Our comments 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 filings with the SEC. Harley-Davidson disclaims any obligation to update information in this presentation.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today at the Harley-Davidson Museum in our hometown, Milwaukee, for our Analyst and Investor Day 2022. It's great to see so many of you after two years of virtual calls. 1903, here in Milwaukee, four young Wisconsinites had a dream to build the greatest motorcycle company in the world and the world had ever seen. 119 years later, we are here today talking about the iconic Harley-Davidson, the most desirable motorcycle company and brand in the world. More than building machines, we stand for the timeless pursuit of adventure, and we are committed to building our legend and leading our industry through innovation, evolution, and emotion.
Today, we'd like to talk to you about the transformation we are on, where we are headed, what the opportunities are, and how we are planning to accelerate as a company and a brand. All with the ambition for Harley-Davidson in mind to be the most desirable motorcycle and lifestyle brand in the world, building upon a 119-year history and leading motor culture into the future. Over the past two years, we've been on quite an unprecedented journey. There have been many significant macro developments that impact the world and our sector. First and foremost, the COVID-19 pandemic and its residual effects on both consumers and on the supply chain, inflation, and more recently, the Ukraine War, which in addition to the tragic humanitarian crisis, is increasing political and economic volatility across the world.
Despite these continued challenges, today we are here to show you why you should be paying attention to our story and why we believe Harley-Davidson is a great investment for the future. Firstly, Harley-Davidson is one of the most powerful brands in the world, with market leadership in almost every category that we compete in. Second, unlike any of our competitors, we have a tremendous opportunity in building a unique global lifestyle brand rooted in motor culture. The iconic Bar and Shield is one of the most recognized logos in the world, and again, unlike any of our competitors, we have the opportunity to evolve our lifestyle brand to new heights if we rigorously pursue and execute on our strategy in the coming years.
A strategic pillar of our Hardwire strategy is growth beyond bikes, and today, you will hear more about one element of that strategy, apparel and licensing, where we see a significant opportunity for growth once we've built a solid foundation that we can grow from. Third, we have a clearly defined vision and strategy to capture profitable growth opportunities. We are seeing the proof points of the Hardwire, and today we are taking it to the next level. In motorcycling, when you want to get more out of an engine, you upgrade it by adding a stage two kit. Today, that is what we are doing with our Hardwire strategy, tuning the engine of our business for improved acceleration and increased performance.
Fourth, as our CFO, Gina Goetter, will detail later this morning, we believe we have the financial and growth profile and ambitions to make Harley-Davidson the right investment for the long run. Lastly, you will hear this morning how we are seeing solid motorcycle demand across all our core categories and what that means for our company. Since 1903, Harley-Davidson has pioneered motor culture, and today is bringing this unique lifestyle to both new and existing audiences. The power of the Harley-Davidson brand is one of our greatest assets. As we approach our 120th year, the brand is at a pivotal point in this, in its history. Today, our brand awareness extends past motorcycles as we grow as a global lifestyle brand underpinned by our focus on desirability. Desirability is a motivating force driven by emotion.
It's in our DNA, it's embedded in our vision, and it's at the heart of our mission and part of our 119-year legacy. Done right, Harley-Davidson desirability preserves the value of our customers' purchases, builds our brand beyond our riders, ensures loyalty, and drives engagement. Desirability provides the framework of our Hardwire strategic plan and the framework for our success measures, and is a significant demand driver for the brand. With Hardwire Stage Two, we now put the customer at the heart of everything we do, and because of this commitment, we will know our customers better than ever. We are investing in understanding our customers, their specific needs, and their expectations of our brand, both as riders and non-riders. What is overwhelmingly clear is that we have a brand that people want to be part of, and that's whether they ride or not.
Within our community, we have our core and our non-riding consumers. Our core customers skewed two ways, non-traditional and traditional. We know that within both these groups, we have a customer base that wants the most authentically Harley experience that we can provide, invariably linked to riding, but most importantly, at the heart of motor culture. With our non-riding customers, we have an incremental opportunity. There is a large community out there who have a passion for the Harley-Davidson brand despite not being riders.
In developing consumer personas, and here's just a simplified version of it, we're able to think differently about the opportunity that exists within our existing and potential new customer base, and how that is applicable across our business, from the motorcycles that we design to the parts and accessories we create, all the way to the apparel and licensing we provide and how we engage with our different consumers. When we look across the consumer personas, what is clear is this shared passion inspired by the Harley-Davidson values of freedom and adventure, whether that's engaging with us today, in the future, or whether they are already part of our community.
This new way of thinking for us at Harley-Davidson is allowing us to be smarter in the way in which we cater to our different customers, and most importantly, the way in which we target them, ensuring that we continue to grow our community of riders and non-riders alike and how we capture that growth for our business. Capturing profitable growth is essential to our future as the most desirable motorcycle and lifestyle brand. Despite the challenges facing our world and industry today, we are seeing positive drivers impacting our company and brand. First, we expect our most profitable segments and markets to grow. You'll hear some more today about the growth of touring that we are seeing and that we expect to continue. Second, the Harley-Davidson Riding Academy is bringing more people to the sport and, more importantly, more people to the Harley-Davidson brand.
I'm pleased to say that in the U.S. today, more people are riding Harleys than ever before. Third, not only are we bringing new riders to the sport, we are reaching a new incremental customer through our strategic additions of new market introductions. You'll hear later how we are using both adventure touring and sport categories to do this. Lastly, sales of our most profitable products are growing faster with younger riders as we see cultural shift within motorcycling aligned to the growing of touring and performance. I want to spend some time on the underlying dynamics of the market and where we believe this will support our growth in the future. We expect the global market for new and used 600 cc + ICE motorcycles to grow through at least 2030.
Several factors underpin these projections, most notably macroeconomic trends with steady growth in disposable incomes, Gen Z interest in outdoor pursuits, and our timing expectations for the transition of core Harley-Davidson ICE segments to EV. We expect growth in new and used with the used part growth mostly offset by lower overall output over recent years and a tighter new used transaction price ratio. While these are the projections for the overall market, it's important for us to also consider the dynamics most relevant to our Harley-Davidson business. First, we look at global growth across segments. We expect touring, a stronghold and highly profitable segment for Harley-Davidson where we enjoy a strong leadership position, to grow largely in line with the total 600 cc + market with important opportunities in Asia Pacific and North America.
Secondly, as we look at global growth across regions, we project growth in our core market of North America, which represents a disproportionate share of global motorcycle profits, where we once again enjoy significant strength and clear market leadership. The markets in which we participate are one important dimension. Our participation in those markets through the health of our ridership is, of course, equally important. Our ridership in 2021 in our core market of the U.S. across new and used reached an all-time high with more customers on a Harley-Davidson bike than ever before. We can see a supporting trend in terms of the growth in our Riding Academy training program with over 450,000 riders trained since 2015.
We believe this provides a strong basis for the future, given the average age of those trained is around 40 years old with many more years of great riding ahead of them. Finally, we wanted to address what we've seen and expect to see with regards to our Harley-Davidson riders. As mentioned, we've seen and expect to continue to see a strong influx of new riders to our brand. While it is true that a significant portion of them exit, it is very important to distinguish the quality of that exit. Only 30%-35% of those exiting actually age out with the bulk of those exiting retaining the possibility of returning to the sport as their life stage evolves. We have said that one of the metrics for desirability is also price and market.
A more disciplined approach to inventory and a commitment to reducing discounting behavior has resulted in higher price realization and improved profitability. As an example, for our critical touring category in the U.S., we have seen pricing within a ±2% band to MSRP for the past 12 months, a significant change to historical patterns despite significant pricing actions over that same time period. Before we get into the future, I'd like to take a moment to look back and acknowledge the huge transformational change we've been on as a business and as a brand over the past 24 months. In 2020 through The Rewire, we fundamentally reset our business both commercially and culturally with a focus on high performance and immediate term profitability in addition to cost and complexity reduction.
We set about this by cutting $135 million, representing a reduction of 13% from our OpEx. We reduced our current and future motorcycle SKUs by 40%, and we exited 40 markets. Rewire laid the groundwork for Hardwire, our five-year strategy to take us to 2025, leading with profit focus in motorcycles while adding select and focused expansion moves and investments in key strategic capabilities. Some highlights of Hardwire have included a flat HDMC top line despite a 25,000 reduction of units when comparing 2021 to 2019, and an additional 2.7% of operating margin growth, again when comparing 2019 to 2021. All of it bearing in mind the significant macro challenges out of our control that we continue to navigate. You might ask, why now, especially given the macro challenges? The answer is clear to us.
The Hardwire is working, and we are making significant progress in transforming our business and now is the moment to elevate our ambition beyond the current environment. As mentioned earlier, we are evolving how we view our consumer opportunity. Today, we get to know our consumers better than we ever have. This information provides us with the opportunity across our business to engage and connect in more meaningful ways, improving our consumer engagement and delivering the right message at the right time. We are driving our core motorcycle market back to growth. Our most profitable segment in our most profitable market, U.S. Touring, has returned to growth after many years of decline. Aligned to selective expansion, we've also entered new profitable segments like Adventure Touring, where we are attracting new and incremental customers and, in the case of the U.S. market, have already emerged as a leader in the segment.
