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By promoting the slogan Ready to Race in all sorts of motorsports disciplines and series from Dakar to Motocross and Grand Prix Road Racing and later purchasing brands like Husqvarna (in 2012) and GASGAS (in 2019) the Austrian Pierer Mobility AG became Europe’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer.
381,555 Motorcycles were sold in 2023, plus 157,358 Bicycles. KTM sold 280.206 bikes last year, Husqvarna 67,462, Husqvarna and GASGAS produced 29,532 motorcycles. Furthermore 1,852 MV Agusta and 2,503 CFMOTO-bikes were sent to the market. The total turnover reached a new record high of total 2,661-million Euros (nine percent more than 2022).
But the profit shrank from 175,7 to only 89 million Euros.
For that reason the Pierer Group planned a consolidation year for 2024, and starting a cost cutting program which also effected the motorsports teams and riders in all series.
In the meantime CEO Stefan Pierer has decided to pull GASGAS and Husvqarna out of Road Racing and Motocross for 2025 and concentrate on KTM in top-level motorsports. This year Husqvarna is leading the MX2 World Championship with Kay de Wild, and GASGAS has won the Dakar rally, the MXGP world Championship in 2023 with Jorge Prado and the Moto3 World Championship with Izan Guevara in 2022.
But GP paddock rumours that Pierer Mobility is thinking about selling the Spanish GASGAS brand are vehemently denied by Hubert Trunkenpolz, member of the Executive Board of PIERER Mobility, when asked by GPONE.com. He also denies all rumours that Husqvarna Motorcycles will pull out of all Offroad events.
"Both rumours have absolutely no basis or foundation, that’s total nonsense. I would prefer to not even comment on baseless reports or messages like this", Hubert Trunkenpolz explained.
Then he added: "Look, we already made a first clarification after the Mugello GP by announcing four riders with KTM in MotoGP for 2025 – Binder, Acosta, Bastianini and Viñales. This should be the strongest MotoGP line up we ever had. We also decided to reach out to the younger riders and new generation with our GASGAS brand in future. About Husky: This brand has a great reputation also in the US, so it would be crazy to leave offroad sports completely with this brand. But because of the economic environment we decided to focus all brands according to the worldwide economic situation. That’s why in future we shall not take part in all sorts of series and championships with all our three brands."
Pierer Mobility supported the GASGAS MotoGP Tech3 project for two years with a budget of 10-million Euros – but the bikes were KTM RC16 prototypes anyway. So in the future the RC16 platform will only be used for both KTM MotoGP teams – Red Bull KTM Factory Racing and Red Bull KTM Tech3 Racing.
The main goal remains the same: KTM wants to win the MotoGP world title in 2025 or at least give Ducati a much harder time than in the current season.
Aki Ajo, Jorge Aspar Martinez and Hervé Poncharal will hold up the KTM flag in the Moto3 and Moto2 classes and scout for talents who can later be transferred into MotoGP – like Oliveira, Binder, Gardner, Raúl Fernández, Augusto Fernández and Pedro Acosta
