Stark actually profitable... kinda

[happyinmotion]

From Stark on LinkedIn: "Stark Future SL Achieves the First Month of EBITDA Profitability and Records All-Time High Revenue"

Stark Future SL ... is proud to announce a landmark achievement in June 2024, marking its first month of EBITDA profitability within just four years of its inception. The company also celebrated an all-time high [monthly] revenue of 10.4 million EUR, with an EBITDA of 210,000 EUR, underscoring its rapid ascent and operational efficiency.

I work in venture capital. I can say with experience that most start-ups fail. Most electric vehicle companies fail. Alta burned through US$44 million without making a profit. Cake raised at least $75m and went bankrupt. So it's pretty damn awesome that Stark are looking very strong.

Obviously, there's a heap of caveats here. EBITDA profit isn't net profit. EBITDA is "Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization". That means some important costs are not included:
- Interest will be the big one. Stark will be in debt - they had to pay up-front to build the factory. How much debt and how much interest cost? Don't know. Some of that cost will be covered by the €50m equity investment from Eicher (Royal Enfield) so no interest but some is debt and that means interest, even if it is at reasonable rates (that's the €20m working capital facility from Banco Santander and the €25m credit from Big Bets).
- Taxes should be zero as they're yet to make an actual profit.
- Depreciation will also be a cost coz factories don't last forever.
- Amortization (like depreciation but for intangibles like the value of Stark's technology & design) - I don't know how Stark are accounting for this, might be zero.

And some of the sales will be the pent-up demand as buyers have had to wait for two years, so they have three years of orders squeezed into one year of deliveries.

But postive EBITDA means Stark are fundamentally strong - they're selling bikes for more than it costs to build them. Build costs will only go down as volumes go up, so profits should be up and be there to pay off the factory and the funds already spent to get the company to where it is right now.

 

[Beagle]

I don't know anything in finance nor business, just doing some elementary school calculations here.

Assuming all revenue comes from bike sales, 10.4 million euros would be 740-800 bikes sold in June, let's say 750.

EBITDA of 210 000 € would be 280 € per bike, is a 2% margin realistic? The benefit per bike must vary between dealer or direct sales and also shipping cost (especially comparing Europe and US).

Then of course with fixed costs, benefit per bike largely depends on sales numbers. We know the Varg is their halo product, but the real test, and real money, will be when they'll get to the much much bigger market of road bikes (planned for 2025).

 

[happyinmotion]

I'd say you do know plenty about finance, coz that's the right calculation to do - profit per bike is what matters in the long term.

Stark are actually a bit worse than your estimate. They've said 1,000 bikes sold per month to get that profit so €210 off each.

(We also know that the average price of the bikes is €10,900. That average comes from a mix of direct sales at €12,900 and sales to dealers at a lower price.)

Higher margins will come with bigger numbers. They always do. Some of that is the fixed costs that you mention, eg management and marketing. A bigger change is that making bikes gets cheaper per bike as numbers go up. There's the direct effects, eg if you're buying 10,000 bolts then you'll get them cheaper than if you are buying 1,000. Lots of the cost reduction comes as machinery gets more productive faster than it gets more expensive, eg if you buy a CNC that costs twice as much it might make three times as many parts. More of the cost reduction it is just learning by doing, eg the engineer or the shop floor worker says "hey, why don't we do it this way" and you try it and discover you've saved a minute of assembly time per bike.

Estimating this kind of scaling is tricky but a rule of thumb/wild-arsed guess is 10% less cost for every doubling of production. Stark aren't Honda or Bajaj or Hero (yet) but looks to me like they're heading towards strong margins and enough profits to pay back all the costs of getting started. After that it's all gravy.

 

[Beagle]

I'm very interested in the production side of things, I feel like one of their biggest achievements is their speed of scaling up production, that is terrific. I think they claim to make (not sell) 1000 bikes per month

Any wild guess about how much profit would Honda make on a CRF450R? Or maybe even just for any "high end" bike? I really don't have a clue.

Did not know how much the dealer discount was, I would be curious about their dealer/direct sales ratio (maybe tilting towards dealer over time?) and about the "alpha ratio", not sure why but I would expect them to sell more 80 hp than 60 hp bikes (and it obviously costs the same to make).

 

[happyinmotion]

Honda have made public a whole bunch of data in their Honda Report 2023, more than I would expect.

Honda are expecting to sell 19 million bikes in 2024. That's huge economies of scale. Stark has a way to go yet.