We continue to build the desirability for our products and our brand. After a history of discounting, we're minimizing promotions and building our brand to a level where products are selling at MSRP. We've also seen a substantial increase in the demand for used motorcycles, with increased prices closing the gap between new and used. Our introduction of H-D1 Marketplace has been a strong driver in the market, and it has quickly become the leading source of Harley-Davidson online dealer listings. This week, we will surpass 2 million total views on the platform, in turn facilitating over 40,000 customers and dealer connections. In our strong dealer network, we have a great asset to our business. We've been working to improve the health of our overall dealer network, with our dealer network having experienced historic levels of profitability despite the very low levels of inventory.
Transforming our business beyond motorcycles is also a new focus of ours. Now, this is twofold. With apparel and licensing, we believe that we have a huge long-term opportunity to grow this business with riders and non-riders alike. As the brand that defines motor culture, this sits squarely within our plans to build a core capability, and it's an ambition of ours. Rooted in motor culture is personalization. With parts and accessories, we know our riders want to make their Harley uniquely theirs, and we are transforming our approach in PNA in several ways. Lastly, we're changing the way we work and are investing in new capabilities both internally and externally. Our digital capability has been lagging behind for too many years. Our new digital and performance marketing capabilities are setting the stage for future growth. With our organization, we're doing two things.
We are rethinking the way in which people work through our Future of Work initiative, increasing productivity while eliminating unnecessary cost and complexity. We are investing our talent, increasing our capabilities and expertise in our leadership teams, setting us on the path to achieve our goals as a high-performing company. In this context, it is worth noting that all my direct reports are new in their role, and about 70% of our second- and third-year global leadership team have changed over the past 24 months. Today, we are here to tell you that we see an opportunity to capitalize on the early success of Hardwire.
As we continue to navigate the current circumstances, we believe that by accelerating our core Hardwire initiatives and by making bold moves in spaces that Harley-Davidson can win in, we are confident that we can deliver not only further improvement in top-line, but also bottom-line performance. Given the dramatic shifts we're experiencing in real-time, we will look for additional cost productivity and maintain prudent spending across all aspects of our business in order to stay ahead of the headwinds and turbulence coming at us. By now, I'm sure all of you are familiar with the Hardwire pillars that form the basis of our Hardwire Stage Two acceleration plan. I'll now provide detail on select initiatives that we will focus on to accelerate and further transform the business as part of Hardwire Stage Two, aligned to our pillars.
As part of The Hardwire, we made a commitment to invest for growth within our core segments. Aligned to Pillar One, profit growth, we are strategically investing into touring where we believe we can capture growth. This investment is driven by the opportunity in our stronghold categories and most profitable segments at the core of our business. We expect to invest $300 million over the next five years in innovation to reinvent, reimagine, and reinvigorate in key categories where we see the potential to grow our leadership, namely touring, cruiser, and trike. As the market leader, it is down to us to continue to innovate within these segments, both through technology and design, building on our 119-year heritage. Within these core segments, we know that our community values elevated design and premium quality.
In CVO, Icons, and our new Enthusiast offering that is to launch soon this year, we are doing just that. The Custom Vehicle Operations, CVO motorcycles, are undoubtedly the most desirable in the world. Looking ahead, we will focus on growing CVO on the market, taking the very pinnacle of Harley-Davidson design to the next level. Our Icons Collection, which launched last year, is a collection of extraordinary adaptations of production motorcycles which look to our storied past and bright future. Produced only once, each model will have a limited serialized production run and deliver on what Harley-Davidson has always done so well, iconic design and historic stories. A new Icons Collection model will be released within each model year.
Production will be enough to fill allocation of approximately one per dealer globally, making each Icon a rare and highly coveted model for our riders while increasing the overall desirability of the brand. The Electra Glide Revival was our first Icons release and sold out instantly. Our Enthusiast Collection, which will debut later this year, will be another special edition inspired by Harley-Davidson riders and their unique stories, but more when we launch it later in the year. In addition to investing in our most profitable categories, we are also focusing even more on building our leadership by investing in our most profitable markets. In North America, we are the undisputed market leader in what is the most profitable motorcycle market in the world, and we will continue to invest in preserving and extending this lead.
In Asia Pacific, we believe we have a significant opportunity to grow the premium segment across the regions while striving for leadership in the most profitable markets of China, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand, and Australia. In EMEA, we will be using our most premium motorcycles to grow share, leveraging our brand and playing to win. Additionally, we plan to participate in the region with new product where our profitability targets are met. Lastly, LATAM, a region that has been historically focused in the lower CC space, but where we're exploring new opportunities that best fit our profitability goals. After our successful product launches this and last year, we will focus on delivering profitable growth with both high potential adventure touring and sport segments utilizing our Rev Max platform.
We know that to achieve our Hardwire ambitions, we cannot only focus on our core segments, and aligned to Hardwire, we are therefore committed to expanding where we have the right product to win and where the profit profile is right. Last year saw the launch of the Pan America, the company's first adventure touring bike, and in a whole new category for the company. Designed to conquest market share, grow the brand reach in EMEA, and grow the adventure touring segment in North America, the response to Pan America has been phenomenal, with the Pan America allocation effectively being sold out from launch and the bike being named multiple times the best motorcycle of 2021.
Pan America has helped build the fastest growing segment in North America, with the Pan America 1250 Special becoming the number one selling adventure touring motorcycle in the U.S. in 2021. As we continue to see its success, it is very well suited to delivering growth in high potential international markets too. With sport, we know that the category skews younger, with the response to Sportster S being very strong. We are seeing a higher proportion of new to the brand riders in this section, in addition to it playing an important role as an incremental bike for existing and new customers. Delivering new to the sport riders is the heart of our objectives to attract new customers to the brand, in addition to expanding the garage of our existing riders.
The Nightster that we launched just last month to step into the footsteps of a 65-year legacy of Sportster is another great example for that. Looking ahead, we plan to tap into the potential of the Rev Max platform using modularity to explore new markets for the company. Modularity in design is a key advantage and allows the company to invest for multiple categories while using the same platform. Now I'd like to invite our VP of Design, Brad Richards, to the stage to talk about how we design with modularity in mind and how this allows us to unlock innovation.
One of the coolest things about Harley-Davidson in general is that we always pay attention to what's happening, what our customers are doing with our products, and that informs the design process and that informs the product planning process. It comes back to that conversation that we've had with our customers since 1903, and that's create a motorcycle, give it to the world, watch what the world does to it, interpret that into the next motorcycle. Watching our customers kind of create these different personalities is very inspiring. They have been made into every shape and form of motorcycle. When you let a bunch of designers go super wild and kind of cut them loose, they're going to come up with stuff that's going to push the limits.
We're going to challenge our internal standards, so you can get away with some really fresh aesthetics and fresh form factors that we haven't tried before. We talk about the emotional connection that our customers have to the product. A lot of that is because there's an emotional connection that our manufacturing teams have with building the product. There's a certain level of, like, just soul that is in the motorcycle because you have people with passion that are putting these things together. I think our customers kind of, they gravitate to that because it represents something in them.
You get the right kind of technology and the right kind of thinking, the right kind of mindset, keep the soul in all the decisions, and you get motorcycles that push all the boundaries of the tech and deliver that Harley-Davidson experience. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Milwaukee. For those of you who don't live here, this is exactly what the weather's like all year long, so you're here at a good time. I wanna talk to you a little bit this morning about these three motorcycles to my left. These are the three members of our Revolution Max family. As Jochen mentioned, a key part of the Hardwire transformation was also thinking about and maybe transforming the way that we actually create our products and design our motorcycles. This has led us to the Revolution Max architecture and platform.
Modularity was a very important element within the Revolution Max project. Basically, the reason that that was important is because if you think about these three motorcycles and look at them, you wouldn't at first think that they come from the same essentially suite of components, but they do. We knew we had to do a motorcycle like Sportster, which really hearkened back to our original, you know, Sportster DNA from some 65 years ago. We also had to create bikes like Pan America that operated in a totally new segment. That was quite a challenge for the design and engineering team. Let's talk about what modularity actually enables.
First of all, it enables a dramatically improved dynamic experience for the rider, and not just the expert rider, but also the new-to-sport rider because it enables a bunch of very ease-of-use attributes, like light weighting, for instance, is one of those. Of course, it also enables less complexity within our engineering and manufacturing facilities, which is a huge bonus as well because that allows us more resources to do other things and make other motorcycles. Finally, most important to the design team was that this modularity enabled this incredible breadth and form factor, which I talked about. In addition to these attributes of modularity, we also knew we had to apply our mantra of look, sound, and feel to every motorcycle that we design.
That's what we do today. That really gives the riders the emotional connection to our products that they love so much. We call it our sweet sauce or secret sauce rather. Let's talk about the Revolution Max bikes we have here in front of us, and I wanna start with Nightster, which is the red bike there in the middle. Nightster really had two key goals. I mentioned, number one, it had to deliver that classic Sportster form factor and DNA, which I think you can all see that we did, especially if you take a trip through the museum and look at our classic Sportsters.
The second thing is it needed really to create a great platform for new-to-sport riders as well as riders that were a little bit more advanced, and we wanted to make sure that we were able to do this. One of the key pieces of innovation that we unlocked were ride modes. On Nightster, you can actually, through selection of ride modes, dial the bike into a rider's capabilities, which is really great. We're also able to shed about 80 pounds of weight with Nightster and added quite a bit more horsepower to the motorcycle as well. Again, that dynamic capability was greatly enhanced. I'm gonna move now to Sportster S, which is the white bike sitting here next to me.
