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Harley-Davidson, Inc. (HOG)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 30, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Briana, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Fourth Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Amy Giuffre, Director of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Amy Giuffre

Analyst

Thank you, very much, and hi, everyone. Welcome to Harley-Davidson's fourth quarter 2013 earnings conference call. The audio for today's call is being webcast live on harley-davidson.com. The support slides can be accessed on our website by clicking on Company, Investor Relations, then Events and Presentations. Our comments today will include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters we have noted in our latest earnings release and filings with the SEC. Harley-Davidson disclaims any obligation to update information in this call. This morning, you'll hear from Harley-Davidson's CEO, Keith Wandell; CFO, John Olin; and President of Harley-Davidson Financial Services, Larry Hund. Then we'll open the call for questions. So let's get started. Keith?

Keith E. Wandell

Analyst

Thank you, Amy. Good morning, and thanks for joining us today. Harley-Davidson had a great year, and I couldn't be more proud of the entire team: Of our employees, dealers and suppliers. We achieved what we set out to do from exciting new products to improved manufacturing operations, retail gains, as well as the growing diversity of our customer base. All of these translated to continued strong improvement in the company's financial performance and shareholder value. Full-year EPS grew more than 20% on a 5.7% increase in revenue. And at year end, Harley-Davidson's total shareholder returns were up more than 40% from the start of the year, outpacing the S&P 500. In manufacturing and product development, Harley-Davidson has been relentless at driving improvements throughout the company that enable us to design, build and deliver motorcycles with greater speed, efficiency, safety and quality. With the launch of Surge Production early last year, we were able to build motorcycles closer to when they were needed, and to have the flexibility to adjust more quickly to market forces. We saw great improvement in better matching our production to customer preferences, seasonality and geographic demand. And with the startup of Surge Production at our Kansas City plant earlier this month, we expect continued improvements on this front. And then, there are the products. The product -- Project Rushmore motorcycles that we rolled out in August were the first to come through our new world-class product development pipeline. They introduced major innovation and design improvements and bring the voice of the customer into our product design process in a whole new way. From the launch on August 19 through the end of the year, our dealers sold nearly 28,000 motorcycles worldwide from the 8 models in the Rushmore line up. And these bikes were embraced…

John A. Olin

Analyst

Thanks, Keith, and good morning, everyone. I'll review 4th quarter financial results starting on Slide 11. During the quarter, Harley-Davidson, Inc. consolidated revenue was up 1.7% to $1.19 billion. Our fourth quarter net income improved to $75.4 million, an increase of $4.8 million or 6.8%. Similarly, diluted earnings per share rose to $0.34 per share, up 9.7% from the year ago quarter. Operating income from the Motorcycle segment was $60.7 million, up 14.3% compared to last year's fourth quarter. The strong increase in Motorcycle business was driven by a 2.1% increase in revenue despite a 1.0% decline in shipments. Motorcycle segment operating income benefited from lower SG&A and restructuring spending, partially offset by a slightly lower gross margin percent. As expected, operating income at HDFS was down behind a higher provision for retail motorcycle loan losses. We're pleased with our fourth quarter and full year financial results. Now let's take a look at retail sales on Slide 12. Worldwide retail sales of new Harley-Davidson motorcycles were up 5.7% during the fourth quarter, driven by increases in both the U.S. and international markets. For the full-year, worldwide retail sales were up 4.4% compared to 2012. This increase was in line with our expectations, driven by momentum in the second half, following the launch of our model year 2014 motorcycles. Let's take a look at U.S. market on Slide 13. Retail sales in the U.S. were up 6.3% in the fourth quarter, positively impacted by the continued momentum from the 2014 motorcycle lineup. As we anticipated, U.S. retail sales growth in the fourth quarter slowed from the third quarter's growth rate, behind 2 key drivers. First, a tough year-over-year comparison of 8.4% growth in 2012. Q4 2012 benefited from the retiming of sales from Q3 when availability was limited by production disruptions…

