Ducati defy credit crunch
Added on Monday, November 17th, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor | No Comments
Ducati defy credit crunch
Ducati have defied the credit crunch so far this year as like-for-like sales grew by 25% in the first nine months of the year.
The Italian manufacturer boasted sales of £346m between January and September whilst profits were up 84% to £27.7m, despite the current worldwide economic problems.
Whilst other manufacturers faltered, Ducati reported that shipments from the factory to dealers increased by 19.1 per cent to 36,979 units whilst worldwide retail sales were up by 8.3 per cent to 37,572 bikes.
The numbers make stark contrast with the reference market (ie directly competing products from other manufacturers), which saw a decline of 6.8% during the period.
The boys from Bologna say they are still on track to achieve a forecast 20 per cent growth in sales for their full financial year - a target increased from 15 per cent at the announcement of half-yearly performance data in August.
The good news was not reflected at KTM however, where operating profit fell by an alarming 50% like-for-like to £16.8m.
The result was largely blamed on the falling euro-dollar exchange rate and the company says that it will cut production for 2009 around 10%.
Piaggio also admitted to cutting back on production across all of its motorcycle and scooter brands as its overall sales fell 5.9%, with European sales fell 10%
BMW also posted disappointing figures as global motorcycle sales fell by 2.5%.
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