Sportster S was what we wanted to create, what we call the apex Sportster experience. We knew that the Revolution Max architecture was gonna unlock all of this incredible dynamic capability with light weighting and horsepower and great braking and technology, and we really wanted this motorcycle to kind of embody all of that. We wanted to kind of set the stage for, you know, putting the sport back in Sportster, if you will. The cool thing about this bike is it's attracting customers that were never interested in Harley-Davidson before. We have folks coming from sport bikes and other brands that are now interested in Harley-Davidson because of the capability that this motorcycle has. Finally, Pan America, the black motorcycle at the end of the line there.
It's the best-selling adventure touring motorcycle in North America, and it has multiple Best of Bike 2022 awards sitting on its tank, which is fantastic. Pan America definitely utilizes a unique design. We did not follow what everyone else was doing with adventure touring motorcycles in terms of its aesthetic, and that was a very deliberate move to kind of carve out our own space within the adventure touring segment. The design language is very steeped in Harley-Davidson go-anywhere DNA, but it's also steeped in North American off-road DNA with vehicles like Jeep, Scout, Bronco. That form factor really came from there and kinda gave us our unique space. It also has a great bit of tech in it called Adaptive Ride Height, or ARH.
What ARH allows is almost a 2-inch drop in the seating position, the effective seating position of the motorcycle. One of the problems with adventure touring, which just by the way, is one of the fastest-growing segments in motorcycling, is that a lot of folks can't experience adventure touring motorcycling because the seats are too high on the motorcycles. We invented some technology that actually drops the motorcycle seat up to 2 inches, depending on the rider's inputs. This allows a more diverse group of people to experience adventure touring. This has also had another side effect in creating a more diverse group of people experiencing Harley-Davidson motorcycles, which is exactly what we wanted. Now with all the bikes available to be experienced, growing rider accolades are piling in on the motorcycles, and it's great to read the reviews.
It's been very positive. We know Rev Max is working. Pan America, Sportster S, and Nightster have brought new customers to Harley-Davidson, and actually Harley-Davidson into new product spaces as well, which is really exciting. This is driving a shift in perceptions, which is one of the things that I'm most excited about being part of the design team at the company, is that we're beginning to make people think a little bit differently about who the Harley-Davidson customer is and what a Harley-Davidson product is, and I think that's a really good thing 'cause we're basically just expanding the pool of potential customers. Regardless of customer, use case, or style of motorcycle desired, the one common thread with all Harley-Davidson customers is a desire for a unique and very authentic experience.
This defines the Harley-Davidson experience and the welcoming community that surrounds it. With that, I'd just like to say thank you and give it back to Jochen.
Thanks, Brad. When Harley-Davidson set its EV ambitions 10 years ago, we did so knowing that the electrification of motorcycles would be a long journey with the convergence of factors needed for EV to be applicable to our core segments of touring and cruiser. LiveWire is spearheading the market development in its segments for the urban and beyond consumer. As the wider two-wheel market continues to develop, Harley-Davidson will target the electrification of its core segments as soon as the technology permits. Battery technology needs to advance before delivering against the core segments of Harley-Davidson. But other tech advancements in EV apply well to our core ICE business too. In short, electrification and the development of EV will allow Harley-Davidson to better our overall technology across the business.
Both Harley-Davidson and LiveWire will continue to co-develop and invest in relevant technology while exploiting opportunities and synergies for scale and efficiency. While overall EV infrastructure is improving, especially in urban centers, it will be some time until the infrastructures and broader EV network in non-urban areas becomes mainstream. Lastly, beyond electrification, we continue to pursue fuel efficiency solutions, including assessing opportunities for alternative fuels. Customization is at the heart of motor culture and for many is an integral part of the overall Harley-Davidson lifestyle. P&A allows us to have a truly personal relationship with our customers and their bikes. What could be better than making your Harley-Davidson uniquely yours? With a global opportunity of $3.5 billion, we know there's a bigger potential for growth than we originally anticipated.
As part of pillar four, growth beyond bikes, we are focusing on growing our overall parts and accessories offering. When we look at the way in which our customers engage around PNA, it splits two ways. Firstly, our dealer loyalists, who will spend anywhere between $1,600-$8,000 per year on their bike through our dealer channel. While this is likely to be on new motorcycles, we think that there's an opportunity to inspire more top spenders, capturing share of wallet, and importantly, creating more engagement with the customer. Secondly, our channel agnostics, who are not dealer loyal, but who spend an average of $1,200 per bike every year. This customer set presents a significant opportunity for us to think about how we expand our reach, creating compelling product that can drive additional customer engagement.
To capture the PNA opportunity, we will intensify our focus in this space and expect to capture incremental new and used motorcycle volume in addition to maximizing our share of wallet across our motorcycle segments, and this is not just about touring. We can offer accessories for new product, having it available from launch, so that we are able to increase accessorization on new motorcycle purchases at launch, capturing that growth from the get-go while maximizing the opportunity within the used motorcycle segment too. A key differentiator at Harley-Davidson is the service that we can provide. We see service as a key driver for growth, ensuring that our customers have the best experience possible while inspiring them to maintain and deepen their relationship with Harley-Davidson. Lastly, we know that we have a high potential to grow our channel.
A focus for us will be through investment into digital, including e-commerce, ensuring that our customers are able to have a seamless purchase experience. Thanks, everyone. We are taking a 10-minute break, and see you right back. We have a vision, and that vision is to take our unique lifestyle brand rooted in motor culture to the next level, and a core part of that vision is our apparel offering, both for our community of riders and our community of non-riders. We know our customers today better than we ever have. We know that we have customers that want riding gear, but we also know that we have customers that want to be part of our brand, wearing our product even if they aren't a rider.
That strong emotional connection to the brand is something special that many others don't have, taking our brand beyond motorcycles with desirability at its core. We stand for the timeless pursuit of adventure, and that is a very unique asset to have. The Harley-Davidson brand is recognized across the globe, and even though we've had a successful business in apparel, we haven't leveraged the full potential of our brand outside of our core demographic. As a lifestyle brand rooted in the sport of motorcycling, inspired by motor culture and growing the business beyond motorcycles, that's the opportunity. Apparel and licensing is a core part of our Hardwire strategy, and as we look to Hardwire Stage II, we've seen there's an opportunity to accelerate our investment to take advantage of this opportunity.
What drew me to the brand is the idea of creating an industrial product, a product with purpose. There's this authenticity to it. There's this rock and roll spirit, this kind of excitement and connection to Harley and this iconic heritage that's lived for 100 years and continues to evolve. You can innovate, you can engineer, you can focus on graphics. There is so much to create and master within the brand, and what's been built already is really just studying what's been done, celebrating it, and driving it forward.
This is a whole new level for apparel at Harley-Davidson. You're going to see a focus on design for use as well as aesthetic, so we can't miss the opportunity to give our riders what they need. You're going to see technology in design and in fabric choice, all of this with sustainability at the core, ensuring we source responsibly. As I mentioned in the beginning, the power of the Harley-Davidson brand is undisputed. Harley-Davidson is one of the most recognized brands in the world, whether you're a rider or not. Rooted in authenticity and heritage and defined by motor culture, we have the opportunity to bring more people into our community, and we think that our apparel and licensing is a high potential way to do that.
As I mentioned earlier, what is special about our brand is that it appeals to a broader audience than just our core riders. From people just discovering the brand to brand loyalists on their 10th Harley. All you need to do is to go online and look at some of the social channels. I guarantee you that you will see a much wider representation of our community than you would have, especially Instagram and even TikTok. Our marketing is rapidly evolving to capture these opportunities in different ways to engage with our different consumer personas, both digitally and physically, satisfying our core and reaching out to new fans. With Hardwire Pillar Four, we are pushing our growth beyond bikes opportunity, beyond motorcycles and parts and accessories. A key focus of that will be investing in apparel and licensing capabilities to accelerate our growth.
Riding gear must be a core competency of the company and brand. By evolving our MotorClothes offering, executing a seasonal forward-looking plan, we plan to strengthen and modernize the way in which we design, develop, and source our product, driving efficiencies through the business while growing our MotorClothes offering. Harley-Davidson lifestyle is where we see the overall apparel and licensing opportunity, especially as it relates to non-riders, but brand aficionados. By creating a unique Harley-Davidson aesthetic, taking inspiration from the past, but for today's consumer, we think we are able to bring more interested people to the brand, leveraging the unique power of Harley-Davidson. Lastly, we know that we must improve our commercial execution of our apparel and licensing business. Having brought in new leadership, we are fundamentally changing our approach to apparel and licensing.
We will be creating a product offering that is inclusive for our community, including non-riders. As we look at the product pyramid, you will see that with clear segmentation, using our customer personas, we are able to address both the lifestyle and more practical elements of our brand based on a clear distribution channel strategy. You'll hear more about this later in the year. Our overarching ambition is to elevate the design and craftsmanship of our apparel offering with form, fit, and function as a priority underpinned by quality. I'd now like to hand over to Edel O'Sullivan, our chief commercial officer, to talk through Pillar Five, the integrated customer experience. Edel.