Lawrence G. Hund

Analyst

Thanks, John, and good morning. During the fourth quarter, HDFS retail motorcycle loan originations increased 14.2%, or $58.3 million compared to the same period last year. The increase was primarily driven by higher year-over-year new retail motorcycle sales and a 4.3-percentage-point increase in retail financing market share for the fourth quarter compared to last year. For the full year, HDFS retail financing market share of new Harley-Davidson motorcycles sold in the U.S. increased to 54.5%, compared to 50.9% in 2012. The primary drivers of the year-over-year market share gain were the pricing changes in the prime segment, which were initiated in the second quarter in response to increasing competition and the strong sales of Touring motorcycles. Finance receivables outstanding increased 3.7% compared to a year ago, driven by growth in both the retail and wholesale portfolios. We believe the overall loan portfolio was solid, comprised of profitable loans, funded in both the prime and subprime segments. In 2013, between 75% and 80% of our new retail loan originations were prime. Moving on to credit performance on Slide 22. The 30-day delinquency rate for retail motorcycle loans at December 31, 2013 was 3.71%, or 23 basis points lower than 2012. This is the lowest year end 30-day delinquency level in at least 12 years. Annual retail credit losses increased by 30 basis points to 1.09% compared to 2012, primarily driven by lower levels of recoveries from accounts charged off in prior years. This was expected, given the lower level of credit losses in the past few years has left a smaller pool of potential recovery dollars. In addition, HDFS experienced an increase in losses due to lower recovery values on repossessed motorcycles following the launch of our new Rushmore motorcycles in the third quarter. We are pleased with the progress at HDFS in 2013, as we continue to maintain a strong liquidity position, deliver solid credit performance and contribute strong profitability. We remain focused on enabling sales of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, while providing an attractive return to Harley-Davidson, Inc., as demonstrated by the $120 million dividend HDFS paid to Harley-Davidson, Inc. earlier this month. Now let me turn it back to John.

John A. Olin

Analyst

Thanks, Larry. Now let's take a look at cash and liquidity on Slide 23. As you'll see at the end of the quarter, we had $1.17 billion of cash in marketable securities. In addition, we had $1.28 billion of available liquidity through bank conduit and credit facilities. We currently have and intend to continue to maintain a minimum of 12 months of projected liquidity needs in cash and/or committed credit facilities. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.7 million shares of Harley-Davidson stock for $176 million, with a full-year total of 7.7 million shares for $456 million. During the first quarter of this year, we plan to pay off the $303 million of H-D, Inc. high-interest debt. We do not expect to make a contribution to our qualified pension plans in 2014, as the funded status of our pension and postretirement plans improved by $600 million as a result of robust market returns and higher discount rates. As we have stated, returning value to our shareholders through increasing dividends and share repurchases is a top priority. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to enhance value for our shareholders. Now I'll review the remaining Harley-Davidson, Inc. financials on Slide 24. I'd like to highlight 2 items. First, with regards to operating cash flow, the company generated operating cash of $977.1 million in 2013. Operating cash flow was up $175.6 million from last year, primarily driven by increased earnings. And second, the full-year tax rate was 34.1%, compared to 35.1% in the year-ago period. This reflects the benefit of both the 2012 and 2013 research and development tax credit due to the retroactive reinstatement of credit -- of the credit in early 2013. The summary for the full-year 2013 is on Slide 25. We had net income of $734 million in…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of James Hardiman with Longbow Research.

James Hardiman - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst

I was hoping you could help us -- you talked a little bit about sort of the core versus outreach customers in 2013 being up. Some of that might have been a function of sort of the Project Rushmore bike not coming out until later in the year. How should we think about that in 2014? My general assumption is that Project Rushmore is the biggest thing you guys have going on, and that ultimately, you're focusing on the core first. So I'm assuming that, that will sort of reverse itself in '14. And I guess, specifically, how should we think about pricing in '14 on those bikes, and ultimately, mix?

John A. Olin

Analyst

James, this is John. James, as Keith had mentioned in the preamble, we couldn't be more excited about our work on outreach sales. So for the year of 2013, we grew outreach at 7.2%, and our core customer at 3.1%, which again was over twice the rate, and the second time in 2 years. You mentioned the impact of Rushmore coming late in the model year. Again, this is all part of the fatten the tail strategy. On one end of the spectrum, is products like Rushmore that encourage trade-up at a high revenue and at a very high margin, and typically are aimed at our core customer. But I want to remind you that Rushmore is selling extremely well with outreach customers. And as we've talked in the past, motorcycles like the Street motorcycle is the #1 selling bike to women, young adults, African-American and Hispanic -- I'm sorry, Street Glide. And so we're seeing a tremendous amount of bikes being sold -- Rushmore bikes being sold to outreach as well.

