Kawasaki Motorcycles For Sale

What are the costs for motorcycle manufacturing?

What amount of profit do companies such as Kawasaki and Yamaha make from motorcycle sales? I assume they sell the motorcycles for more than what they make them, and then I assume the dealerships jack it up another percentile. To narrow my question, what would you say it actually costs these companies to produce these motorcycles though?

In this imaginary example, let’s say Kawasaki sold me a sportbike for $10,000. How much did it cost them to produce this motorcycle?

Thanks in advance everyone, and I appreciate it. The more detailed will get the best answer!

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Decided to answer this one after I saw you blast an idiot on another question. Way to stick up for yourself…

It’s difficult to get exact numbers on Kawasaki and Yamaha because: 1) They don’t detail their financials enough to get an exact cost per bike
2) They produce lots of other stuff too, which allows them economies of scale that produce greater profits. In other words, Yamaha produces electronics and stereo equipment which gives them an advantage when needing suppliers for motorcycle parts. If one of their other divisions already buys parts from a supplier, when they need something new developed and produced they will already have a relationship with a leading supplier for that type of part. Yamaha is big into manufacturing boat engines and they even make wheelchairs, Kawasaki makes everything from heavy equipment to rechargeable hand drills.

Now, to answer your question, the average profit margin for the motorcycle segment of these companies is about 15% (Harley reported 14.86%) which means that if these companies only produced motorcycles, they only keep about 15 cents of each dollar they make. This is after paying taxes, paying for secretaries and engineers, plus the cost of metal and plastic to produce the bikes.

As far as the manufacturing side is concerned, the actual production of motorcycles generates an average operating margin of 25% (Harley reported 22.82%) which represents the amount of profit from the sale of a bike less the cost of manufacturing it.

So when you ask the question “how much did it cost to produce this motorcycle” then the answer is:
The cost of the metal and plastic
The cost of engineers, secretaries, and factory workers
The cost of equipment and robots and maintenance
Divided by the total number of bikes sold

At a 25% operating margin, you could guess that the total cost to produce this motorcycle is about $8000

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