Honda's margins for motorbikes are 16.8% (page 12). That's for the bike division overall. Most of those will be cheap bikes with small engines for poorer nations where customers are very sensitive to price. A CRF450R is a low-production bike for wealthy markets so their margin is likely a lot higher on this model. Maybe 20%? Maybe 30%? I don't know. But Honda could drop their CRF450R prices by maybe 20-30% and still make a profit.

But here's the thing - Stark are making 10,000 per year (give or take). If Stark up their production by 100x to a million per year then their cost to build a bike will roughly halve. If Stark can halve that then Stark can halve their price and still make a profit. That's going to be a much cheaper bike than any petrol bike.

That makes sense to me - there's just fewer components in an electric bike so they'll fundamentally cost less to make. Petrol bikes are cheaper now because we make so many more of them. When we're making the same number of petrol and electric bikes then electric bikes will be cheaper and petrol will be gone.

(Also, Honda's company-wide margins are 4.6%. On motorbikes it's 16.8%. That's a really big difference. I can only presume that motorbike buyers either don't care very much about price or that you're all getting ripped off.)

 

[UKLee]

"I work in venture capital. I can say with experience that most start-ups fail. Most electric vehicle companies fail. Alta burned through US$44 million without making a profit. Cake raised at least $75m and went bankrupt. So it's pretty damn awesome that Stark are looking very strong."

Depends on what you mean by "fail" you can bet the guy who started the business will be ok one way or another, some even plan it this way from the start.

Margins on bikes might well be small but they need to sell the bikes to us who then need parts to keep them going, I have seen it estimated that if you were to build a bike out of spare parts it would cost you 4 to 5 times what it would cost you to buy a new bike so this is where they make most of the profit. With a modern 4 stroke bike you need to be chucking pistons, valves, cams etc at it often and plenty of other parts in crash damage blow ups etc.

This is also one of the reasons the manufactures want to continue selling these very expensive to run bikes instead of allowing the electric bikes that require a lot less parts (hopefully!) to take over.

 

[happyinmotion]

Yeah, I can see why Stark are wanting to have a subscription model. That way they get some ongoing income from the bike.

Whereas for a combustion bike you're going to keep on buying replacement parts at a high margin.

I know lots of people hate subscriptions, but I think I'm ok with it. The bike is cheap as after you've bought it - no fuel or parts. The one litre of oil that I've bought should last me two years. So I'll be coming out ahead, even if I'm paying a bit per month.

 

[Kurlon]

Alta got shafted by HD, they didn't fail from natural causes.

 

[happyinmotion]

I've heard mixed tales about Alta. HD definitely screwed them, but if the business side of Alta was strong enough then HD wouldn't have been able to screw them.

Their sales were maybe a tenth of Stark's sales. That's would have made it very hard to get to profitability. Stark is in a much better position and heading for real profits.

 

[Beagle]

I've heard mixed tales about Alta. HD definitely screwed them, but if the business side of Alta was strong enough then HD wouldn't have been able to screw them.

Their sales were maybe a tenth of Stark's sales. That's would have made it very hard to get to profitability. Stark is in a much better position and heading for real profits.

Yeah the production side of things is off the charts, Alta made about 1000 bikes in 3 years, Stark makes 1000 bikes every month.

 

[Erwin P]

I think Stark should make work of their enduro to keep in the profit margin.
You would need very strong arguments to convince me to sell my Varg, but a plated enduro version that is roughly the same to the Stark might be one.

That way you could sell a second bike to the same people or have them to trade it in. I had some ''gen 1'' warranty claims on my bike and i could see that continue for some time. I have peace with that and their service is second to none. But the hours Stark has to put into my bike and replacing my parts isn't free either so i could imagine my bike being a nett loss.

Adding an Enduro, SM or small'ish Duke competitor with the same motor (and even battery?) would add a huge economy of scale. The Enduro/SM could use the same frame and the ''Duke'' might as well with some different platework. A Duke/690 Enduro competitor would need a bigger battery, but the motor is plenty up to the task.

All those bikes i imagine would sell really well because most E motorcycles on the market are quite dull. With Scandinavian design and the power off the Varg motor i don't see any way those bikes would end up being dull.

Edit:
They should also sell more accessories.

Why can't i buy a fast charger? In an interview they mentioned the charger is the bottleneck. They used the 3.3kW charger because that's a max outlet. However i do have acces to a 3 phase output/generator and it would be a huge plus to have shorter breaks.

Clothes is also a very high margin product. No one bats an eye paying 40 euro for a Tshirt with a costprice of maybe 4 euro if made from exotic ecofriendly materials.