Keith E. Wandell

Analyst

This is Keith, James. I just want to add on here that our strategy is, and has been, to grow our outreach customers at a faster rate. We want to grow our core customers, but we just believe and have believed and continue to believe that we have a lot of opportunity with these underserved demographics, and also, internationally. And so, again, while Rushmore has been extremely popular with our outreach customers, Street Glide has been extremely popular. I just want to remind you that we focused only on the Harley-Davidson brand, all of our dollars and product development are being focused on the brand. We have a whole pipeline of products coming that are intended to not only solidify and grow our core customer base, but to bring new outreach customers into our dealerships in the years to come as well.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Craig Kennison with Robert W. Baird. Craig R. Kennison - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Larry, I'd like to ask you, have you seen any change in credit availability at either the prime or subprime levels? At reference, Carmax, for example, one of your peers in the financial space where subprime has tightened a little bit.

Lawrence G. Hund

Analyst

I had seen that release on CarMax as well. I would say that we are seeing strong credit availability, particularly in the prime segment. I would say in the subprime segment, obviously, there's less availability, but we have not seen any pullback on competition in the subprime segment.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Rod Lache with Deutsche Bank.

Rod Lache - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Could you talk, first of all, a little bit more about the -- thanks for the volume estimates for the Street 750 and 500. How are those positioned, such that they won't affect the Sportster and some of your other products? Do you feel that those would be largely accretive? And if I could just also ask for clarification on the margins -- the margin drivers. Can you give us some sense of how you're thinking about FX and commodities in terms of magnitude this year, just given some of the volatility we've seen recently?

John A. Olin

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Great. Rod, this is John. With regards to the Street 500 and 750, again, as Keith had mentioned, we couldn't be more excited to be introducing these models in the second quarter. When we look at the overall pricing, in the U.S., the MSRP will be from $6,700 from the 500cc motorcycle to $7,500 for 750, a very attractive price point, and certainly considerably lower than Sportster. And Sportster's range anywhere from $8,000 to about $11,000. And even with a much lower MSRP, we're looking for ongoing gross margins of Street to be in line with our Sportster line. So we feel very good about the margins and certainly, the price point. Do we expect some cannibalization of Sportster? Yes, we would expect a little bit of cannibalization, especially of 883, but nothing all that great because of, again, the differential in the price point, as well as the type of bike and the attitude of the bike. Remember, this thing is designed for an urban environment and young adults. It's a Dark Custom, it will appeal to outreach customers. It's liquid cooled, which is very different with our new revolution x engine. So there'll be some cannibalization, but not to any great extent. I think then, Rod, you had asked about FX and raw materials. First of all, when we look in 2014 on raw materials, we would expect it to be largely flat on a year-over-year basis. We're not seeing any big moves in raw materials that would cause us concern at this point. And of course, we continue to monitor that. With regards to foreign currency, we do expect it to be unfavorable in 2014. And I believe that would be the third year of unfavorability in terms of foreign currency. And as you know, this year was quite painful in terms of foreign currency exchange. On a full-year basis it cost $39 million, and that was largely driven by significant devaluation of the yen, the Australian dollar and the Brazilian real. So as we look forward, as we exit this year and the positions that we have on and the hedges that we have on, as well as where currencies are today, and the general expectation that the U.S. dollar will strengthen, we do expect foreign currency exchange to be unfavorable, both on a dollar basis, as well as affecting our gross margin percent in 2014.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tim Conder with Wells Fargo Securities.

Timothy A. Conder - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities.

A couple of things here. The gross margin, John, you alluded to the start-up costs related to the Street in the first half of the year. Should we interpret that to mean that the margins in the first half of the year potentially could be down a little bit, given all the other factors that you cited? And then the other piece here relates to cash flow. What's that minimum liquidity that you talk about, and above that, should we expect all free cash to be returned in dividends or share repo?

John A. Olin

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities.

