VOL. 55 ISSUE 16 APRIL 24, 2018 P109
LC8c parallel-twin engine—which just
made its global debut in the recently
launched 790 Duke—transferred to
China from 2020 onwards, as part
of his new five-year plan to manufac-
ture 400,000 KTM and Husqvarna
motorcycles annually by 2022. How-
ever, KTM sources insist that neither
Pierer nor his Indian partner Rajiv Bajaj
personally, nor KTM or Bajaj Auto cor-
porately, acquired any CFMoto stock
when 25% of the Chinese company
was floated on the Shanghai Stock
Exchange last August. The two com-
panies remain separate independent
business entities.
KTM Industries AG achieved a
seventh consecutive year of record
sales in 2017, retaining its status as
Europe's number-one motorcycle
manufacturer with a record 238,334
KTM and Husqvarna motorcycles sold
in 2017, an increase of 17% over 2016,
with 56% of them delivered outside
Europe. This brought 14% larger an-
nual revenues of 1.533 billion euros,
with 8% higher EBIT (operating earn-
ings—aka gross profits—before interest
and taxes, but after depreciation) at
132.5 million euros. Just over 150,000
of these units were manufactured at
KTM's Mattighofen home factory in
Austria, with around 90,000 examples
of its 125/200/390cc single-cylinder
model families produced by its Indian
partner (and 48% shareholder) Bajaj
Auto at the firm's massive Chakan
factory. Bajaj sold 47,000 examples of
those KTM models locally in India and
Nepal last year, with others shipped
overseas as fully built-up machines to
Europe, North America and Austral-
asia, and the remainder in CKD form
to KTM's six offshore assembly plants
in Malaysia, the Philippines, Brazil,
Argentina, Colombia—and China.
There, KTM's existing partnership
with local privately owned manufacturer
CFMoto had already commenced in
April 2014, when its Hangzhou factory
125 miles southwest of Shanghai be-
gan assembling Indian-made 200 and
390 Dukes for sale exclusively in the
People's Republic under the KTM R2R
CFMOTO AND AC ARCHIVES
(Below) CFMoto
will be in charge of
producing KTM's
range of midsize
street bikes, like the
new 790 Duke.
Marriage made in China.
