Little by little KTM has gained a foothold among motorcycle manufacturers. Without making too much noise and with a 'Ready to Race' philosophy with a lot of offroad DNA, the Austrian firm has been gaining market share in different markets until becoming in its own right a little big monster in terms of sales figures.
KTM is already bigger than BMW Motorrad, has toppled Harley-Davidson and doubles the sales of Ducati and Triumph combined, but best of all, in three years they want to sell double what they are selling now.
261,000 units in 2018; 400,000 units in 2022
The figures are there and they leave us an overwhelming figure according to Bloomberg: KTM has manufactured 261,000 units in 2018, a figure to take into account considering that motorcycle sales have not yet picked up since the crisis.
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Putting it in the context of the competition, KTM is fully involved in leading the top sales of a non-Asian brand, unseating Harley-Davidson from this throne, who sold 228,051 units in 2018, leaving 6.1% of sales with compared to the previous year, in which they shipped 242,788 units.
These figures may be quite stark when compared to the 20 million bikes that Honda is capable of selling, as well as the 5.4 million units of Yamaha, but it is revealing to realize that KTM has far surpassed a great of the industry such as BMW Motorrad, who in 2018 sold 165,566 units and in 2020 expects to reach 200,000 units sold.
These very positive results at KTM are largely thanks to the clever product strategy that the oranges are following by using Husqvarna and Bajaj. On the one hand, the Swedish firm allows them to redouble their range with products that use the same bases as KTM, while on the other hand, Bajaj is responsible for producing and consolidating low displacement products in Asian markets.
What must be taken into account is that KTM's profit has remained at 1,750 million dollars, which is much lower than the 5,000 million dollars achieved by Harley-Davidson. And it is that the KTM product line and its quite aggressive pricing strategy leave much more conspicuous profit margins.
So it is not surprising that KTM has considered a long-term project in MotoGP. The small Austrian brand began its career in asphalt competitions timidly with the supermotard and later used its experience in two-stroke engines to enter the 125 cubic centimeter world championship and establish the popular Red Bull Rookies Cup.
The successes achieved by their 125 cc encouraged them to continue with the change to Moto3 and the 250 cc four-stroke engines with which they have shown that they have also known how to be competitive. More recently they have deployed a huge offensive in Moto2 and MotoGP with their own prototypes that have already managed to win races in the intermediate category and podiums in the top category.
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KTM intends to continue expanding and now it will go one step further with the creation of a new electric scooter together with Bajaj that should provide an extra injection of sales and the image of being an avant-garde brand. And they are not resting on their laurels, because KTM wants to reach 400,000 units sold in 2022.
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