them. And I think that's essentially the key decision that we've made.

And so far, it's proven very successful. The comments that you'll see in online forums, people understand that there's a lot more features and a lot more benefits that we have previously had in our STs and special now already incorporated our mid-levels.

Got it. Thank you.

Noah Raskin, KeyBanc. Your line is live.

Thanks for taking my question and maybe just what are on LiveWire for me. Looking out over the next several years. How are you thinking about the unit profitability ramp there? And has anything changed in terms of your medium term view for the business and the opportunity? Thanks.

Thank you, Noah. But I guess when we look at where we are right now, our focus is really about product innovation and cost improvement. We want to reach profitability as fast as we can. So we're in a strong position to capture the opportunity as the market develops.

So right now, we remain focused on our long-term vision of being the leader in a two wheeler EV industry driven again by innovation and performance in a short term, a strong internal plan, too, reach profitability as soon as practical.

Thanks.

David Macgregor, Longbow Research. Your line is live.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. My questions. I guess I just wanted to follow up on the library discussion, could you dig a little bit deeper into kind of the experience this quarter, the consumer reaction to the [ST Del Mar], you shipped 660 bikes and '23. Could you talk about kind of retail sales and how that may have grown through the year? And you're talking about 126 dealers this year. What are you expecting to grow that to 2024? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for the question. A follow-up question. Well, look, at this stage, we feel pretty good about the Q4 shipments because we have more orders in hand, shipments done so far. So we feel pretty good about retail and the conversion in a short in a short term.

Now, we absolutely working really hard on creating a retail engine and supporting our dealers, which is why you saw that we reach 126 retailers globally. Obviously, when you look at the number of bags with naked for dairy attainable target for retailers to achieve at retail.

So our goal is to do essentially in 2024, much retail with wholesale, I saw that you made the point that work to deliver on that making retail momentum it sustained and to support wholesale.

Thanks and good luck to that.

Thank you.

Jaime Katz, Morningstar. Your line is live.

Hi, good morning. I wanted to focus in on market share, which actually improved quarter over quarter, but I'm wondering where you guys are trying to structurally drive that to over time or is it something that maybe this 40% level is the new normal, given the shift in consumer demand to other types of bikes. Could you help us think about that longer-term thing? Thanks.

Thanks, Jamie. Well, our focus as part of this strategy has been very clear on shifting the mix towards our core focus, our core categories, right? That's dry cruiser touring, and that shift has proven being the successful. We've mentioned earlier, our average unit profitability is up from $1,300 to $3,700.

So you know, I'm not being obsessed by unit sales over the last few years served us well in terms of overall profitability, which is improved from 6.3% to 13.6% extraordinary in improvement. That said, obviously, we want to grow our business to we believe that with our new model year '24, we have that opportunity. We have the right foundation, but we also needed a more accommodating economic environment.

And when I say economic environment. And I'm talking about our industry and high interest rates that a tough challenge for many of our core customers. So you either own a very few the answer to your question. But you know, our focus is on growth and profitable growth. And that's how we will complete our Hardwire Stage two strategy at the end of '25 what comes after that we will address at the appropriate time.

We do look at market shares, but we are not obsessed by market shares have never been never will. But of course, it's pleasing to see that in this tough environment, especially in the fourth quarter, we were able to fill our touring share back to 75% large Cruiser, 80% I mean that's commanding, give or take 5%. That's always a swing that you're going to see throughout the year and also on a rolling 12 months forward or backward I think that's likely where we're going to be.

But we believe there's an opportunity to take market share, especially in touring and through our trade offering because we have competitive great product. And that should see a positive development certainly next year, if all our plans come to fruition. And hopefully that will carry us through in future years as well at least until the end of our hardware Stage two, which is at the end of '25.

The Turing platform, as I mentioned, is there has been in development since 2020 and it's the first refresh. And in fact, it sort of refreshes a complete rebuild from the bottom up in every respect. And I think the positive reactions give us that opportunity. But it's a little early to comment how lasting that is going to be, but we feel very good about it.

Thank you.

Brandon Rolle, D.A. Davidson. Your line is live.

Thank you for squeezing my question here. Just a question on your margin guidance. I think you had called out additional manufacturing costs as being a headwind to guidance this year. Could you size up the amount of headwind from those additional manufacturing costs? And then provide any additional color on feedback you're receiving for the multiyear '24 line? Thank you.

