Merida data bucks slowdown trend, up 73% in September

Publicly available accounts released by Taiwanese bike and electric bike manufacturing powerhouse Merida show the business to be significantly ahead in revenue terms so far in Q4.

September proved a particularly strong month for the business, which against a backdrop of slowdown among many top tier labels posted a 73.18% revenue growth over the prior September, reaching 3.15 billion Taiwanese Dollars.

Following up that startling advance October put in a 48% advance like-for-like. The Q4 data is markedly ahead of prior quarters in terms of the advance and could possibly be attributed to the supply of key parts improving and thus bikes out the door likely increasing during the period.

Overall in the first three quarters of the year sales revenue advanced by 15.9% to tally 26.4 billion Taiwanese Dollars (Approx £710.76 million).

Can it last, many will ask? Now that supply has caught up and more bikes are on the way there is a sense that, short of another burst in consumer appetite for bikes, the bikes now on the water will not help alleviate the oversupply bottleneck that is building by the day.

For shareholders in the brand the price at present is not presently far off the recent 52-week low registered at the end of October and which was about 50% down on the high in June.

Revenue aside, profits no sales volume are not reported in the quarterly figures, though it is known that in 2021 the business registered around €50 million/£43.6 million in net income.

Back in summer CyclingIndustry.News interviewed UK Merida Boss Chris Carter, who described the bike industry as “being in another phase of appearing sexy” in reference to the investor buy ins that have increased in frequency in recent years.