Okay, Jim. When we look at that Street introduction, there will be incremental start-up costs associated with it. Remember, this is the first time we're introducing a product in 2 separate plants in the history of the company, and one of them will be international; the first time we're doing manufacturing outside the United States, an entirely new supply chain. There's a lot of things happening with this product that are going to drive some higher start-up costs, and those costs are going to hit in the first half. And so, what we can say is that we do expect first quarter gross margin percent to be down slightly on a year-over-year basis, driven by those start-up costs. But again, once we get it up and running, we expect margins that look very similar to Sportster on a much lower revenue. In terms of overall cash flow and liquidity, as we've talked about, we are going to maintain 12 months of liquidity in terms of cash and committed credit facilities into 2014 and then in the foreseeable future. Anything beyond that, that we would deem as excess cash is coming back to our shareholders, and I think we've got a great track record over the last couple of years of delivering all that cash back. So when you look at our flows this year, we had $456 million go back in the form of dividend repurchases, $188 million in dividends, and then $175 million contribution to our pension plans. Now as we look to 2014, we clearly are not going to be funding the pension plan, so that will be additional excess cash to be returned to our shareholders or to pay down debt. So yes, all excess cash will come back to our shareholders, and again, with the reminder that we will be paying down the Buffet debt of $303 million here, and I believe the next week.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Badishkanian from Citi Research.

Gregory R. Badishkanian - Citigroup Inc, Research Division

Analyst

Just in terms of sales for 2014, your guidance, 79% increase, a little better than my estimate. And I'm just wondering, typically you provide more conservative guidance, and that growth rate is higher than you've typically guided in the past. Is it just due to the Street bikes? And could you have a little bit of cannibalization, and just kind of the other factors there. Because you have, I guess, in the second half, you have new model year 2015 products, what are you thinking of those? And then, to kind of look at the run rate of the fourth quarter going into next year, how much did weather really impact that 6% U.S. retail sales number, because obviously, every -- all the leisure vehicle companies have seen a pretty big impact from weather.

John A. Olin

Analyst

Greg, we feel great about our guidance of 279,000 to 284,000. All I can say is that we believe we'll ship between those numbers. The drivers are the appeal of the brand. I don't think the brand has ever been stronger. The brand fundamentals are very strong. We've got Rushmore momentum coming in the model year '14 products. And yes, we're very excited about model year 2015 motorcycles. The Street adds a couple points of shipment margin under that 7% to 9%, and remember, the other thing about Street is that's just the initial rollout. It's only 5 markets this year, and we'll continue to roll it out over 2015. And then we've got some momentum in international business, and we're happy to see Europe start to turn the corner there, with 5% growth and especially, core Europe growing. So all those things make us very comfortable with our shipment guidance of 279,000 to 284,000 units. Your other question, Greg, was with regards to the fourth quarter, and overall retail sales in the fourth quarter, and were they impacted by weather. And it doesn't matter if you're a local market or in a big region, weather affects the timing of motorcycle sales. And so yes, we do believe that we were impacted by weather, but this is a business that we're in, and we're always going to see weather push sales. We don't think that we've lost any sales. We do think that they'll be pushed forward, but in particular, starting in the second month of -- second week of November, weather turned a little bit worse than a year ago levels, but again, we'll pick that volume up, and we feel good about where we're at. I think the bigger impact on our Q4 sales was really the Road Glide -- the absence of the Road Glide, which we completely expected, and that's going to provide some headwind with regards to retail sales as we go forward, as well as market share. And again, when you look at Q4 of 2012, Road Glide represented 9% of that volume, and that Road Glide customers are incredibly loyal to that motorcycle. It is different; it's a different design, it's a different look and a different ride. And so they -- knowing that, that -- those models are going to come back with Rushmore features, we believe that they're out of the market, and that's probably the biggest impact that we had on our retail sales in the fourth quarter.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Pat Archambault with Goldman Sachs.

Patrick Archambault - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Just looking -- with this being, I think, the first year of kind of OpEx/SG&A with fairly minimal restructuring charges in it compared to history, I think it came in somewhere around 18.9%, 19%. If you look back historically, the last time you kind of recorded a year where you had similar levels of revenue that SG&A/OpEx number was, of course, lower in the 15s. And I understand that it probably costs more to sell a bike now than it did back then, but could you, A, maybe just give us a sense of what the structural differences are in the business now? And then maybe a little bit more about the longer-term opportunity to leverage that down because it does look like it's a potential margin opportunity even beyond 2014.

