Harley-Davidson hopes getting “Back to the Bricks” will help turn its motorcycle business around
Its ~$1 billion financial services segment has helped keep the company ticking over in the meantime.
Harley-Davidson is at a weird fork in the road. Sales of its traditional motorcycles, still very much the heart of the business, have been sputtering now for years, while the less said about LiveWire — the company’s electric segment where they’ve sold less than one motorcycle a day in some quarters — the better.
Luckily for investors, CEO Artie Starrs, who took the top job last October, thinks he can see a route out of the business’s current bind, hitching his hopes on cheaper models and a new “Back to the Bricks” strategy to get the 123-year-old company roaring again.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Starrs confirmed that Harley-Davidson will bring back the popular Sportster model, a more affordable Harley that the company said it was burning $2,000 a bike on when it discontinued the line in 2022, with plans to release “more budget-friendly bikes” in the pipeline, too.
As part of the announcement of its “Back to the Bricks” strategy shift yesterday, the company revealed that it is planning to cut $150 million in costs, target $350 million in EBITDA across its core business in 2027, and will focus on improving profitability for its network of exclusive dealers — a clear “competitive advantage,” per the press release. The turnaround plans helped to soothe investors yesterday after the company posted Q1 results where profits came in below expectations and total revenue slumped 12%.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Insurance
Zooming out a little further, one unexpected part of the HOG biz has actually been holding up okay in recent years, despite being less thrilling than the bikes the business built its name on.
While it shrunk in the first quarter of 2026, Harley-Davidson Financial Services — a segment that offers customers financing options for their bikes, insurance, and a branded credit card to let everyone know that sure, while you may be participating in late-stage capitalism’s relentless spending march like everyone else, you’re actually doing so with a sort of counter-cultural, Easy Rider vibe — was nearly a $1 billion business last year, up more than 2.6x from 2005.
In the same time frame, the amount of revenue that Harley-Davidson brings in from selling actual bikes and associated products has slipped almost 40%.
