Much chatter was made a couple of months ago when Harley Davidson announced that the then CFO (Chief Financial Officer) Gina Geotter suddenly it seemed would be leaving to join Hasbro Inc who make toys.
Questions were being asked of the current financial position of the company and the millions in credit losses announced at the start of the year too but allegedly this was a personal decision to leave and not based on the performance of H-D MoCo.
David Viney – VP and Treasurer of the company did step in to hold the fort whilst the company searched for another CFO and nearly 2 months later they have found their man; Johnathan Root. He logically comes from a financial background and more recently was Senior VP of Harley Davidson Financial Services who coincidentally have been making losses on previous stats.
Whilst revenue was up for HDFS in Q1 2023 by 16% on Q1 2022, their expense rose by 55% in the same period, therefore leading to an overall decline of of 32% in Q1 and much of this is due to credit losses but also in a slow uptake in financial services based upon higher lending fees.
Johnathan Root takes charge with immediate effect and will have a job on his hands and we come to the end of the Q2 period where there is an expectation the figures will improve but perhaps not as much as were thought previously…as recently there has been more scrutiny on investors and stagnant share prices.
Regardless of the current position, it still begs the question how a company the size of H-D could have fallen into a position whereby their CFO can leave so relatively quickly to seek employment elsewhere and not have a strategy to have a replacement already waiting in the wings, preferring instead to plug the gap with David Viney until Root could be planted into the fold.