Third Quarter +6.8% - now the clouds are retreating!This has been a roller coaster year where new Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) registration data is concerned.
After a storming first quarter for most of the (currently!) 28 EU markets, growth was +19% over Q1 2018 on 242,696 units (204,163 units for Q1 2018).
For the first six months of 2019 the ACEM data cited growth of +8.67% on 612,690 units YTD (563,820 units for the first half of 2018).
However, the growth for the second quarter alone, the period April, May and June of this year, was down to +2.9% on 369,994 units for the second quarter of 2019 (compared to 359,657 units for Q2 of 2018).
This appeared to throw the early forecasts of an annual 2019 growth rate of between 7 and 9% into considerable doubt. Indeed, if the down trend were to have continued, then it appeared quite likely, statistically, that the second half of 2019 would have been negative, or flat at best, and that somewhere around +2% (+/- 2%) was starting to appear to be the more likely outcome. I was suggesting that +3% for the full year was starting to look more realistic.
However, drilling down into the ACEM data for the first nine months of the year shows good news. The ACEM data puts the first nine months at +8.1% over the year-ago period with 903,586 new Internal Combustion Engine motorcycles registered.
Within that figure, Q3 was a reassuringly stronger +6.8% at 290,896 units (compared to 272,355 for Q3 of 2018). Hurrah!
The data came out while much of the industry was gathered in Milan for the 77th EICMA. It is uncertain as to whether or not adverse registration statistics would have dampened the market 'vibe' at EICMA, or if positive data ever actually adds to the atmosphere at a show.
Generally, by the time a show is underway, the decisions about market prospects (good or bad) have already been taken by most vendors, and unless we are in the kind of major economic downturn seen a decade ago, attendance numbers generally aren't affected by such factors anyway.
EICMA is claiming a total attendance "reaching almost 800,000". Whether or not that is true (doubtful), it doesn't really matter - there were plenty of people there either way. I checked out of the show on the Thursday evening, but a friend with a booth adjacent to Indian Motorcycle emailed me Friday evening to say the place was "rocking" (and in a good way!).
Good news is good news, and regardless of the truth behind the numbers and the effects that the growth of the past five years (especially in Italy) has on short-term attitudes, the overwhelmingly positive market sentiment in evidence among the vendor community at EICMA, and the crowded aisles of at least seven of the eight halls in use, showed that we are bathing in the warm glow of sunlit uplands at last - and long may it continue!
It won't of course, it never does. This was the 30th anniversary of my first visit to EICMA - back in the days when it was an alternate annual event staged in Mussolini's 1930s then state-of-the-art downtown 'Trade Fair' complex - the one where fascist brutalism meets deco loveliness. For the widest ranges of reasons, all business is a cycle and all businesses are subject to cyclical trends and impacts. For now, though, let's make sure that we enjoy the moment, but not get complacent - not take our eye off continued and continuous preparation for the future.
At present that preparation has been going well, but, if it is in large part R&D investments that got us to this point after the calamitous events of ten years ago, then now is not the time to take our eye off that ball.
Rather with investment "proof of concept" fuelling growth, we need to re-double our efforts to not just keep the momentum going, but to accelerate it.
R&D spending isn't "just for Christmas" - it needs to be a 24/7/365 obsession that evolves over decades - a process that is never finished; it does not have an end-game, but by its nature it should result in designs and technologies that make prior triumphs redundant. It does not have a finish-point but is simply a time, a point, on a virtuous upward spiral of market improvement. Turn off the switch and the power will drain from all that has so far been achieved.
My overwhelming impression of the show, reinforced by the workload we have had to eat through since getting home, was of a show packed with more excellent new products and vendors for us to write about than ever before.
More to get the doors of the market's dealerships swinging than ever before, more to get consumers excited than ever before. In a performance-oriented market, the performance of the market is highly motivating.
Personally, I think we have a lot to thank the changing demographics of our market for. They have provided the R&D stimulus that has set us down a much longer and more important path to, first, being able to come to understand what the bigger picture issues beyond the downturn really were going to be, and get them firmly in our sights.
With issues come opportunities, and though often regarded as a cynic, I still like to think that the bigger the challenge, the bigger the opportunity.
That big picture, that big opportunity is to continue accelerating the progress that regulators and manufacturers (at last working in harmony) are making in getting our industry fit for purpose in an urban mobility and leisure riding future that speaks 'new gen' where customers are concerned.