Thank you, Jochen. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming to Milwaukee to meet with us. Delivering on the growth ambitions that Jochen just shared across our motorcycles, our apparel and licensing, and our parts and accessories business requires us to really transform how we think about the customer journey and to really meet and at times exceed the expectations of our customers for a modern retail experience, most notably at the intersection of our digital and physical channels. From the moment that a customer first engages with our brand all the way through post-sale support and service, it is our intent to allow our customers to engage with us where and how they choose. We have made significant progress on this dimension over the past year, and let me give you one example of that.
At the beginning of the riding season, we expanded the capabilities of our pre-order program to allow for customers and dealers to more directly order a bike that was of their interest, as well as for us to modify how we then sent those bikes to market to be able to more directly fulfill that demand in an environment where we all know we're very lean on inventory. Leveraging this program for one of our most popular models this year, the Low Rider ST, allowed us to sell out the allocation of that bike, the initial allocation, in less than six minutes. This is just the beginning of what we want to do with this program. You can imagine over time that this will start with much more robust tools for capturing that demand directly.
We will use that to feed into a much more flexible and robust system for inventory. We're actually thinking about piloting a couple of different rapid replenishment models to allow us to test customer demand and wait times, allow for more specific customization and personalization of the bike pre-purchase, all the way to then providing better visibility and tracking to the customers and to our dealers as that bike is in production. This is just one aspect of it. Across the entire purchase journey, there are a couple of hallmarks of what we're trying to build. The first and most important thing is we want to have an excellent search and configure capability. We know that the customer journey starts online increasingly for many of our customers.
That then needs to port with facility and ease into the dealership environment where much of that inspiration, customization, and engagement takes place for things like test rides and fitment. We want to simplify the transaction to allow this to be a much better customer experience and for the dealer and the customer to spend a lot more of their time on the excitement of the purchase as opposed to the paperwork. Finally, as you've heard throughout the course of the day, the ability to engage in service and customization post-purchase, we think is not only a great opportunity for the business, but a true driver of engagement for our customers. As we look to deliver that journey, we know that there are many capabilities that we will have to deliver, and we're making the investments in the systems and infrastructure to allow us to do that.
First and foremost, we need much more robust digital tools that allow us to build, to configure, to customize. Secondly, we need an inventory allocation system that is more modern, that is more based on a lean inventory environment, which has significant benefits for ourselves and for our dealers, but that preserves the ability to meet customer demand for what we know is still in many instances an impulse purchase. Third, we need to make sure that that customer ID, that customer identification and their history is fully transparent across channels. It is portable, so you can start in one channel and end in another one as you choose. Finally, it requires us to continue to work with our dealers to modernize the in-dealership experience.
As we think about the history of our dealers over the past few years, let me start by saying dealers are of course for us an important part of our overall journey. They're our partners in this journey in delivering that customer experience. The past couple of years under the spirit of desirability, which has led to higher price realization, as Jochen mentioned earlier, as well as a much leaner inventory environment, has significantly improved the profitability of our dealers, and we are thrilled to see that. We also think that this provides the basis for significant strength going forward and the capability to invest in transforming the in-dealership experience. We intend to keep our network as the strongest, most competitive, and most exclusive network in all of powersports as it is today. This is a brand that thrives on emotion.
It is a brand that's about connection, it's about community. It is not just about the transaction. At their best, our dealers do this better than anyone to be able to really establish that relationship and that connection with the customer. Over the course of the next 10 years, we expect that our dealer network will invest close to $2 billion in order to transform the in-dealership experience to more completely deliver that experience in dealership.
The hallmarks of this transformation will be a better alignment to the brand, a stronger representation of the brand, a more flexible approach as sometimes we hear that can be a little bit intimidating for non-riders, so we want this to be an environment that is friendly to riders and non-riders, that is more integrated with that digital experience I just spoke to, but crucially, that really invests in the experience, the engagement, and the community that sets this brand apart. As part of this transformation, we do expect that there will be further network optimization, both in the size and quite frankly the shape, of the dealer network to ensure that we keep discipline and focus, while very, very importantly ensuring that we keep the market coverage and the strength of our network today that allows us to invest so significantly in service, in customization, and in experiences.
We're very excited for this transformation. For a little bit more detail, let me show the following video to you.
More chrome. Matted out. Make it your own. There are 1,000 ways to make a Harley-Davidson uniquely yours. Your personality, your attitude, it's your motorcycle, and it tells the story of what you've put into it and the miles you've put on it. Whatever you throw at it, a Harley-Davidson will always be a Harley-Davidson. In the same way, every Harley-Davidson dealership is a destination, and each one uniquely reflects the people and families that operate them and the communities they serve. Rest assured that will never change. It's this combination, the uniqueness of our dealerships and the evolution and innovation of the iconic Harley-Davidson brand that will carry our legacy of adventure and freedom into the future.
Beginning in 2022, as part of the Hardwire Five-Year Strategic Plan, we're rolling out the new HD Fuel Facility Program engineered to deliver our customers an unparalleled experience in every dealership. This program is built on a new design foundation inspired to enhance the wanderlust of the Harley-Davidson brand and the unique experience of our dealership network. What's the goal? Transform the dealership into a one-of-a-kind destination like our customers expect. Show off the heritage and innovation that makes Harley-Davidson the most desirable motorcycle brand in the world. Grow our rider community. Draw riders and fans deeper into the Harley-Davidson lifestyle and keep them coming back. Just to be clear, these are not cookie-cutter templates.
Just like every motorcycle model we make is unmistakably Harley-Davidson and in a category all its own, these bold new design tools will give dealers the freedom and power to outfit their dealerships in a way that's authentically Harley-Davidson and distinctively unique. This is how the next chapter of the Harley-Davidson story starts. Let's write it together.
As I said, we're excited to roll this program out over the next couple of weeks. We have been collaborating extensively with our dealer network over the past few months to really ensure that we drive that consistency, that improved experience, but also preserve the character and the uniqueness, which again denotes the Harley-Davidson dealership and the strength of that dealership in connecting with our customers. In summary, over the next few years, we see significant transformation in our go-to-market and in our relationship with the dealers. We see a world that transitions from much more siloed processes around transactions with product and services in very different sort of buckets in terms of the customer experience to a much more seamless approach where product and services are all integrated.
From a world where we have slightly disconnected and fragmented digital experiences to one that again matches the expectations of a modern retail experience with a lot more integration, and that really puts the customer and their experience at the center of the journey. From something that is really largely based on new sales, and the transaction around new sales, to an experience that recognizes the value of that customer through their entire journey, again, emphasizing engagement, emphasizing community, service, customization, and ultimately preserving that customer's long-term value for the brand. We see a transformation also in how the network works with each other from a somewhat more fragmented approach, with a little bit more ad hoc to something where we're all collaborating together in our ultimate goal, which is for Harley-Davidson to win.
Finally, from a world in which each dealership is sort of its own point in time and in place, with its own sort of most of the activities oriented around allocation and trying to manage sort of a specific pool of inventory to a world where we think more holistically about all of the profit opportunities within a dealership and do more of the inventory management at the center to preserve that delicate balance of desirability with the ability to meet our customer demand. We're just getting started. We couldn't be more excited. With that, let me turn it over to Gina for a recap of the financials of Hardwire II.
Thank you, Edel. Who's ready to talk some numbers? Get the spreadsheets out. Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us in my hometown of Milwaukee. It's lovely for you to be here. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for bringing the weather. It is definitely the motorcycle gods are definitely shining on us this week. It is definitely getting time to ride. You know, over the past few years, Harley has been on a transformation journey. We have restructured the company, we have streamlined our product portfolio, and we have refocused our strategy against our core markets and our core products. Looking at the financial measures in year one of The Hardwire, we delivered about $4.5 Billion of revenue, which was just shy of 2019, but we delivered that with 25,000 fewer units.
As Jochen talked about upfront, we saw growth come back to the categories, and we were growing share in our most profitable category and our most profitable market. We are very proud of the margin improvement that we were able to drive in 2021 with 2.7 points of improvement versus where we were in 2019. As we've talked about before, this margin growth was really driven by the actions that we took as part of Rewire to take out the cost to really refocus the portfolio, and also actions that we took as part of our year one of Hardwire to kind of keep going towards our core focus areas, our core products, and restoring the profitability of the company.
After a dividend hiatus in 2020, we went back to dividends in 2021, and we gave back $92 million to our shareholders. With a solid foundation now set in 2021, we turn the corner to year two of The Hardwire. As we highlighted a couple of weeks ago on our earnings call, we remain committed to be on track to delivering our 2022 guidance. As you have seen in our Q1 performance, we were largely in line with internal expectations. Chip shortages and supplier production impacted our ability to efficiently produce, build dealer inventory and meet demand, and we continue to see high levels of cost come into the P&L across supply chain. 2022 is definitely gonna be a back half story for Harley, assuming some improvement in the supply chain in the back half of the year.
Also assuming that we don't have any new material supply disruption from our supply base. We expect that Q2 is going to look very similar to Q1 in terms of the production, in terms of shipments, and we're not expecting a meaningful change in cost inflation or chip availability. As we turn to the back half, we're planning for more efficient production and logistics costs to stabilize. While there will continue to be volatility, just given all of the macro global events, we will continue to pivot and take action to make sure that the business is on track to deliver the goals for the year. Hardwire Stage II is all about acceleration, and as you've gone throughout the morning, hopefully you're walking away with confidence that our business fundamentals have improved.
