Cannondale Bike Maker Slumps After Tariffs Prompt Dividend Cut

(Bloomberg) -- Dorel Industries Inc., the maker of Schwinn and Cannondale bikes, plunged to a 23-year low after it stopped paying a dividend, citing the impact of higher U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports.

Dorel dropped as much as 23% to C$7, the lowest since 1996. The 25% U.S. tariff on Chinese products “is having a much greater impact on the business than the original implementation of 10% introduced a year ago,” the Montreal-based company said in a statement Tuesday.

“We raised prices midway through the third quarter and this has had several negative consequences,” said president and Chief Executive Officer Martin Schwartz. “The net result of these challenges is that Dorel Home’s expected gross margin improvement from first half levels will be delayed to the beginning of 2020.”

Some of Dorel’s bigger U.S. customers have delayed this year’s Christmas deliveries to the start of the fourth quarter and that, together with the rise in the U.S. dollar, have hurt Dorel’s sports and juvenile business units.

“Given the number of headwinds facing the company over the recent quarters, we are not entirely surprised by the announcement,” said RBC analyst Sabahat Khan in a report. The third-quarter results “are likely to be well below” previous expectations, he said.

“It is prudent to suspend the dividend until the chaotic market conditions created by tariffs are normalized,” Schwartz said in the statement.

Dorel generated almost 60% of its $2.6 billion revenue from the U.S. last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its share price has plummeted almost 61% this year.

The dividend announced on Aug. 2 will still be paid out Wednesday.

--With assistance from Aoyon Ashraf.

To contact the reporter on this story: Divya Balji in Toronto at dbalji1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Madeleine Lim at mlim131@bloomberg.net, Scott Schnipper, David Scanlan

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