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Brines – thanks for those finance blogs, some solid reads in there. I’m subscribing. On Rapha (and bike apparel in general), saw someone in the thread say, “Walmart bought it, I’m out.” Bit unfair, no? It wasn’t Walmart—it’s the Walton grandsons. Say what you want, but they’re bike fans. And if we’re being honest, if any of us were billionaires, we’d probably scoop up some cool bike brands too. I think they’ve also got their hands in Allied and Wahoo? Honestly, not the worst portfolio if you’re trying to uplift cycling. Rapha’s got a new CEO too, and from what...

Not to rain on the GM hype parade, but let’s not rewrite history… Back in the ‘08–‘09 mess, GM took a fat bailout – over $50B from the U.S. government. They went full bankruptcy, government owned a chunk, and when all was said and done, taxpayers ate like $11B in losses. Not exactly a heroic brand imo. Ford? They saw the writing on the wall early, leveraged everything (even mortgaged the damn blue oval logo), and pre-borrowed $23B in 2006. Didn’t touch the TARP bailout like GM and Chrysler. They did take some smaller loans for tech stuff, but actually...

This is a world class forum/thread. As someone that departed a PE hot potato in my past life, its all an interesting read. Keep up the good insights, posts, observations. I just saw our fantasy rankings are listed on the left, so sad that I missed Andorra roster and got a friggin zero score, slipped about 200 places But-my wife is clocking a wonderful 69th place! no pun intended on her ranking number.

Jeff, Robot, and all: thanks everyone for your insights in this thread. It's by far my favorite on Vital and Vital is the only forum I engage with on a regular basis. I've learned a ton from all of you, particularly on the business side (and maybe more than I care to about flex stays). My friend Roger has a saying that an offer is only as good as a take. I interpret that as being basically the same as "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink." Not to get too specific, but I...

My version of what I think Robot was saying is that the issue is the industry is run by enthusiasts. I intentionally use "issue" instead of "problem," because I want my bikes designed by people who are passionate about riding bikes. But mixing passion for the sport with running a business in the sport can lead to the sort of irrational exuberance we saw during the COVID boom. I don't follow the financial news closely so I may be way off, but can you imagine the CEO of General Motors saying, "We just build the trucks we want to drive"...

As a fellow nerd with one foot in corporate finance and another in the mtb world, just want to say I love this thread.

Hey everyone, not mad at anyone in this thread (besides maybe myself). I clearly have ideas and a delivery style that probably isn’t ideal for a mountain bike forum. Robot wrote a genuinely great post (he’s a better writer than me), and I realized there was no way for me to counter it. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I started turning into this (actual photo Tucker took of me this morning): Any frustration you see from me is with myself, not anyone else. I like friction. I like debate. What I don’t like is knowing...

If you stopped providing your input, I'd probably stop reading this thread for the most part. By far the most intriguing content I've read in a long time regarding the bike industry. Have you ever worked in Finance in the aerospace industry? I will tell you...they take Finance VERY seriously. The CFO of my company has a lot of power in the decisions we make, and the CEO leans on him quite a bit. We'd love to have someone with your passion and thought process. And this is coming from an Engineering Manager!

I'm not sure YT would even be valued at a 5-7X EBITDA now. Though it wasn't that long ago, the multiples being given to "high growth D2C" businesses in 2021 was next level. My finger in the wind guess of 10x seemed in the ballpark, and this research report does back this up (though I've never cited or read them before 😬). ... Camping and Hiking targets led M&A pricing, with an average multiple of 12.6x EV/EBITDA from 2017 to the year-to-date 2023. The Sporting Goods segment followed with an average multiple of 10.8x EV/EBITDA, then Tactical & Hunting with...

So many thoughts come to mind when going through their website… I just don’t get it, but I’m probably just too horizontally integrated, and not vertically integrated like them. 1 billion... Is that a long or short billion?

The purchase price of a product in no way reflects the margin to the manufacturer, especially in times like this. While @Dave_Camp has inside knowledge from the engineering side, I have the same sort of insights from the finance side. I can tell you with high amounts of confidence a lot of the pricing we are (still) seeing is not sustainable When your margins don't support your baseline cost to run your company + cost of capital, you will end up in bankruptcy. The only question is when, which is based on how strong your balance sheet is and how...

Radial update: Went out earlier with my brother, went down to 24psi front and rear (front is super soft MM gravity pro radial, rear is a soft Tacky Chan in gravity) I've never been able to really keep up with him, and I started off feeling really slow, but when I warmed up I started catching up to him, which never happens. We both agreed to go full race pace and I was still catching up to him, provided I didn't make any mistakes or anything. He says his front and rear were both sliding at points (he runs a...

Paper products from Germany can only mean one thing, new fork day! This is the Intend Flash 35, it can be run from 160mm to 190mm. Very similar to the Edge; but with a more robust crown, longer legs, and slightly different uppers. After initial riding and then a full tear down and inspection, there will be some parallel testing with a 35mm Boxxer. Both forks will be run at 190mm of travel on a DH bike. The capability of the 170mm inverted forks at Angel Fire was so impressive that a direct comparison of a longer travel version to...

The math aint mathin' edit: I take that back, I totally forgot they sold a big chunk to PE in peak valuation era. He probably does have a chunk of change from that.

I don’t mean to make light of a bad situation, but this felt inevitable. Anyone with any level of inside knowledge of the bike industry could look at YT from 30,000 feet and perhaps wonder if they have long had a money tree or maybe the operation was a money laundering front for the cartel.\ Some head scratchers, in no particular order: -Aggressively low prices (like...how is this possible low pricing) -Bloated SKU count (for them, its mostly the number of builds they have per model of bike) -Complex global supplier web (true for everyone, but their vendor count is...