INTERNATIONAL SHARE PRICES

Market analysis with financial editor Roger Willis

Contact 01237 422660 or adsales@dealernews.co.uk

vision of economic stagnation and mass unemployment.

So there has been a belated panic-stricken realisation of the dichotomy between manpower and commodities in the global automotive industry. Manufacturing ICEmotivated motorcycles, cars and trucks is a complex process. Lots of precision-made moving parts are involved. Engine assembly is intricate and labour-intensive. Associated industrial activity employs millions of people worldwide, many of them highly-skilled and well-remunerated. But the principal input commodities consumed – steel, aluminium, rubber, plastics, etc – are relatively cheap and comprehensively available.

In stark contrast, the opposite will be true in a battery-electric firmament. With far fewer moving parts, assembly will require a dramatically smaller workforce. You could teach monkeys to bolt Teslas together and feed them peanuts, as Elon Musk knows well. At the same time, acquiring sufficient crucial input commodities – copper, cobalt, rare-earth metals and oodles of lithium for serried ranks of batteries – is financially, physically and morally challenging.

Supplies of cobalt are dug up by infant slave labour in a Congo conflict zone. Despotic China has a monopoly on more than 80% of refined rare earths. Putin’s attempts to annex the Donbas region have a lot to do with an abundance of rare earths in Ukrainian soil. Reliable sources? Hardly. Other vital commodities are very finite in quantity and shortages imminent, forcing costs up relentlessly.

Automotive trade unions have now got wise and are crying foul. One forecast suggests 50,000 redundancies at Volkswagen’s German plants over the next few years, if the group’s current pace of electrification continues. Toyota is in the same fix, and is championing the hydrogen ICE corner fervently in an attempt to preserve Japanese jobs. And as ACEM has twigged, the sheer technical impossibility of producing high-performance electric motorcycles oriented towards enthusiasts, with acceptable weight and range at affordable prices, is likely to kill its twowheeled golden goose stone dead.

Don’t take my words as gospel. Look where the smart money isn’t. Canny US investors are assuming the post-petrolhead bike market is going to be a lower-volume shadow of its former self.

There are only two battery-electric PTW manufacturers with primary listings on New York’s tech-heavy NASDAQ electronic stock exchange – Ideanomics, parent of Italian sparky superbike maker Energica, and Niu Technologies, a globally big-league Chinese producer of delivery scooters and small motorcycles. In September, their monthly share-price performances were tragic, respectively incurring losses of 54.1% and 23.9%.

And then in the final week of September,

Harley-Davidson launched the muchhyped NYSE listing of its LiveWire electric motorcycle division as a stand-alone entity. Harley retained an approximate 74% stake in the opening market capitalisation of $1.77bn. Investor response was described as “lacklustre” by analysts. Across four trading sessions through to Friday’s NYSE close, the company’s value slumped by 23.8%, roughly $300m down the can. An omen for the future? 

A snapshot of share performance across key manufacturers and markets

Indian motorcycle industry. Press reports have emerged suggesting that Hero MotoCorp is on the verge of being overtaken in the sales charts by Honda’s local subsidiary HMSI. The shock this has engendered, given HMSI is an unlisted private company inaccessible to eager Indian investors, abruptly knocked the value of every indigenous bike maker.

CHINA – THE EAST IS RED

After a week-long public holiday, China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges reopened and markets rallied. Shanghai’s all-share SSE Composite and the bluechip CSI 300 indices respectively finished 1.6% and 1% up. Biker stocks did well. A fortnight earlier, ten out of the eleven listings were negative. This time around, eight of them were positive. www.britishdealernews.co.uk

Price Week Month

USA (dollar) Harley-Davidson 35.89 +0.3% -11.8% Polaris Industries 95.74 -1.3% -11.2% Textron 59.84 -2.4% -4.8% Ideanomics (Energica) 0.21 -19.2% -68.8% Niu Technologies 3.22 -8.5% -35.3% LiveWire 7.44 -21.3% N/A Europe (euro) BMW 75.02 +4.6% +0.8% Volkswagen 162.85 -4.2% -17.1% Pierer Mobility 57.10 -2.4% -8.9% Piaggio Group 2.23 +1.8% -2.2% India (rupee) Hero MotoCorp 2535.90 -3.4% -5.6% Bajaj Auto 3570.50 -0.9% -3.2% TVS Motor 1078.35 -0.6% +5.2% Eicher Motors 3477.20 -0.6% -2.0% Mahindra 1230.30 -0.7% -1.6% Share performance as of 14 October 2022

Japan (yen) Honda Yamaha Suzuki Kawasaki Price Week Month

3279 -0.4% -7.0% 2935 +3.2% +1.5% 4722 -2.1% -4.8% 2355 +1.3% -5.7%

China (yuan) Qianjiang Zongshen Sundiro CETC (Jialing) Lifan 21.80 -3.1% -12.4% 6.21 4.2% -3.1% 2.52 +3.7% +3.3% 13.23 +3.8% +4.2% 4.65 -0.4% -9.5%

Loncin

5.06 +12.2% -0.8% Linhai 8.16 +5.7% -3.0% Guangzhou Auto 12.73 +4.9% -1.6% CFMoto 137.27 +2.1% -10.8% Xinri E-Vehicle 20.52 +6.0% -5.7% China (HK dollar) Jianshe 5.14 -1.2% -0.6%