We're investing for long-term growth within our most profitable markets and categories, and we're building capabilities that will allow us to expand our customer reach and dealer engagement, and ultimately, that we are focused on those initiatives and those areas of the business that drive the most amount of value for all of our stakeholders. With LiveWire as a separate business, we will set different target metrics for the three businesses based on what matters most for their business model. These updated targets are through the same time period as our original Hardwire plan, so through 2025. As we said last year, the base for our algorithm will be 2021, where we ended the year in 21. For the motor company, we are now targeting revenue growth to be 5%-7% through 2025.
This revenue growth is inclusive of ICE motorcycles, our parts and accessories business, and our apparel and licensing business. This updated target is ahead of our original Hardwire expectations and is driven by the confidence we have in our ability to continue growing our motorcycle business desirably over the long- term, as well as the step changes that we're making across PNA and apparel and licensing. For HDMC, we believe we have a path back to 15% margin by 2025 through continued focus on the fundamentals of pricing and cost management, including a more ambitious agenda around the long-term supply chain optimization. For HDFS, we continue to expect solid earnings growth. Using 2021 as the base, the CAGR is -3% to -5%.
Remember, this includes the historically low losses and loss allowance reserve rate that we had, a reserve release that we had back in 2021. That was worth about $100 million, and we do not expect that to be repeatable as we move forward. When you look at the HDFS 2022 through 2025, we expect operating income to grow 3%-5%. Turning to LiveWire, we continue to be committed to the targets we issued back in December. By 2025, we expect to deliver about 53,000 motorcycles as we continue to expand into new markets with new products. The revenue growth of 140% includes the motorcycle unit growth as well as growth within our STACYC kid motorbike business. We're gonna talk more about LiveWire and STACYC a little bit later this morning.
Since Harley is going to own the majority stake of LiveWire, we will continue to consolidate the business into Harley-Davidson, Inc., and LiveWire's results will flow through to the income statement and with an adjustment for minority interests. For total Harley-Davidson, Inc., we are targeting low double-digit EPS growth through 2025. These updated targets represent what we know of today in terms of the macro operating environment and our ability to navigate all of the headwinds that are coming at us. You know, one of the biggest questions that we received coming out of our LiveWire announcement in December was, how does the ICE market coexist with the EV market? As EV is rapidly growing, what is this gonna mean for your ICE business?
Earlier, Jochen walked through that we expect through 2030 that our ICE market and the categories in which we compete will continue to grow. You know, in many of these markets and many of these categories, we are the category, we are the market, and it is our job to continue to invest behind innovation and brand development to continue to lead. At the same time as ICE is expanding, the EV market is accelerating, and we expect double-digit growth as customer preferences continue to shift, the EV infrastructure continues to expand, and the market continues to mature. Looking a little bit more closely at revenue, our HDMC revenue target of 5%-7% growth is made up of the four main businesses of motorcycles, parts and accessories, apparel and licensing, and experiences.
We expect that all four of these businesses are gonna grow over the next three years. For motorcycles, we expect revenue growth towards the lower end of that 5%-7% range as we grow units behind innovation and continue to focus on profitable mix and pricing. For PNA, A&L, and experiences, we expect growth above the HDMC segment range. PNA growth will accelerate as we continue to emphasize customization of new and used, as well as we have a re-engagement with the park through service. For A&L, growth projections are based on our expectation of higher attach rates on things like riding gear, as well as us stepping into the new opportunity with new customer segments, as Jochen outlined earlier. Experiences will drive growth by engaging customers in the brand across services, events, and various touch points.
We are also committed to getting back to 15% operating margin across HDMC, excluding LiveWire. In 2021, we delivered 9% operating income margin. If you kinda take out LiveWire and then you add and you take out the impact of the incremental EU tariffs, you get roughly three points. Those two things, LiveWire and the tariffs, gets you about three points. Over the next three years, we expect the additional three points of margin growth will be driven by a combination of more units at a stronger profit unit mix, pricing, and cost productivity. As we focus in on cost productivity through The Rewire, we achieved a significant amount of cost takeout within operating expense.
As we move forward, we're gonna maintain a strong balance of cost controls and balance our reinvestment back into the business with the market realities that are hitting us today. The next big area of opportunity for cost takeout is across the supply chain. In 2021, we saw almost $200 million of cost come into the P&L, and in 2022, we're guiding to similar levels. With all of this volatility though, it has opened up the opportunity for us to rethink how we approach productivity. Within manufacturing, we are reassessing our footprint to optimize delivery times and improve profitability in all of the markets in which we compete. This work will inform our capital strategy and the type of investments that we're gonna need to make at both our York and our Thailand facilities.
We also have an opportunity to continue investing in automation and digital technology across all of our facilities to drive efficiency and enhance our product quality. For logistics, we will have a concentrated effort on bringing down our expedited shipping costs as our supplier health improves. As we relook at the overall network design, we are expanding on our capabilities to improve visibility of our inventory by creating seamless system connectivity that will connect orders all the way through to operations to drive better predictability and speed. Finally, for supply, our opportunity here is to reshape our supplier network to best serve our updated global footprint. A big factor in us being able to deliver these targets will be talent and capabilities.
Over the past year, we have brought in new leadership across all of our buckets of supply chain, and they bring with them decades of expertise and best practices that we are going to put to use on our own journey. This cost savings commitment is a critical part of our Hardwire II targets, because it allows us to expand our margin, it allows us to stay ahead of inflation, and it provides the fuel that we need to continue investing back into the business. Moving outside of HDMC, our financial services business provides a distinct competitive advantage to us as well as to our dealers. We currently finance about two-thirds of all of the new and used motorcycles that are flowing through our network.
For every bike that we are financing, we generate about $1,000 of profit per that bike. Plus, there's additional revenue and additional profit from other services such as extended warranties, insurance, car products. HDFS has been a steady performer that is cash generative and self-funding. We have grown our return on equity from the high teens in the 2012 to 2017 period to an average of 21% over the past five years. This ROE regularly benchmarks as best in class amongst other finance captives, and we continue to work to improve it as we maximize our net interest margin, make greater use of our Eaglemark Savings Bank, and grow our revenue from all of our other services that we provide.
Taken all together, HDFS continues to be a strategically important segment of Harley, which drives value across our entire ecosystem. Turning to our capital allocation strategy, the first priority continues to be funding the investment against our Hardwire strategy. Over the next three years, we anticipate spending $225 million-$250 million behind ICE product innovation, manufacturing modernization, and continued evolution of our go-to-market strategy. Our remaining priorities continue to be returning cash to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks. I have talked with many of you ever since our Q1 earnings release on what our plan is on share buybacks, and we do expect this will continue to be part of our capital allocation strategy, but we will balance the buybacks with other cash priorities that we have across the business, including potential strategic M&A activity that is aligned with our strategy.
As we think about both growth opportunities, organic or inorganic, and that will be the priority for our cash with buybacks then kind of taking a back seat to those. As we think about M&A, we will take a focused approach in accelerating and evaluating potential opportunities that will complement our Hardwire, too, growth strategies and accelerate our capabilities. A good example of this is within our parts and accessories business, where M&A could play a role in either filling product gaps, expanding our retail or omni-channel presence, or enhancing our business model. It's important to call out the targets that I shared with you earlier. They do not include any material M&A activity in them. One final slide as I wrap up.
You know, this is the first time that we are providing guidance for all three of our businesses, and the announcement of LiveWire as a separate public company is definitely an accelerator from our original Hardwire targets. We put together this chart to do an apples to apples of if LiveWire, you know, LiveWire and HDMC Hardwire, LiveWire and HDMC kind of in the Hardwire Stage 2, so you can see apples to apples how the model is shifting. You know, for all of my sell-side friends at this table, I know that last year we probably didn't make your job very easy trying to fit all of the left-hand side into your model.
Hopefully the specificity of what we're providing today gives you a better sense for where we're headed from a business model standpoint. We believe that the step-ups that we're making really across all areas of our business model lead to stronger revenue and a healthier margin profile, creating a sustainable business model that sets us up for what comes next after the Hardwire. With that, I will wrap up, and I will turn it back over to Jochen.
Thanks, Gina. Thanks, Edel. Inclusive Stakeholder Management is an integral sixth pillar of our Hardwire strategy, and it is applicable across everything we do. Highlights since initiating the ISM, Inclusive Stakeholder Management program across the business include driving a commitment to a diverse workforce, establishing a path to net zero in operations, driving shared prosperity for all stakeholders through fair, equitable, and ethical policies and practices, and investing in our community, ensuring it's not just a great place to work, but also a great place to live. Driven by our commitment to people, planet, and profit, we are continuing on our journey as not just a great brand, but a great company. Thank you very much.
Before we take your questions, I would really like to take the opportunity to thank the Harley team for all their very hard work and dedication to win, especially in the current environment, and leading this amazing brand to new heights with new ambitions. Thank you very much, and we're open for questions.
Thanks.
Robin, when we do Q&A, if you can please just state your name and where you're from. Okay. Here we go,
Robin. Thanks. Robby Ohmes with Bank of America. I'm gonna ask two quick follow-ups to Gina, just because she went last, and I'm probably gonna raise my hand again for other questions. But
Super
Just on the guidance, one question is just what would the gross margin assumption be for Harley-Davidson Motor Company in 2025 on the 15% EBIT margin? The second question on the motorcycle guidance, the unit assumption falling below the 5%-7% revenue growth, how much of that is an assumption about demand versus the new strategy, you know, under Jochen to, you know, not make as many motorcycles maybe as people want?
