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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sir Auric Goldfinger who wrote (9145)	2/12/2002 1:23:04 PM
From: mmmary	Respond to of 19428

7:02AM Harley-Davidson sales seen revving down (HDI) 54.03: WSJ reports that critics are questioning the growth prospects, financial-disclosure practices and high stock valuation of HDI. According to article, critics believe co may be attempting to mask slowing sales by pressuring dealers to take on more inventory than they really need, also known as channel stuffing. WSJ notes that many of the same critics have been attacking the stock for more than a year, yet HDI shares have risen 31% over the past 12 months. just a summary of your article, sir auric. I do agree. They've been changing their accounting practices during the last year and doing some questionable math. Selling bike loans then considering proceeds revenue instead of proceed from sale of assets. They listed the loans as assets before. Same with selling the credit card division. They are in bike selling biz not loan selling biz. Adding demo bikes to bike sold column for the first time then challenging independent bike registration numbers. Changing tax brackets down to reduce taxes when they are supposedly making more. They've also been trying to make the bike for less at the expense of quality. A very large percentage of the parts are now made overseas. They used to do biz with US companies but not as much today. A few of htese companies are now going BK because of this. They have been stuffing hte dealers for a year now. There are actually a few lawsuits and finally a dealer won one. They tell the dealers they must buy so many tshirts, bikes, collectibles, HD clothing racks...or they can't keep their license. And, the cost to become a new dealer has come down dramatically. They need more stores out there to keep revenue numbers up. I also wonder where the heck they are hiding all the repo bikes. Are they selling them to some other entity and showing no paper loss on the books? I personally feel that no one can expect HDI to continue with such growth especially as they get larger. Math is impossible. I feel this is why they launched the blast, vrod, twin cam when they weren't quite ready yet. HD has more recalls than all the other bike companies combined. I can understand why they can't grow as quickly anymore percentage wise but I do not condone their funky bookkeeping, stuffing dealers and releasing products before they are ready. They also did not recall one very serious bike flaw because it was too expensive. I'm talking about the high speed wobble on the bigger models which make up 25% of their bikes. they have at least been working on fixing hte problem but every lawsuit they are settling under stict confidentiality. I don't think that's fair for consumers. People have died in these wrecks or left severly disabled. I have the attorney's names and some victims if anyone wants the info. Will HDI price go down? It should and probably will a little but compared to other investments in today's economy, HDI may not be growing as fast but at least they're not losing money or getting smaller.