19 percent good enough for Harley

U.S. motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc. (HOG.N: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Thursday that quarterly earnings rose 19 percent as a strong performance in foreign markets offset what the company acknowledged was a disappointing decline in U.S. sales.

The company reported a second-quarter profit of $290.5 million, or $1.14 a share, compared with $243.4 million, or 91 cents cents a share, a year earlier.

Sales rose 17.7 percent to $1.62 billion.

Analysts, on average, had expected the Milwaukee-based company to earn $1.13 a share on sales of $1.64 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

Harley said total dealer retail sales fell 1.2 percent during the quarter, pulled down by a 5.5 percent decline in sales in the United States, the company's biggest and most important market.

But that was offset by a 13.4 percent increase in sales in markets outside the United States, including Japan and Canada.

Even so, in a statement, Jim Ziemer, the company's chief executive, acknowledged that the U.S. numbers for the first half of the year had "not met our expectations" and said the company would monitor -- and possibly scale back -- wholesale shipments during the rest of the year.

Harley said it shipped 95,117 units motorcycles during the second quarter, a 19.2 percent increase from the same quarter last year, and that it expected to ship between 91,000 and 95,000 bikes during the third quarter of 2007.

source:investing.reuters.co.uk