John A. Olin

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Pat, so overall, SG&A, let's start with the fact that it represents -- it's about 80% fixed. But that doesn't mean that it isn't subject to inflation because it certainly is. But when we look at our motorcycle growth and revenue growth, the SG&A base is highly leverageable. Again, about 80% fixed, 20% is more variable and more directly tied to motorcycle sales. So as we look forward, I mean there's a tremendous opportunity to leverage that base of SG&A spending, and that's why we did move from guidance to add gross margin to operating margin. We want to make sure our investors, as well as our employees, are focused on that opportunity. I don't know when you go back and look over time, you'd asked about SG&A because there was inflationary pressures, and also, the big investment we've made over the last 3 years in our international expansion have pushed SG&A up. But again, a lot of that footprint is set from an international perspective, and we expect to leverage that with international growth exceeding our domestic growth.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jaime Katz with MorningStar.

Jaime M. Katz - Morningstar Inc., Research Division

Analyst · MorningStar.

Can you guys talk a little bit about how you're thinking about pushing price increases through, going forward, particularly overseas, and maybe what you're seeing in way of competitive environment over there promotionally?

John A. Olin

Analyst · MorningStar.

Jaime, this is John. We actually don't think about it as pushing price increases through. We think about more of delivering value to our customers that they're willing to pay for, and I think Rushmore is a great example of that. We're able to increase -- well, drive the entire line of pricing at 3.5% in model year 2014, certainly more of a larger price increase of about 5% on our Touring motorcycles. And it was delivering an incredible amount of value, because we know our customers better than anyone else in the world, and we'll continue to do that. We think that the brand gives us a lot of opportunity and pricing power as we go forward, but I think the pricing opportunities are going to be driven by the life cycle plan that we have in design. And the models that we're going to be bringing forward will allow us to continue to increase our prices behind the value that we deliver. I'm sorry, the other question was competitive environment internationally. We feel great about opportunities to expand our business internationally. We certainly had some headwinds in Europe, and this quarter represents the best growth that we had in Europe in the last 11 quarters. So hopefully, we'll see Europe economically get better. We do expect some up-and-down quarters there, but that's really where we've had the most pressure in terms of a competitive standpoint, and even within Europe we've been -- the team has done a great job at growing market share, and grew a significant amount of share in 2013. So the rest of our focus internationally is really through building the distribution network and building the brand internationally.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Gerrick Johnson with BMO Capital Markets.

Gerrick L. Johnson - BMO Capital Markets U.S.

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets.

In U.S. you gained 2 points a share in the third quarter without the road glide. Now you're down about 3% in the fourth quarter. Can you just discuss other factors that may have impacted share, perhaps talk about the competitive environment, products and promotion and do you anticipate gaining U.S. share in 2014?

John A. Olin

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets.

Gerrick, in Q4, we did lose some market share. And as we talked about at the Investor Day back in August, we expected that we would be given back some market share. So there was 3 drivers of the market share in the third quarter. First was, similar to retail sales, when you look at the company, the comp was a little bit tougher in the fourth quarter. On a year-ago basis, we lost share in the third quarter of 2012 because of the fact that we're putting in the ERP system, and we pushed volume out of that quarter into the fourth quarter, so that was part of what we were comparing against. The biggest driver though of share loss in the fourth quarter was the absence of Road Glide. And again, when you have a year-ago product that sold 9% of your total U.S. volume, and we no longer have those models in the lineup, and this year is the comparable and we believe the loyalty of those customers we'll have them out of the market until we reintroduced that product, that was the largest impact of the share loss. And then also, during the quarter, we had increased competitive activity. As we look forward to 2014, we would expect headwinds in terms of market share for the next couple of quarters, in particular, due to the absence of Road Glide.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Felicia Hendrix with Barclays.

Felicia R. Hendrix - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays.

A lot of my questions have been answered, and you gave great color on your prepared remarks, so I appreciate that. Just to stick on this market share commentary, just wondering if you could touch upon what you're seeing from your newest competitor, Indian, as they've been ramping, and do you see that as being a bit of a headwind to some of your market share improvement? Or is it all the -- just a return of the Road Glide? Maybe if you -- I don't know if you can calculate this, but maybe if you could give us some kind of guesstimate of what your market share might have been, kind of adjusting for the Road Glide or normalizing for the absence of that?

John A. Olin

Analyst · Barclays.