On the gross margin question, I'm not gonna give guidance on gross margin, but what I would hint to and say that our operating expense and kinda where we're running today in 2022, what we're planning to spend in 2022, that could be a good gauge when you look at it on a percent of revenue moving forward. That should kinda help you back into what that right gross margin could be. We, you know, the getting away from giving precise gross margin guidance gives us the flexibility because we've got investment decisions that we make within operating expense that we can continue to flex up or down as we're going throughout the year, and we're watching, you know, what is happening to us in gross margin and being able to respond to that.
That could be a hint from a modeling question of how to think about it. In terms of the unit growth forecast within, you know, there's absolutely an element of we're not gonna go back to where we were previously of pushing demand at any cost. We are being very mindful of what we're putting in a market is good from a revenue standpoint, but it's also good from a profit standpoint as well. We feel confident in the work that we did around our ICE segment modeling to know that there is growth in our most profitable segments, in our most profitable markets. We'd rather put and focus there than chase demand at any cost. I don't know if you would wanna add.
No. As you said, you know, we expect motorcycle unit growth to be at an absolute growth at the lower edge of the range that we provide for that very reason as well.
Thank you.
Craig.
Hi, it's Craig Kennison from Baird. Thanks for taking my question. Gina, just a quick one for you on the tariff issue.
Mm-hmm.
Are you saying you expect incremental tariff relief to give you that, benefit, or are you asking analysts to exclude a number?
No, I'm saying as we got to 9% last year, there was a little over a point of margin drag that was attributed to those incremental tariffs. If you kinda back that out knowing that we don't have those this year, that kind of is an easy give on our margin and gives us that point. That's what we're saying.
Just on the dealer side, if I could, how have dealers reacted to your plan, and where are they pushing back the most?
We have very constructive conversations with our dealers in all of this evolution. I think the past 18 months have been actually a really interesting proof point on the value of a more restrained and disciplined strategy. I think they see that in their results, and they understand the value of that. They also, of course, know because they can see it in their own customers and in their own behaviors that the world is evolving in terms of how people connect and their expectations across channels. I think we are moving very closely together in alignment in all of those questions.
Of course, there are issues that are raised around how do we effectively work together and make sure that we maintain a fair and equitable approach to the network, that the investments that we are asking them to make are reasonable, and that we are going to hold up essentially our end of the bargain in being very disciplined in how we manage volume and how we ensure that profitability going forward. That other negotiations or the conversations really where we engage the most, this is a conversation obviously in North America, but also globally, ensuring that we continue to evolve the relationship with the dealer and the value of the dealer.
One thing that is very clear for us, and I mentioned it in my comments, the experience that our dealers are able to provide is very critical to this brand and is very critical to this category, and we intend to continue to work together to make sure that we do the best we can collectively for our customer. Sorry.
Hey, it's Fred Wightman from Wolfe Research. I was hoping you could just walk through some of the assumptions. I think it was slide 14 where you have the new rider assumptions. You have sort of the new adds, the exits. Could you talk? I know that it's sort of different time frames. One was six years. It looks like this next one's nine. It looks like there's a step up in the assumptions for the adds, new rider adds. Can you just sort of walk through what's driving that?
Do you wanna?
Go ahead, Jochen.
Do you wanna do it? I don't.
No, go ahead. Do you want me to go ahead?
Yep.
I think the big thing that is, like, we see, we don't have our hand signals. Usually during earnings calls, we do hand signals to each other. Now we're doing real-time hand signals. That in that chart, this is the one that you're talking about that goes up and down. Yeah, yeah. Okay. As we think out beyond, it's the tailwinds that are starting to help us within the category to increase ridership. Some of the pieces that Jochen walked through of we've got more people that are going through Riding Academy, we've got growth coming back into our categories. Both of those things provide the tailwind that more people are entering in than are leaving.
I think what's really important is, and it's not something that the company has really emphasized, is the fact that we talked a lot about aging out, but never talking about aging in, right? I take myself as a rider. I started when I was 16, and in my twenties I stopped, and I came back to riding before I joined Harley. Because it's a life stage that you have to age into to be ready to ride a Harley, right? And to have the time and the money, you know, to actually do that. That's a huge asset for us.
I don't think any other brand has that opportunity to go after this consumer that is ready to ride again. How we change the company to understand who that customer is, when that customer is ready, is absolutely critical. It was not a focus of the past strategies to actually go after that segment. The focus was always how do we keep people riding. For us, a significant focus has to be to focus on those who want to think about riding again and being there when that decision is there, right? That's a very important focus of ours, and that's something I think you, all of you should be focusing a lot more on because, yes, consumer is aging, but that's just life, right?
I mean, people get older, but that doesn't mean that as a company you don't have a responsibility to bring new people into the sport. That's our responsibility as the market leader, and we've been way too much focusing, oh, that there are headwinds, people are aging out, rather than saying, well, actually, there's more people coming into the sport if we so choose to focus on them. While we want to keep people riding and, you know, the customers are riding longer in their lifetime because they're fitter, they're, you know, average age is going up and all of that, a key focus needs to be to get to those customers that, you know, that wanna start riding again, just like I started to ride again, you know, in my late 30s .
I think that's absolutely important to focus on it and not just thinking, can you get an 18-year-old to become a Harley rider? That's really not focusing on the right thing. In addition, it's really not just about demographics, it's about psychographics. You know, it's when is that consumer ready? Is it just the age? Probably not, because, you know, life at 30 and 40 might vary from where you live and what you do. Having all that data available about the consumer is critical because that's when you can focus on a customer, when he or she is ready to, you know, step up again and say, "Now it's time to ride.
Yeah, that's why that chart is so powerful, because before it was always very black and white with the company, the previous narrative, right? It's people are getting older, and we try to do with that chart is show that it's so much more nuanced than that.
Thanks. Good morning. Joseph Altobello, Raymond James. A couple questions, if I could. I guess first, in terms of the EPS guide, the low double-digit CAGR through 2025, how much of that is coming from capital allocation, and in particular, the stock buybacks? Are you assuming that your share count comes down, or are you just offsetting stock-based comp? Is that a significant component of that double-digit EPS growth?
It is not a significant component, no.
Okay.
It's a measure component. It's not a significant component.
Got it. Secondly, in terms of your dealer footprint, what does that look like in 25 versus today? Are we up? Are we down? Are we flat?
Yeah. I would expect that as we go between now and 2025, that we will continue to see some optimization of the network. The two guiding principles for us is to make sure that we create enough focus and discipline, but that we preserve market coverage. That's one of the things that is particular to our brand, and it allows us to have, quite frankly, the size of the share that we have, is because we provide excellent aftermarket support and service that nobody else can do. So as that network potentially becomes a little bit more optimized, a little bit smaller over the next few years, we're looking to preserve that balance and that coverage. The other thing that I would tell you is it's not only the number of dealers, but we're also looking very closely at the format of those dealers, right?
We may not need them to all look the same. We may not need for all of them to do the same things in the future, right? There may be characteristics that look very differently depending on the market, depending on the customer, depending on the geography, quite frankly. All of these factors are going into consideration. In terms of the general trend, I would say it'll be smaller and more flexible than it is today.
Thank you.
Think of what Edel just said as a tiering of your dealer network, right? Yeah, that could be a there could be a tier one, a tier two dealer, maybe tier three, depending on the location, to Edel's point, depending on the customer base, depending on the location. Is it an urban dealership? Is it not? I think dealer tiering is something that is critical, as you divide who could be a service dealer, who could be an experienced dealer. It's not just about selling motorcycles. That's critical.
More questions.
Hey, Brett Andress, KeyBanc Capital Markets. Just following up on Joe's question on the, you know, the level of investment in the dealerships. I mean, how many dealers do you think can actually make that level of investment? And just maybe getting back to a more precise number around what is the optimal number here in the U.S. And then second on just inventory turns, where do you think inventory turns ultimately settle out when you get to 2025 at the dealership level?
Yep. On the first part of your question, this is not an approach that we have done sort of in a vacuum. We've worked very, very closely with the dealers over many months to ensure that the affordability of this is front and center. We do not want this to be a situation that actually creates distress in the network and that actually makes it difficult for us to preserve the strength of the network. It's a very flexible template. It has a lot of different alternatives. It has a lot of customization opportunities in it, being Harley, enough customization, that allows the dealer to be very flexible in how they think about implementing this program.
It is also a gradual rollout, so it ensures that we have the time and the dealers have the time to build up sort of the right financial projections to make themselves able to go through the program. Then the last element that I would say is these have been very profitable years for the dealers, which we are thrilled to see, but that also, we think, provides a good opportunity to go through what is a very long overdue transformation of the dealer environment. On your second question of inventory, I mean, what I would say is we're definitely too lean today. I think that is certainly an industry trend. We are not going back to the sort of 110 days of inventory.
What we are trying to do is to create the right balance between impulse purchase and the right representation of the brand in dealership with a much more flexible and much more sort of, rapid replenishment view of inventory so that you are able to engage in the dealership or in a digital way, to create and customize your bike. It does not have to be on the floor. It also limits the possibility of discounting if it's not the right bike in the right place, but you're still able to access it in a reasonable timeframe. We would expect it'll come up from where we are now.
