$58.26

+0.47%

Coca-Cola Co. may buy back more shares in 2008 than its existing target of $1.5 billion to $2 billion, Chief Financial Officer Gary Fayard said.

"We're just being a little cautious at the beginning of the year with the volatility of the markets and everything else," Fayard said Friday during a presentation at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York annual meeting in Boca Raton, Fla. "We'll see how we go through the year."

Fayard told analysts that bond rating services are "extremely nervous" because of market turbulence, and that he didn't want share-buyback forecasts to affect debt ratings in the Coca-Cola bottling system. The soft drink maker said in 2006 that it planned to repurchase as many as 300 million shares over an unspecified period.

If Coca-Cola bought back $2 billion of its shares in 2008, that would represent about 34.7 million shares.

—- Bloomberg News

Motorcycle sales down, Harley says

Harley-Davidson Inc. said industrywide U.S. sales of large motorcycles fell 5 percent last year.

Consumers bought 516,100 motorcycles with engines of at least 651 cubic centimeters in 2007, a drop from 543,000 a year earlier, Harley said Friday in a regulatory filing.

The sales figures were collected by an "independent third party" from the manufacturers, Milwaukee-based Harley said, without identifying the compiler.

Harley sold 255,100 Harley-Davidson and Buell motorcycles, a drop from 271,700 a year earlier. That trimmed Harley's large-motorcycle market share to 49.4 percent from 50 percent. Honda, the world's largest motorcycle maker, had U.S. market share last year of 14.2 percent, down from 15.1 percent a year earlier, Harley said in its filing.

—- Bloomberg News