Yamaha Motor has cause for celebration…just not in the United States, as the Tuning Fork brand posted a 6.6% increase in revenue during the first six months of this year, coupled to a 86.8% increase in net income.
These strong financial figures are due to strong unit sales in emerging markets, like Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan. But, they come with the caveat that sales are flat in Europe, and down in the United States.
Yamaha has some good excuses for its performance in these developed markets: blaming environmental regulations for the lackluster sales in Europe (we assume they are referring to the Euro4 emission requirements), and a weak overall demand for motorcycles in the United States.
Yamaha doesn’t give detailed sales figures for its various markets (it also rounds to the nearest thousand), but we do know that the Japanese firm expects to sell 76,000 units in the USA this year.
That’s down from the 77,000 units that Yamaha sold in 2016, which was massively less than the 89,000 units that were sold in 2015.
Meanwhile, European sales have remained flat, with 209,000 units sold in 2015, with that number dropping to 208,000 for 2016 and the expectations of 2017.
By its own estimations, Yamaha sees the European market increasing by 3% over 2015’s numbers (which would be zero growth against 2016’s numbers).
Unfortunately however for the USA, Yamaha also sees a dip in the total motorcycle market in the United States, to the same tune of 3% – between 2015 and 2017.
That estimate seems correct from what we have been seeing from other motorcycle brands, especially when you consider Harley-Davidson is taking a pounding in the USA right now, with its first six months of sales down 9.3%.
For those keeping up with the math though, that means that over the past three years, Yamaha has outpaced the losses occurring in the United States but a considerable extent, with the market contracting 3% from 2015 to 2017, but Yamaha’s sales dropping a staggering 14.6% during the same time period.
Yamaha appears to have stopped the bleeding however, as its drop in sales numbers from 2016 to 2017 is closer to what the US market is doing as a whole.
Source: Yamaha Motor Global
