INTERNATIONAL SHARE PRICES

Market analysis with financial editor Roger Willis

and accessories retailer Sportsbikeshop in October that year, to weaponise Polo with a far superior e-commerce platform. A further acquisition followed in 2016, when Equistone took over leading French online bike aftermarket retailer D3T Distribution, primarily trading under the Motoblouz banner from a warehouse near Lille in the north of France. Crossover growth between these three companies has since been substantial, under an overall Polo Motorrad management umbrella.

Sportsbikeshop’s in-house budget brands – Dexter helmets and DXR apparel – have become ubiquitous across all their websites. And, although still mainly championing online sales, it has created a modest chain of bricks-and-mortar UK stores to showcase product ranges. In addition to Motoblouz’s original Gallic platform, D3T has established Motoblouz España in Barcelona as a similar e-commerce entity addressing the Spanish aftermarket. And a motoblouz.it website is also up and running to do the same in Italy.

Equistone, incidentally, isn’t a podium-sitter as PE firms go. It “only” has around £7.4bn in assets managed, with funding from backers in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and North America. That latter destination is where all the really fat PE wallets live, because US institutional investors have a huge appetite for stumping up the necessary debt. So we’ll go there next.

THE YANKS ARE COMING

Our cover-story splash on last month’s issue of BDN featured an acquisition of undoubtedly the premier European aftermarket trade channel Bihr, another odyssey of PE-provoked consolidation. Without going into too many of the sordid details again, the Bihr group had been built up into a distribution powerhouse by Belgian PE firm Alcopa over the past 12 years and sold to US aftermarket giant Arrowhead Engineered Products – which had itself become a vassal of American big-league PE firm Genstar Capital in the autumn of 2021. Genstar’s asset portfolio is currently valued at a cool £29bn.

Local interest for BDN readers was provided by the fact that two of Bihr’s component companies now destined for US parenthood were British buy-outs. Off-road specialist Race FX was one. The other was trade distributor Motodirect. Its wholly owned RST and Wolf apparel brands were included in the deal. They will be joining another UKbased business already in the Arrowhead fold, leading hard parts purveyor Hi-Level. This had been snaffled more than eight years ago by Arrowhead, with funding from its erstwhile PE string-pullers Riverside and Investcorp.

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THE NEXT IN LINE?

Masters of the American PE universe are bound to be hunting fresh targets in our two-wheeled niche. Some of them are probably eyeing the juicy prospect of LeMans Corporation on home turf. LeMans is the cheerfully independent proprietor of the developed world’s largest powersports aftermarket empire. It comprises Parts Unlimited, Parts Canada and Parts Europe, armed with its own headline Drag Specialties brand and a host of others, servicing more than 20,000 prime dealerships. They are supplied from five vast warehouses in the US, two in Canada and one in Germany.

LeMans supremo Fred Fox, who founded the business in his basement during 1967, stood down as the company’s chairman last July, upon reaching the ripe old age of 85 years. Instead, he adopted a “chairman emeritus” title. His younger brother Jeff Fox retired from the role of LeMans chief executive in 2007 and died in 2018, aged 62. Full family control has aged out.

Current chief executive is company veteran Mike Collins. Another veteran, Bruce Schumacher, sits in the key director of purchasing saddle. Both were instrumental in the most recent Parts Europe expansion. Paul Langley, regarded as a safe pair of hands after serving in successive leadership positions at US bike industry titans Vance & Hines, Dynojet and S&S Cycle, has been appointed executive chairman.

It’s a given that PE investors bearing gifts will eventually come knocking on LeMans’ palatial door. I sincerely hope that Fred Fox, as long as he’s not pushing up daisies, will slam it in their faces. 

A snapshot of share performance across key manufacturers and markets

Most indigenous bike manufacturer share prices haven’t been far off that trend for a fortnight.

CHINA – ECONOMIC GROWTH STALLED

Latest Chinese government economic data has shown seriously belowtarget recovery. Year-on-year retail sales growth in July was just 2.7%, against a forecast 5%. Industrial production was 3.8% higher, under a predicted 4.6% improvement. In an attempt to stimulate activity, China’s central bank cut its medium-term lending rate by a miserly 0.1%. Chinese equities investors were unimpressed. Shanghai’s SSE Composite all-share index closed 0.6% down by Friday. The blue-chip CSI 300 fell by 1%. Almost half of biker listings were losers – although there were some substantial winners, most notably Sunra parent Xinri E-Vehicle. www.britishdealernews.co.uk

Price Week Month

USA (dollar) Harley-Davidson 41.20 +3.1% +19.0% Polaris In-dustries 121.54 +1.1% +6.5% Textron 66.05 -3.0% +3.5% Ideanom-ics (Energica) 0.61 -14.1% -12.9%

Europe (euro) BMW Volkswagen Pierer Mo-bility Piaggio Group 75.81 -3.5% -1.7% 193.35 -2.1% +1.5% 61.20 -2.4% -3.0% 2.52 -1.9% +4.1%

India (rupee) Hero Mo-toCorp 2838.65 +2.8% -1.1% Bajaj Auto 4074.55 +0.9% +0.5% TVS Motor 958.75 +0.7% +8.2% Eicher Motors 3424.10 +6.7% +8.8% Mahindra 1239.40 -1.6% +4.9% Japan (yen) Honda Yamaha Suzuki Kawasaki Price Week Month

3713 +4.4% +7.1% 2892 +3.5% +11.7% 4882 +1.2% +10.4% 2624 -0.9% +1.5%

China (yuan) Qianjiang Zongshen Sundiro CETC (Jialing) Lifan 24.46 +7.8% +32.5% 6.85 -0.4% +0.6% 2.53 +3.3% +7.2% 15.75 +11.8% +31.0% 5.13 -0.6% -0.6%

Loncin

4.91 -0.4% +0.6% Linhai 9.13 +2.8% +3.3% Guang-zhou Auto 14.26 -4.3% -6.7% CFMoto 145.48 +0.6% +13.8% Xinri E-Vehicle 23.64 +28.7% +12.3%