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.