Polaris recently announced that it promoted Matt Winings to senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary.

Winings will join Polaris’ executive leadership team and report to CEO Mike Speetzen. In his new role, Winings will oversee all of Polaris’ legal, compliance, regulatory, government affairs, and governance practices across its global businesses

. He joined Polaris in 2023 as vice president and assistant general counsel.

“ Winings has been an incredible asset to Polaris, with a proven track record of providing strategic and business-focused counsel,” Speetzen says.“ His deep legal acumen and understanding of our industry’ s complex matters, along with the already strong relationships he’ s built across our businesses, will be invaluable.”

Winings brings nearly two decades of legal expertise to his role as general counsel. Prior to joining Polaris, he spent more than 10 years with Cummins, serving in various senior legal roles, including in the company’ s London office. He also practiced in the litigation group at Barnes & Thornburg LLP.

Winings holds a law degree from Indiana University Maurer School of Law and earned his bachelor’ s degree from Indiana University.

Matt Winings is a senior vice president and general council member of Polaris.( Photo: courtesy of Polaris)

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consumers are using that, and that’ s feeding back into how we’ re thinking about the development of the next generation of vehicles. And we also partnered with Zero Motorcycles to get our powertrain up and running quickly. We’ ve since modified the relationship with them.”

Speetzen remarks that they reduced their salaried workforce by about 10 %, many of which were at the vice president level.“ That shows how we’ ve flattened the organization, and it will allow us, as the recovery comes, to keep our operating expenses down and put ourselves in a position to leverage that as we go into the future.”

DEALERS The Polaris CEO continues to highlight its commitment to dealers.“[ We’ re ] going to be with dealers in Nashville in a couple of weeks for a dealer council meeting. We will take them to our Huntsville plant and walk them through what we’ re doing with Lean. They have a lot of curiosity around that, and we are listening to what they’ re talking about. We take it seriously. Given how rapidly the market moved down, it was about getting the dealer inventory down. That was a challenging thing for us to accomplish.

Dealers have pushed back on inventory to keep them at acceptable levels for the market conditions. Speetzen says that is a priority, but Polaris is a huge company.“ We’ ve got supply chains that are in motion. We had materials on the ocean four weeks out, and we’ ve got factories that we’ ve got to manage. We’ ve got employees to contend with in terms of ensuring

we’ re managing that system. We downshifted through the course of the year( 2024).”

The CEO says Polaris helped dealers during that transition period by providing things like extended flooring.“ We did things like providing additional promos to help dealers navigate through that challenging period, and I’ m proud that we got inventory down 16 %. We led the industry and made sure that we held firm to that commitment. We’ ve had a lot of questions about inventory in 2025, and there are still pockets that we have to make adjustments to.”

The lack of snowfall during the season and in the flatlands has put a lot of pressure on Polaris’ snowmobile business, Speetzen notes.“ We’ ve cut the [ snowmobile ] builds to get our inventory down. And we’ re making a few minor tweaks in the marine segment. Then, within off-road, we’ re bringing the recreation side down a bit more, given the persistent weakness in that category, and

pulling the utility side up, given it remains stronger year-over-year than the recreational side of the business.”

R & D When asked about cutting some of the R & D budget, Speetzen says firmly they won’ t do that.“ We learned a lot through the last down cycle. Polaris became number one because we kept investing, outpaced the Japanese, and overtook them all. And we’ re not going to back off that. The products we’ ve come out with over the past four years is pretty impressive, but it’ s not going to stop.”

Speetzen outlines that innovation will be the key for Polaris to gain market share in the future.“ Once this starts to recover, we want the right products that customers will want, and we think we got ourselves well positioned to do that.”

Speetzen emphasizes Polaris’ s partnership with its dealers and how they’ ve been able to grow the sport.“ We’ ve brought in over 1 million new customers. Powersports is a business that has many recurring, repeat customers. The fact that we’ ve brought in over a million new customers, I think, speaks to the strength of the brand.”

“ Ridership is up 10 % compared to the time period before Covid,” Speetzen notes.“ It’ s a great indicator for us now, and a lot happened from pre-Covid to where we are today. We saw a surge in demand in 2021−’ 22. We also saw a surge in ridership during that time period, starting in’ 23 and tailing off. And that correlates pretty heavily with people returning to the office.”

INTEREST RATES With interest rates still high, Speetzen says it has created some fatigue and a lot of pressure in the market.“ The tariff situation makes that worse. People are worried because they’ re unsure if daily life will return to being more expensive. The report that inflation came down a tick and was slightly better than people expected at 2.8, but every article I read said this has no impact. And I think you have consumers stepping back on big-ticket items.

Speetzen says that dealer inventory will continue to be a big focus in 2025 as Polaris navigates this promo environment.“ Just yesterday, we rolled out some promos for finance interest. My message to the team has been that we have to remain agile. We can’ t put a promo plan together once a quarter and then look at it. This is a daily thing that we’ ve got to manage. And from a tariff standpoint, it changes by the hour, and anything that we would say today will probably be wrong tomorrow.”