Etc etc.

 

[Theo]

This statement at 8:19 is pretty interesting:

I don't know how much Stark is profitable; maybe he doesn't consider Stark because non road legal dirtbikes could be considered as not being vehicles and because surely they are not part of his competition.
Anyhow, apparently this is another confirmation that unfortunately EV companies are typically non profitable.

 

[Theo]

Let me conclude my wonderful saturday at the track with my Varg by posting some good news that I've found out on their Linkedin profile:

Spain: EIB and Stark Future sign a €40 million loan to invest in innovation and new solutions for the electric motorcycle sector

 

[Jocke_D]

My personal opinion is that they should leave out the fancy toolkit and eliminate the phone for a fixed data screen. That would up the profit margin right there. Most people have torque wrenches or can go buy them separately. I don't know what their actual cost is on these two items but just the free data plan from T-Mobile must cost a fair amount. I'd sure love to not have a second phone to worry about leaving home, charging, losing, breaking. And I kinda hate getting all my emails and messages on the stark phone at the same time I get them on my primary phone. Simplicity is sometimes better. But from a profitability standpoint it doesn't seem necessary.

My take on this is something like this.
If they want the connectivity of the bike it cost nothing extra (or very little) to have a twin sim card for the phone. Without the 4G connection on the bike we loose OTA updates.
The purchase cost of the phone can't be that high compared to a fixed display that would have the same functionality as the phone. Probably higher. If you want the possibility to adjust stuff on the bike you need some sort of interface and I can't see there's a cheaper way of doing it than a cheap chinese phone. Also development is extremely simple on the phone. It's just an android app.

What need to happen is a more stable connection phone/bike.

 

[Erwin P]

Exactly, that phone is cheaper than any dash with comparable information. That said i would pay premium for a fixed dash, the connectivity is just poor.
I can buy that phone for €124 from China directly as an consumer. Imagine the price if you order 10.000 of them.

Also the tool kit is a bit overdone, but i can see where they were going with that. They want to be seen as a more premium brand than any other. Also lots of bikes were send without a dealer in between and most warranty can be done without dealer. You will be shocked how cheap people can be when it comes to fitting tools.
Having your customers doing the work themselves instead of having to pay a dealer to do it is way cheaper. The toolkit has a consumer price of €499, but for Stark it's way less than half that. Lets assume half with €250. That would mean 3 labour hours at a dealer. I replaced my own motor. So it's a nett win for them.

Also with consumers being convinced they don't need the dealer they buy from Stark themselves. The dealer has a margin of i guess €1000-€2000. Skipping that is a huge profit boost.

 

[Aleksandar13]

Exactly, that phone is cheaper than any dash with comparable information. That said i would pay premium for a fixed dash, the connectivity is just poor.
I can buy that phone for €124 from China directly as an consumer. Imagine the price if you order 10.000 of them.

Also the tool kit is a bit overdone, but i can see where they were going with that. They want to be seen as a more premium brand than any other. Also lots of bikes were send without a dealer in between and most warranty can be done without dealer. You will be shocked how cheap people can be when it comes to fitting tools.
Having your customers doing the work themselves instead of having to pay a dealer to do it is way cheaper. The toolkit has a consumer price of €499, but for Stark it's way less than half that. Lets assume half with €250. That would mean 3 labour hours at a dealer. I replaced my own motor. So it's a nett win for them.

Also with consumers being convinced they don't need the dealer they buy from Stark themselves. The dealer has a margin of i guess €1000-€2000. Skipping that is a huge profit boost.

I think you are spot on, they want people to perceive this bike as being easy to work on, hence all the videos online about how to change anything on the bike, plus supply of a nice tool kit gives you as consumer the boost that you are able to do anything... I like this approach and it has made me buy this bike over other brands, especially having 2 years warranty. Advantage for me is that the dealer I bought it from is an amazing guy and will get out if the way to help you with anything... He spent 2 hours with me over the phone on a few occasions just to clarify things about the bike.
To me it's clear that they have huge plans for the future of the company and with further software developments it can only become better. If they focus on getting a throttle map adjustment out that would be amazing.

 

[Erwin P]

My local dealer is a great guy, but a bit lacking of problem finding and is know to rush over things. He also is 45 minutes away so i prever working on the bike myself.

Stark allows that in the warranty wich is great.
But allowing customers to work on the bike is a risk. It's easy to damage a bike with improper tools, but still they need their warranty to be top notch. A customer messing up and saying something broke while riding also costs money. Giving them proper tools that work better than what they have does minimise that risk as well.