Thank you, Brandon. Will start with your will start with your sort of question on what we're seeing from a manufacturing perspective and some of the noise that we have within there. So obviously, we've put a $400 million price target out there from a productivity perspective, we walked through what we've seen over the last couple of years and where we envision 2020 for landing.

So about $100 million of positivity that lands in 2024 to help offset what we see from an inflationary perspective. As you look at that movement over time, we obviously feel pretty positive about that when you kind of talk through some of the headwinds that we see as we take a look at what this means from a margin perspective, obviously, depending upon where we fall from an overall volume perspective with our with our fairly wide ranges.

We want to make sure that we are looking at moving our retail and wholesale in concert with each other. We obviously have a lot that we have to pay attention to from a structural cost and as you think through sort of a leverage or deleverage impact.

And so I think from that standpoint, certainly a little bit of noise as we just tried to work through what that could mean from an overall leverage or deleverage impact. And then as we think about manufacturing optimization and supply chain efficiency, as Jochen talked about, this is a this is a transformative launch as you look at, but the significance of what we have with Street Glide and Road Glide that are that are now hitting our dealers.

Obviously, as you have sort of a very, very major change that occurs all the way from your suppliers through to what we end up moving into our dealerships. There's a lot of there's a lot of them, a lot of changed and a lot of variability that can occur with that.

We feel like it's been a fairly smooth launch so far, but we certainly always want to make sure that we have are living in a world where we're not over-promising to anyone. And I think beyond that, the open and the Adele, do you have questions on or I'm sorry, you have some comments relative to the '25 model year reception we're looking for from you ahead of time with your time and '24?

Well, look, I've not much more to add. Maybe overall, I would say this really positive reaction to our overall pricing strategy when it comes to the carryover product and our new product. I think the decisions we've taken in the fourth quarter will help us in '24.

And I think unilaterally positive reactions to all to our new street guide road glide. Lots of excitement about our new CVO ST, and we started that trend with performance and picked up on a trend that we saw years ago, developing, especially on the West Coast, but on all other parts of America as well.

And we've, as I mentioned in my speech, and we've tried to push that hard with our King of the [Bagassi] race series in a spike. So really bringing a performance aspect into our product is now shown with our CVO Road Glide ST fantastic product, very well-priced and lots of excitement I've been writing. It's a big group of influencers in Las Vegas. And I mean there was just a lot of excitement around our touring new touring bikes.

I don't want to forget our first CVO ever outside of the touring category with our Adventure Touring bike, also a testament to our development on continuous focus and developing the Adventure Touring markets overall, we feel good about it. And also the pricing in our entry product Nightstar that we've adjusted accordingly great product, especially for new riders as well as an entry bike.

So we should see some positive development that in overall in the year. But as I said, it's early days, but I want to get overly excited here '23 was a tough year and interest rates haven't changed. And the outlook certainly doesn't suggest that that's going to happen in the prime riding season. So we'll have to balance our excitement for the new product with realities of the market.

Thank you. And if I could just follow up on the manufacturing cost question. Would you be able to break out the initial start-up costs for the new flooring production line versus just additional manufacturing costs throughout the year?

I think all we can say in the largest investment in a single platform that Harley Davidson made.

Yeah, but I think and I think, Brandon, the good news is that you will hear more from us as we move through the through the year and talk about our financials and do our kind of year-over-year comp. So in sort of our in our standard fashion, we'll make sure that we're continuing to provide breakouts that we're seeing from a revenue perspective.

We'll obviously we'll walk through and talk through the P&L so that the promise that we do make is that throughout 2024, we certainly will be talking about this. And as you would imagine, 2024 is a little bit noisy. When you look at some things quarter over quarter, and some of the changes that we envision that we'll see in terms of in terms of things, shipping units into the dealer network.

And as Jochen talked about throughout his prepared comments and I talked about through mine. Obviously, getting that match between retail and wholesale is something that we feel is very important. But yes, we'll be excited to talk about that with you throughout this year.

Great. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you and thank you to close out today. I'd like to hand the call back over to CEO Jochen Zeitz for any closing comments.

Yes. Well, thank you again to everyone for joining us today. And before we sign off, I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank Dan Sullivan for her many contributions to the company over the past three years and to wish you very well on her future endeavors. So thank you very much, Adele, and thank you all for joining us this morning and thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thanks for joining. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.