Ducati up for sale? Things are getting serious ahead of its centenary

“I can assure you: Ducati is part of the Audi family!” A statement by the Audi CEO intended to nip rumours of a sale of the Italian motorbike brand in the bud. The catch is: it’s not a recent statement. It was made by the then Audi boss Rupert Stadler to Reuters journalists in 2019, to signal – after two years of speculation – that the decision had been taken not to sell the Bologna-based company.

Not entirely of their own volition, as numerous publications reported at the time: the VW works councils, within which the Piëch/Porsche family clan is considered powerful, are said to have opposed the sale. The takeover of Ducati was regarded as the dream of the late former VW patriarch Ferdinand Piëch, though the deal was “hardly justifiable on rational or even business grounds”, as the German magazine *Der Spiegel* put it at the time.

Furthermore, none of the interested parties is said to have been prepared to pay the reported asking price of 1.5 to 1.7 billion euros for the motorbike manufacturer. VW itself paid 860 million euros for the Bologna-based company in 2012. However, according to the then Volkswagen Group CEO Diess, the transformation into an electric car manufacturer could be financed without selling off company shares. He had declared the Group’s restructuring a priority in the wake of the ‘diesel scandal’, which had caused reputational damage and cost billions.

In the wake of the Wolfsburg-based group’s latest crisis, the sale of company assets is once again under discussion: VW needs money. In China, the most important market for the VW Group’s combustion-engine models, sales are plummeting – and with them, the group’s profits. In addition, at least 50,000 Group employees in Germany, the company’s home country, are set to lose their jobs, with four plants there alone hanging in the balance. This is a step the Wolfsburg-based firm has already taken in China: three plants have been closed or sold.

VW has also taken decisive action regarding its heavy-duty engines subsidiary Everllence, selling its majority stake to financial investor Bain Capital for a sum running into the billions. The Wolfsburg-based company refers to this as ‘streamlining the investment portfolio’. Bugatti, another of Piëch’s pet projects, has also been sold off: initially, the long-established Molsheim-based brand was spun off to sports car manufacturer Porsche; Porsche has since sold its Bugatti shares to Rimac and a consortium of investors.

This means that the Italian luxury brands Lamborghini and Ducati are now seen as the next logical candidates for sale. However, whilst the sports car manufacturer from Sant’Agata has recently been consistently breaking turnover and sales records and, despite a slight decline, still contributed an operating profit of 768 million euros to the group’s coffers, Ducati’s contribution to the group is modest: Since 2022, sales have fallen from 61,500 to just under 51,000 units, whilst the margin has dropped from 9.1 to 5.6 per cent. Ducati’s profit of 52 million euros is, in the context of the group as a whole, at best a drop in the ocean. By way of comparison: the group’s parent company, Volkswagen AG, based in Lower Saxony, generated 322 billion euros in turnover last year and posted a pre-tax profit of 8.9 billion euros. An operating profit of 8.9 billion euros sounds impressive, but compared with 2024 it is something of a disaster, given that Volkswagen AG made a profit of 19.1 billion euros in 2024.

So, of all years, the year of its centenary is proving to be a serious one for the brand from Borgo Panigale. Yet Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali told his Australian colleagues at ‘MCnews’ as recently as early July, during World Ducati Week, that a change of ownership for the motorbike manufacturer was ‘not entirely impossible’, though he added that ‘there is currently no discussion of this in Bologna’. Ducati’s value is measured by the value of the brand itself – comprising its name, history and image – rather than by the bare financial figures. This makes its current sporting success in Superbike and MotoGP all the more important.

Should a decision on the sale of Ducati be on the cards, however, it is likely to be taken in Wolfsburg and Ingolstadt anyway: Volkswagen reported that the entire automotive industry, and thus the Volkswagen Group as well, is undergoing profound change, and that additional burdens such as new tariffs and declining markets would cost the group tens of billions.

There is no confirmed information as to whether any serious prospective buyers have currently expressed an intention to purchase Ducati or even submitted concrete offers. The prospective buyers from 2019 are unlikely to be in the running any longer: according to several media reports, Bajaj is said to have expressed interest seven years ago, but has since taken control of KTM. The Austrians, in the person of former CEO Stefan Pierer, had also publicly stated their intention to acquire the Italian company at the time. Harley-Davidson was also considered a candidate for a takeover of the brand from Emilia-Romagna, but has since found itself in crisis.

At the end of July, reports began to circulate that the investment holding company ‘Patritalia S.p.A.’ was positioning itself as a potential buyer of Ducati. The holding company, which until now had operated solely through its president, Manuel Ros, was founded around a year ago and has so far been unable to demonstrate any financial resources, yet is said to have submitted an offer for 100 per cent of Ducati’s shares. A spokesperson for Ducati North America denied this to ‘Rideapart’, stating that the spokesperson was ‘not aware of any offer having been made to the group’. However, there was no denial of any intention to sell the Borgo Panigale-based brand; on the contrary, the Volkswagen Group reportedly wishes to “focus on its core business in the automotive sector”. A few more chapters are likely to be added to the never-ending saga surrounding the sale of Ducati in the coming weeks.