THE long and well-documented slide that America’s most famous motorcycle manufacturer has been on recently looks set to continue as the firm battles out of COVID-19. Although that hasn’t stopped new Harley-Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz from filling his pockets!
Financial website, Barrons, has reported that Zeitz paid $2.1m out of his own pocket for a massive slice of Milwaukee pie, amounting to 97,850 shares. Aside from that, the new CEO wasted no time in converting 3.7m share units, that he was awarded as a director of the firm (a post he’s held since 2007) into the equivalent amount of share stock.
It’s reported that Zeitz now owns over 100,000 Harley-Davidson shares in a personal account, along with 225,403 restricted stock units and 22,612 share units. The report is based on a form he filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The share purchase spree, that seriously outdoes any of my late night, too many beer binges on eBay, is the German’s first open-market purchase since joining Harley back in 2007. Barron’s also reports that it is the first time a Harley-Davidson insider has purchased such a hoard since 2017.
It remains unclear whether or not Zeitz is buying the shares to help boost the brand, or because he’s expecting to fulfill his role so well, he’ll get a big payday at the end of it. Barron’s requested to make Zeitz available for comment, although it was unanswered.
The current global COVID-19 pandemic has hit the historic motorcycle brand hard, at a time when they were already in what many would deem a troubling position. Harley-Davidson stock has crumbled 48.6% year to date through Wednesday’s close. Since Zeitz was named acting CEO, shares have lost 37.2%, while the S&P 500 index, a measure of the broader market, has slipped only 4.5%
It’s not all doom and gloom though, some financial analysts have upgraded Harley stock from ‘Hold’ (meaning ‘just sit on them for now’) to ‘Buy’, with certain parties predicting a rise in the share price in the coming months.
