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It's been three and a half years since the last time I informed you of the opportunity to invest $1,000 to buy shares of a U.S.-based electric motorcycle manufacturer with no revenues, but Curtiss Motorcycles is back again with another sale of shares. The difference, this time, is that the company is suggesting that it may be the last cash raise before it begins profitable production. Plus, if you invest enough, you may get a prototype Curtiss motorcycle as a gift.
For those who haven't been following along, Curtiss (named after motorcycle and aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss) is what used to be Confederate Motorcycles before the company changed its name and totally changed its strategy from selling expensive, uniquely styled, V-twin motorcycles to selling expensive, uniquely styled, electric motorcycles. Curtiss plans to begin production of the $120,000 Curtiss The 1 this year. (If electric motorcycles were supposed to bring new innovation to the space, apparently that doesn't extend to naming, as the Curtiss The 1 goes up against the LiveWire One.)
Now, Curtiss is back in the crowdfunding game and aiming to raise $5 million by offering shares directly to investors.
Shares are priced at $0.15 each and the minimum investment is $1,000.05. Larger investments get you bonus shares, as do purchases made this month (30% bonus shares) or before Feb. 20 (20% bonus shares). But if you have the means to invest bigger bucks to put into an unproven startup, Curtiss will give you one of seven prototypes it has created in recent years. These offers range from a non-operational Zeus concept prototype for a $200,000 investment to a functional The 1 prototype for a $1,000,000 investment. Or, get in the door first and invest $3.3 million and they'll give you all seven prototypes.
I'm not a financial advisor and nothing I say should be construed as financial advice. Nor do I want to get any phone calls from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Fortunately, I don't have to tell you this is a risky investment, because all the reasons that is true are duly spelled out in the the Form C filed with the SEC. After all, this is a company with six employees and zero current revenues that has yet to deliver a The 1 to a customer. Plus, this is not the first time the company has sold shares and there's no guarantee Curtiss won't sell more, further diluting current shareholders, though the company says on its web site that "We have no need to dilute shares after that."
What Curtiss does have is the enthusiastic CEO Matt Chambers, who once said Curtiss could be a "hard knock out punch" to the Harley-Davidson LiveWire electric motorcycle. Now, a few years later, The 1 is still not in production but Harley-Davidson has already spun off LiveWire into a separate company that has been selling LiveWire Ones for a year at a cost of about 19% of the price of a Curtiss The 1. But Chambers has a plan.
As he shows in the video below, he projects the company will be profitable in 2023 with sales of just 30 motorcycles. Production increases to 40 in 2024, 60 in 2025, and, in the positive scenario, leaps to 720 motorcycles in 2026 when the second generation of Curtiss motorcycles is in production. In the less optimistic scenario, Chambers projected sales of 225 motorcycles in 2026, which would still yield a profit of almost $8.5 million.
The company claims that as Confederate it sold more motorcycles costing more than $100,000 than any other company. Now we'll see if it can do the same, only electrified.