It'll probably be much closer to where we are now, though, than where we were in 2019, but it's going to be ideally a much, much more flexible approach to how we replenish inventory and how our dealers access it.
Questions?
Hey, it's Colin from Bernstein . I've got a couple. First off, on apparel, the distinction between MotorClothes and lifestyle is noted. Talk to me about lifestyle and how that goes to market. I imagine I'm not having to walk into a dealership to buy this stuff. Online has its own challenges. Branded high street presence has its own challenges too. How do you do that? That was the first question. Second question, the CapEx guidance. You're going from a $205 million- $275 million midpoint. In the words of King Lear, nothing comes from nothing. Maybe you wanna give us some sense of where the extra $70 million a year spend is going. Thanks.
Colin, to your first question, I just talked about tiering of dealers, right? When you think about apparel and licensing, you also have to think of tiering your channel. That's what, you know, consumer brands do. You sell certain products in certain channels. Then even within the dealer network, you have an opportunity to sell more lifestyle apparel, e.g., think, the urban consumer, the urban dealers versus the non-urban dealers and consumers. Within the apparel and licensing opportunity, we will have the chance to segment our apparel and licensing offering based on, you know, the consumer that we think we can attract into certain dealerships. There might be opportunity also to think outside of the dealer network together with our dealers, if their location is not exactly where we think it should be.
There might be, and I'm saying might be because it's something that we will be looking at very selectively, a few stores that we might want to own in order to understand that consumer in the urban area better as an experience center, but not to make it, you know, a big part of our business, but to learn retail, because retail is detail, and to give a better guidance to our dealers. There certainly will be an e-commerce component as well, where we think that the apparel, and I mentioned that, you know, sometime later in the year, we are launching a new a new collection or collections rather, that will appeal to the more lifestyle consumer. There is an opportunity to go direct to the consumer as well, select dealers, but also e-commerce.
In some instances, there might be a channel out there, and I'm not thinking department stores, I'm thinking those who can really live up to the values and the positioning of the brand that could carry selective product of ours as well. There will be clear segmentation based on the pyramid you've seen of who gets what and what collection has what aspiration, what price point, so that our dealers have their genuine MotorClothes, which has two components, performance, functional gear, but also lifestyle gear. T-shirts, for example, is a very important component for their business, localized T-shirts. There's also a component for some dealers that can sell a more upscale lifestyle and an opportunity beyond that. All of that will be part of the game plan for the coming years.
In terms of capital and the step-up, year one, we saw a lot of good momentum across our core business, and as we head into year two, three, four, it's really investing behind innovation, particularly within our core products of touring and trikes. Doubling down, making sure we've got the investments needed to make that profitable core growing, continuing to grow. The second place where we're stepping up investment is across the supply chain. There's a lot of cost productivity that we're putting on the table.
With that comes work that we have to do across our network, both in terms of automation, digital enhancement, but there could be some infrastructure investments that we're gonna need to make as we kinda get that footprint in the right spot, depending on where, you know, the forecast that we've got for each market, volume opportunity. Those would be the two that I would call out of what's driving that step change.
Colin, I'd like to just talk a little bit more about apparel and licensing to give you know, a bit more background. The company has not really been in control of its own destiny from a branding perspective. We kind of said, "Here it is," right? Sign some licensees, give dealers the opportunity to design T-shirts and other things, so we essentially lost control of our brand, and that's changing, right? We are taking that control in-house and build a core competency that never really truly existed because it was all about the motorcycle. Having a dedicated parts and accessories team, having a dedicated skilled apparel and licensing team is a complete change that is quite extraordinary. That will take a little bit of time, but it will bring a competency in-house that we've never had.
We used to have three T-shirt licensees that all competed for space within the dealer, right? The design was provided by the dealer. You can't run a licensing business like that. We let our licensees decide where they wanna sell their product. No channel strategy. We have several competing licensees for the same segment beyond T-shirts as well. We have not really looked at licensing as a business opportunity that goes beyond creating royalties or generating royalties, but actually helping to build the desirability of the brand. Think, you know, sunglasses as an example. Think footwear, think bags and all of that has never really been managed as a business.
That's obviously my background and I'm like, "Wow, that's quite extraordinary that a cult brand like Harley-Davidson gives away the keys to its house to actually control and manage with a competent team what this business should be." It is a truly unique opportunity because once you identify, and that's why I've highlighted it so much, the non-rider versus the rider, once you identify with the brand, that's your first step into a motorcycle or the first step into the brand. There are a lot of fans out there that you know, don't know where to buy Harley-Davidson other than in dealerships that don't want to go into a dealership. We have to provide that experience and that aesthetic that is appealing. That's why I also highlighted, you know, go onto TikTok, look at influencers, what are they wearing?
There is a huge fan base out there that we've never really serviced. You know, think of the vintage market now. Try and buy a 40-year-old leather jacket, costs you several thousand dollars. It's there as a market, but we are not actually going after that consumer or after that market opportunity because people associate with the heritage and the vintage aspect, but we've never really created product to service that consumer and bring them into the brand rather than saying, "Here's the dealerships, and here's a whole world out there," that we then actually don't talk to. We need to start building that relationship.
We need to know everything about the customer, have different customer personas, and what I presented is a really reduced version of what we are actually doing in-house because we don't wanna really talk too much about it in the outside. Everything we do is focused from a product development, from a design, from a price point perspective, from a channel perspective, targeted towards those customers that range all the way to, from a traditional core customer to contemporary core customer, all the way to those who are fans and are aspire to come into the brand. I always think the first T-shirt that you buy is your first step into the motorcycle. That's really, really important. It's a revenue and profit opportunity as well as it is a brand opportunity and a leverage to actually get people to ride.
Jochen, if I could add one other dimension to it, I think it also gives us a much more balanced approach to the female consumer that is just naturally less, you know, at this point, less in our motorcycle market. It creates a completely new opportunity for us to engage with the female consumer, introduce them to the brand, and eventually sort of move into the space of riding, which we think is a huge growth opportunity in our core business as well.
If you look at our announcement for the 120th anniversary, the language changed a lot to what we would have advertised in the past. It's for fans, it's for families, it's for kids, and it's for riders, right? We purposefully decide that when we go to an event, it's not just about the traditional core customer, but it's expanding and offering a diverse set of experience to those, you know, who just think Harley's a cool brand.
Hey, good morning, Gerrick Johnson, BMO. I had a question on the optimization of the dealer network, specifically on exclusivity. Most dealers are exclusive, but not all. Is there gonna be a push to make them all exclusive or continue to allow them to sell other products? One reason why I ask is in northern markets, I find an extreme turnover in salespeople because they have nothing to sell in the wintertime, and so there's a lack of a relationship with the customer when you have that turnover. How do you fix that in some of those northern markets where you don't have anything to sell in winter, and what's the corporate policy on exclusivity going forward?
Yeah. We think it is very important for our network to remain as exclusive as possible. As you state, there are certain conditions under which, you know, that's a little bit more understandable, but the strength of the brand is best expressed in a space that is dedicated to Harley-Davidson, and we intend to continue to encourage dealers in that pursuit of sort of exclusive coverage of Harley-Davidson. Again, harking back to the points around profitability, around the model that we are driving now, around creating, quite frankly, a lot more opportunities aside from the pure transaction of a new motorcycle. We think that that creates much more opportunities for our dealers to continue to be extraordinarily profitable with us.
The position that we have in the market in North America, and quite frankly, globally, with very high margin, very premium products, I think is a real element that is encouraging and very attractive to dealers, and we intend to continue to maximize that going forward. Providing more balance across all of the profit centers of the dealership, including apparel and licensing, customization and service is one important part. As we roll out this program, ensuring that we encourage our dealers to remain sort of exclusive to Harley-Davidson and all the benefits that that provides is another component.
Yes. Good morning. David MacGregor at Longbow Research. Congratulations on all the progress, by the way. It's, it's encouraging. I guess a couple of questions. First of all, on the dealer optimization, we seem to be focusing on that this morning. How do you grow the rest of the world? I realize, you know, in one of your early charts, you'd indicated that you're looking for 2x the growth in the U.S. versus the ROW, but just talk a little bit about that, rest of world dealer organization. How do you grow it? How do you invest in it?
Then secondly, just if you could talk a little bit about the Riding Academy as a gathering device and an opportunity to engage people and just grow the number of riders that are out there, maintain your share, obviously. How do you invest in that, and is there sufficient capacity at the dealership for that now, or do you have to invest there as well? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. Globally, this program that we just described today is actually a global program for us. The same principles apply, right? It's an experience. It's based on all of the profit centers and all of the value streams that Harley-Davidson can provide to our consumers, to our dealers, so all of the same elements are there. Obviously, the regulatory environment is different in different parts of the world. There are different opportunities, and different restrictions in different geographies, which are obviously part of what we are considering. If you recall in Rewire, one of the actions that we took was to significantly scale back our country participation with the intent of being able to go deeper and in greater profitability in the countries in which we remained, and that is inclusive of our dealers.
The same actions of optimization, we're looking at them in other regions of the world, and we intend to continue now with that reduced footprint to have it be more profitable for us and for our network. It harkens back all the way to Rewire in terms of thinking about a smaller footprint, but one that is much more profitable, and we intend to continue to do that going forward. I'm sorry, I forgot the second part of your question.