Felicia, it's John. Let's start with the last one first. We're not going to speculate on what market share would have been had the Road Glide been in there, but just to suffice to say that it was a huge part of our sales in 2012, and it's no longer there. When we look at Indian, they sold some motorcycles in the fourth quarter. We expected that. They've been out of business for quite sometime and Polaris has been promoting them heavily. So they sold some motorcycles, but nothing outside our expectations at all. So it's what we expected. It hasn't thrown us off our plan at all. We'll see how they continue to roll out. I would imagine a lot of that was driving the overall category up and the new people coming in picking up a nostalgic bike, but it's going to take some time to understand where everything nets out, but everything is well within our expectations.

Keith E. Wandell

Analyst · Barclays.

And Felicia, this is Keith. I'll just add that as we sat back and look at these numbers here sort of as a leadership team, we have to remember that we did gain a full point of market share this year, and that was our fifth consecutive year. And over the last 5 years, the market share has increased 13.4%, and we're at all-time high market share numbers in our company now. Having said that, we take every one of our competitors seriously. And clearly, Indian has targeted Harley-Davidson, but so has Honda and so has Suzuki and Yamaha and other companies over the years as well. And so while we monitor that regularly, we take all of our competitors seriously, what we've done here is we've transformed our company, and we've also transformed the culture in our company and how our employees think. And none of our employees take our market share leadership for granted. None of our employees think that we're great, but they all know that we're on a journey to be great. And so everything that we do in our company, everything that we've done, every ounce of energy that collectively we've put into our company in the last several years has been all about designing and developing and bringing great new products to market, which you're beginning to see, and there's more to come. It's been about manufacturing in a great way. We -- our plant in York, Pennsylvania -- the transformation that took place in that plant in less than 4 years is unbelievable. We were just awarded one of the Industry Week's Best Plants in America. And it's really an example of what we can do -- an American manufacturing to be competitive and provide great, world-class products and export freedom around the world. So -- and so that's what we're all about, and our dealers are all in. Our dealers are stepping up their game in terms of providing great customer experiences every day that are personalized, that are trusted and that are social. And so, we're -- we got our eyes straight ahead, right? We're not looking back, and we think that we're going to be able to compete very well.

Operator

Operator

And your last question comes from the line of Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley.

Adam Jonas - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Analyst

Just a question on pricing for both of used and your expectation of new. You mentioned that you're seeing some lower recoveries within HDFS, with the Rushmore success. I'm just wondering is that, A, is one of the expectations and, whether there's any commentary of the overall environment for your used bikes. And then on the pricing comment, the guidance. I think you said price mix would be positive for dollars, but negative for margin. If you were to isolate pricing, specifically, is that also the case that it would be negative for margin? And if so, I was just wondering is that because you expect content to be higher? Just a bit more color there.

John A. Olin

Analyst

Jonas, I'll start with the second question first. In terms of pricing, this really is driven largely by the model year '14 pricing in which we increased our overall revenue across all the lines, across all the regions by about 3.5%. When you look at the gross margin piece of that that increased at a slightly faster rate. It increased at 4-point -- the cost increased at 4.2%. So what that cascades down to is gross margin growth of about 2.1%. So we had higher revenue and certainly higher margins and higher dollar profits. But when you look at that content growing at a little -- with our cost of goods sold growing little bit faster rate than revenue, we did see a headwind on gross margin percent by about 0.05 point and we feel that was the right thing to do for our shareholder, and to drive shareholder value, and make sure that we didn't over price the motorcycles. They've got a tremendous amount of content, but there are some stiff increases in there of up to about $1,800 on some of the models. So we want to digest that, and again, as we mentioned earlier, we think that we have pricing power as we move into the future, which you're absolutely right. Is dollar profit in revenues accretive due to our pricing actions and we'll be slightly -- so slight headwind to overall gross margin percent.

Lawrence G. Hund

Analyst

And Jonas, this is Larry. Just adding on what you said about used. Not surprisingly, I think with the great introduction of Rushmore, and all the content, those motorcycles have, number one, dealers are taking a fair amount of trades when selling those new motorcycles. That has meant they have not had to go to the auctions quite as much for their used motorcycle source. And this has put a little bit downward pressure on recovery values. Also some downward pressure probably on used motorcycle prices.

Amy Giuffre

Analyst

Okay, thanks, gentlemen, thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining us today and this morning. The audio and visual support for today's call will be available at Harley-Davidson.com. The audio can also be accessed until February 13 by calling (404) 537-3406, or (855) 859-2056 in the U.S. The pin number is 26990236#. We appreciate your investment in Harley-Davidson, and if you have any questions, please contact the Investor Relations at (414) 343-8002. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.