 

[Chaconne]

Exactly, that phone is cheaper than any dash with comparable information. That said i would pay premium for a fixed dash, the connectivity is just poor.
I can buy that phone for €124 from China directly as an consumer. Imagine the price if you order 10.000 of them.

Also the tool kit is a bit overdone, but i can see where they were going with that. They want to be seen as a more premium brand than any other. Also lots of bikes were send without a dealer in between and most warranty can be done without dealer. You will be shocked how cheap people can be when it comes to fitting tools.
Having your customers doing the work themselves instead of having to pay a dealer to do it is way cheaper. The toolkit has a consumer price of €499, but for Stark it's way less than half that. Lets assume half with €250. That would mean 3 labour hours at a dealer. I replaced my own motor. So it's a nett win for them.

Also with consumers being convinced they don't need the dealer they buy from Stark themselves. The dealer has a margin of i guess €1000-€2000. Skipping that is a huge profit boost.

I am not sure on the margins and it depends where you live I suppose. Having a dealer network is more than just service and markups though. A good dealer network can do localized marketing and outreach, especially to folks who are not early adopters and willing to make the change to a non-ice bike.

EVs generally in the US are suffering from many things but among them is a strong anti-EV press sentiment which sort of aligns EVs with one kind of politics or another. Local supporting dealers who are in communities serving those communities can do a lot to overcome this. Particularly with their core customers. In dealerships Starks can be seen as a good competitive bike not some symbol of some wokeness internet conspiracy or whatever the politics flavor of the day is.

And more than that, with production reaching upwards of a 1000 bikes per month, dealers can act like an inventory buffer in market fluctuations and directly serve customers in varied geographies. The internet is flat space un-tuned to localities. Plus, many customers are not willing to part with 10k for a mail order bike on the internet even though Stark has a pretty good reputation.

I am not a dealership fanboy but I think it would be short sighted --at least in the US which is currently one of Stark's largest markets-- to think the short term profit boost of a few bikes on the front end will offset the potential to really grow the brand in a solid way in varied markets. Even old well known companies like Nike have stumbled in failing to recognize how dealerships/resellers serve the overall business and often are more than just profit skimming middlemen.

 

[Dirt-E]

So, in a nutshell, is this post suggesting that Stark is proving to be viable (even beyond Alta) and that it would be "safe" to buy one and have some backing with it?

I still own and love my EXR. I actually have no need to get rid of, or replace it at this point. But I'm curious about the (Stark) as I've been able to try both the MX and woods versions. Given the sales price they're at currently, I was initially avoiding them for fear of going under. Maybe this is unfounded?

 

[Erwin P]

I am not sure on the margins and it depends where you live I suppose. Having a dealer network is more than just service and markups though. A good dealer network can do localized marketing and outreach, especially to folks who are not early adopters and willing to make the change to a non-ice bike.

EVs generally in the US are suffering from many things but among them is a strong anti-EV press sentiment which sort of aligns EVs with one kind of politics or another. Local supporting dealers who are in communities serving those communities can do a lot to overcome this. Particularly with their core customers. In dealerships Starks can be seen as a good competitive bike not some symbol of some wokeness internet conspiracy or whatever the politics flavor of the day is.

And more than that, with production reaching upwards of a 1000 bikes per month, dealers can act like an inventory buffer in market fluctuations and directly serve customers in varied geographies. The internet is flat space un-tuned to localities. Plus, many customers are not willing to part with 10k for a mail order bike on the internet even though Stark has a pretty good reputation.

I am not a dealership fanboy but I think it would be short sighted --at least in the US which is currently one of Stark's largest markets-- to think the short term profit boost of a few bikes on the front end will offset the potential to really grow the brand in a solid way in varied markets. Even old well known companies like Nike have stumbled in failing to recognize how dealerships/resellers serve the overall business and often are more than just profit skimming middlemen.

I think Stark does a great job of a ''hybrid'' system here.
They have rather few dealers as you might expect from a starting brand. But there are enough to pick up and serivice your bike at one if you don't mind a longer drive there. However they also sell them online wich takes out the dealer margin and make more profit.

With a low number of dealers it's worthwile for them to be a dealer since they sell enough through scarse. But Stark can also sell them themselves for a higher margin.

A little sidenote. In the Netherlands we actually almost never see dealer mark-ups. The price any OEM mentiones on their website is the dealer price. For what i've heard thats very different in the US?