The Riding Academy.
Oh, thank you.
Just how do you invest in that and create a, you know, a greater level of awareness around that program?
Yeah, as I said, you know, we've created 450,000 new riders. It's a fantastic tool that is led by our dealers. It's something we would like to expand. Not every dealer can have a Riding Academy. We are booked out, you know, on everything we offer. There's also an incremental opportunity, think adventure touring, for example, and providing when we talk about aging into riding, you know, making people feel confident about riding. You might have been a rider, but you've been out of it for 10 years and providing, not a from scratch experience, but one that gets you comfortable again and improves your skills.
We believe there's an opportunity beyond beginners to actually tap into that rider that would like to freshen up or would like to get better at riding as well and feel more comfortable. That's a new element that we are targeting in the coming years as well.
Yeah. Hi, Ryan Sundby, William Blair. You touched on new technologies like ride mode and the Adaptive Ride Height to improve the rider experience. Can you maybe just touch on where you stand in terms of a more connected bike and where you see opportunity moving forward?
Well, as I said earlier, that's the unique opportunity that we have with LiveWire being a standalone company and innovating in its own space, but still having the ability to actually inspire each other in terms of development. The whole question of connectivity is definitely something that is more led by the EV consumer, but it's something where we from a Harley perspective will also learn, give back to LiveWire, but also, you know, benefit from the connectivity aspect that is gonna be absolutely critical. As you've seen in the auto space, you know, it's become a very important ingredient over the air updates, you know, frequent updates. You might have a program, but that program evolves in terms of connectivity, in terms of what your bike can do, just like it can improve your ability to drive for a motorcycle.
It's, you know, better adaptability of the bike. There's huge opportunities here where the ICE business will benefit from the overall change in approach to motorcycle. That's exactly what we are planning to do. There will be more innovation coming from us in the coming years. As I mentioned, core investments in our core segments is critical. We want to expand our market leadership, not just defend it at all, and innovation will play an important role, as Brad talked about innovating in ICE, but at the same time also changing the look and feel of our bikes, also in safety aspects, which will be more and more critical as you think into the future. That's where technology can play a very important role as well.
Two quick questions. The first, Jochen, you mentioned social media a few times, TikTok, things like that. You've done some incredible things already, I think with The Long Way Up and can you give us any, you know, color on what you may be doing next or what you might be doing on the social media digital influencer to achieve these brand goals?
You have to start surfing on TikTok to find out.
We'll do a TikTok for you right now.
I am not.
We've got a coordinated TikTok right here.
No, look, as I talked about consumer personas, you know, different things for different people, right? You always stay true to your brand. That's important. You know, you do not want to be everything to everybody. The authenticity is absolutely critical. That needs to translate from, you know, your overall brand communication point of view to your PR and to your, how you show up in social media. For those who follow us closely, when you look at the evolution of our social media posts and engagement over the last two years, it's been a radical change, right? If you look into the commentary section, radical change. If you look at the Nightster launch that we just did, how we approached the whole launch is a huge evolution.
It might not seem that way, but it is based on how we would communicate in a very traditional way and a singular way towards a certain customer in the past that is evolving tremendously. What's really important is that segmentation, right? You can't talk about the same things to everybody because then you don't reach anybody and that's where that segmentation is critical, whether it's social media, PR. What we post on LinkedIn is probably not what we would post on Facebook, for example. That differentiation is the level of sophistication that we have in our overall approach, and that applies to product and the messaging in itself.
Always paying back into this Harley heritage of 119 years, but with the performance and innovative face to the brand that I don't think we've really pushed for a long time.
That's very helpful. Just one quick follow-up, I think for Edel. Another dealer question. Is there any, as they do this, dealers do the $2 billion of investing, are there any things being put in place as part of that process that reduces the HDMC expenses?
Yeah, as you say, this is largely a program that our dealers will undertake. We have already, and they're included in our Hardwire II projections. A lot of the things that we need to do on our end to ensure that we support that experience with a more integrated digital approach. Some of those end-to-end supply chain, including that replenishment model, being able to also support the role of the brand activities, how the brand then shows up in the broader social context. That is sort of our side of the bargain as our dealers partner with us in this evolution over the next few years. We're both in this together to deliver that improved customer experience.
The bulk of the cost is with the dealer, right? We provide design support and implementation support, sometimes financing support, but the cost is with the dealer, and that's why.
To Edel's point, dealer profitability is so important. You know, five years ago, it would've been hard to push a program like that through, but now with the dealer profitability, not from just a percentage, but on absolute terms profitability, we believe it's a must. When you look at some of the dealerships, it's time, right? We will focus on those, and that will drive dealer consolidation as well, where we need to be. What's critical is we want to be a broad network 'cause that's unique, but it doesn't mean everybody does everything, and everybody has to have a flashy dealership, so that segmentation is gonna be critical. The focus of where we tackle the transformation first and then later throughout because you can't do all dealers in one year.
That's a program that will prioritize year one, two, three, four, five.
Thank you.
Hey, could we just go through the $400 million of cost productivity, the sequencing of that, gross versus net, maybe how that splits across the three big buckets that you've outlined? Anything else to keep in mind there?
That $400 million is a gross number, so obviously we expect inflation that's gonna be in the next three years. To stay ahead of that inflation, that's where we have to get after that $400 million. From a sequencing standpoint, to your point, there are pieces that are near term in nature and easier to get after, and there are ones that are gonna take us a few years. The work on the manufacturing optimization and making sure we've got the right investments and the right facilities to support the long-term growth, we've started that work. We will really start to see the benefit of that cost savings as we move into 2024 and 2025.
As we think about 2023 specifically, it's gonna be more about the real-time changes that we can make within logistics, particularly as the supplier health improves and the expedited shipping costs start to come down, as well as the work that we're doing across our supply base and trying to create that right kind of value proposition with our suppliers. From a front-loaded, think logistics and supply, and as we get into the back half of Hardwire, it becomes more about the manufacturing footprint and the optimization within.
Are there investments that offset the early part? I mean, it sounds like this is all back-half weighted, right? I mean,
Yeah. Those are phased into kind of, as we talk about the $250 million-$275 million. They're embedded in that guidance, so there'll be, that 275 happens later, I would say, in the five-year window or the three-year window.
Thanks. It's Craig from Baird again. Could you walk through the mechanics and the milestones of the LiveWire spinoff?
Sure. Do you wanna get into that now or do you wanna wait?
We actually
We're gonna do it LiveWire.
Talk about LiveWire later.
Oh, okay.
No, Craig. We'll talk about it later.
Save that.
If you're trying to get your report out, what I would tell you is that we are on track for a close here in the first half of the year, so which is Q2 of the year, since Q1's behind us.
Okay. I think we have time for one more question. Hands?
Oh, God.
Thank you. Ivan Feinseth, Tigress Financial Partners. I actually have a couple more dealer questions. On what areas of the U.S., for example, do you think are kind of overserved, and what areas are you looking to focus to open new dealerships? One of the key parts is, there is a shortage of techs. You know, I mean, like the dealership I go to, as service becomes a more important part and bikes continue to become more complex, you're gonna need more techs. Also, while I believe Harley salesmen are probably more enthused than most other auto industry salesmen 'cause they're more engaged, there still is, in my view, a big need for salesperson training to understand all the bikes, and again, especially as, the bikes do become more complex and, there's more ancillary services available for them.
Mm-hmm. Thank you for the question. I wouldn't be ready to share yet some of the questions on where specifically we're thinking about the network optimization. It is something that we are studying in this quarter to be able to sort of fully inform the program as we continue to roll out this transformation. Your question on the techs is really fantastic. We hear this from our dealers all the time as we continue to push for more service and more engagement in aftersales in general with customers of both new and existing bikes, new and used. I think there's a real recognition that there's an opportunity for more vocational training.
Some of our dealers are being incredibly creative in where they're sourcing talent and building talent for their service department, and we certainly want to partner with them on that. One of the things, for an example, of what we are doing, we recently launched a pilot program around service consultants. These are highly trained Harley-Davidson specialists in service that will go into the dealership and spend an intensive period of time with the dealer on optimizing their service department, including, in some instances, finding ways to extract more productivity out of new scheduling practices, a different approach to the work, the work process, so that they can really maximize the technician time that they do have.
We're supporting on our end because, again, this importance, it's very important for us to be able to grow service and after-sales market, aftermarket, engagement in general. Those are some of the things that certainly over the next few years, we intend to continue to support. We are expanding that pilot program now. It has gone now. We're going to do this nationally, and we hope to have the same results that we did with the pilot with many of the dealers.
Just to come back to your first question, you know, I've heard early on, that dealers are competing with each other. That makes no sense. We don't want Harley dealers to compete with other dealers. We want Harley dealers to compete with others, but not Harley dealers.
Making sure that they focus on bringing in new riders, focus on our competition rather than trying to chase away and then price all of a sudden becomes a selling argument. That's where consolidation also needs to happen. If we see that happening within the rules, we will also make sure that, you know, overlaps don't really help the business. It, they're actually can be a negative influence on focusing on the right things for our business, so bear that in mind as well. That is usually more an urban phenomenon than it is, you know, elsewhere. Good. I think we are through the questions. Thank you so much again for coming, and please take time, go to the museum, look at our bikes.
We have most of the senior management team here today, and for those I hope can stay around, we'll see you later for LiveWire. Thank you.