LCI Industries - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 topline modestly beat and EPS (adjusted) edged past consensus: revenue $1.107B vs S&P Global consensus $1.072B; adjusted EPS $2.39 vs $2.29; EBITDA was roughly in line/slight miss ($121.3M vs $119.4M est.). Mix and one-time separation costs compressed YoY margins, though EBITDA margin expanded sequentially to 11.0% (+40 bps q/q). Revenue/EPS/EBITDA estimates marked with * come from S&P Global.
• OEM strength (share gains, fifth-wheel mix, tariff-related pricing) and acquisitions offset marine and European RV softness; Aftermarket grew 4% but margins contracted on mix and investments.
• Management reaffirmed its 2025 RV wholesale shipment forecast (320k–350k), guided Q3 revenue up ~5% y/y with EBIT margins similar to 2024, and highlighted July sales +5% y/y; marine expected to remain soft.
• Capital deployment remained active: $1.15 dividend paid in Q2 and declared again on Aug 15; $38M buybacks in Q2 and another ~$62M post-quarter; liquidity remains strong with $192M cash and $595M revolver availability.
• Stock reaction catalysts: tariff mitigation progress (reducing China exposure to ~10% target), steady margin resilience, and accretive bus-market acquisitions (Freedman, Trans/Air) sustaining diversification amid marine softness.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Share gains and mix: RV OEM sales +3% y/y to $503.3M on market share gains, fifth‑wheel mix and targeted tariff pricing actions; Adjacent Industries +10% on acquisitions. “We delivered strong second quarter results… fueled share gains across key categories and generated 5% sales growth… EBITDA margin of 11%, a sequential expansion of 40 bps” (CEO).
  • Tariff mitigation: Higher material and freight costs “fully mitigated” through sourcing strategies and targeted price increases, supporting profitability despite headwinds.
  • Strong cash/returns: $192M cash, $595M revolver availability; $67M returned to shareholders YTD through 8/1 (dividends + buybacks).

• What Went Wrong

  • Margin pressure y/y: Operating margin 7.9% (–70 bps y/y) on executive separation costs and less favorable product mix; Aftermarket margin 13.5% (–200 bps y/y) on mix and growth investments.
  • Marine softness and Europe RV headwinds: Marine expected to remain soft through 2025; European RV volume down; automotive aftermarket volumes pressured.
  • Tariffs raised baseline pressure: Management quantified ~290 bps 2025 potential margin impact pre‑mitigation, up from prior assumptions; mitigation focuses on resourcing and selective pricing, but reported margins will mathmatically compress as tariff dollars are mitigated without layering margin on top.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining the LCI Industries second quarter 2025 conference call. My name is Lucy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing *1 on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press *2. It is now my pleasure to hand over to your host, Lillian Etzkorn of LCI Industries, to begin. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the LCI Industries second quarter 2025 conference call. I am joined on the call today with Jason Lippert, President and CEO, along with Kip Emenhiser, VP of Finance and Treasurer. We will discuss the results for the quarter in just a moment. First, I would like to inform you that certain statements made in today's conference call regarding LCI Industries and its operations may be considered forward-looking statements under the security laws and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. As a result, the company cautions you that there are a number of factors, many of which are beyond the company's control, which could cause actual results and events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. These factors are discussed in our earnings release and in our Form 10-K and in other filings with the SEC.

The company disclaims any obligation or undertaking to update forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date the forward-looking statements are made, except as required by law. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Jason.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Lillian, and good morning everyone. I'd like to welcome you all to LCI Industries' second quarter 2025 earnings call. We delivered strong second quarter results with $1.1 billion in sales, up 5% year over year, along with 2% organic total content growth despite RV mix headwinds. Our strong performance reflects dedication of our teams, the strength of our diversified markets and products, and the durability and expansiveness of our competitive moat. While elevated interest rates and other macro factors continue to challenge RV retail demand, our strategic foundation effectively drives growth and resilience, keeping us firmly on track to achieve our $5 billion organic revenue target in 2027.

Our 5% growth was driven by continued market share gains in our top five product categories: appliances, axles and suspensions, chassis, furniture, and windows, as well as the continued traction of our five recent key innovations that have reached a $100 million run rate. Our recently completed acquisitions of Freedman Seating Company and Trans/Air contributed $32 million in sales in the quarter, while strengthening our position in the bus market. This market further expands our durability as it benefits from continuous and essential municipal fleet upgrades, providing $200 million in expected annualized revenues to Lippert, unrelated to consumer demand. Early integration efforts have been very successful operationally and culturally, engaging all 875 new team members collectively between the two new businesses within weeks of closing the acquisition. In addition, we are making good headway on synergies through consolidations of our transportation business units and teams.

In addition, Freedman has just announced new product launches for heavy-duty commercial buses, an entirely new market for them. We remain focused on what we can control, reducing raw material exposure, mitigating new costs around tariffs, and allocating capital with discipline across M&A, CapEx, and shareholder returns. We are happy to announce that our tariff mitigation strategy of diversifying our supply chain, with help from our vendors and other sourcing strategies, enabled us to minimize the impact of pricing to our customers, as well as support our bottom line in the quarter, in line with what we stated last quarter when tariffs were first announced. We're also making strong progress toward our goal of reducing China exposure to 10% by the end of 2025, down from 24% in 2024.

We are achieving this by further diversifying our supply chain into more strategically favorable regions, including bringing some products back to the U.S. for manufacturing, renegotiating supplier agreements, and leveraging existing inventory to further mitigate cost pressures. We also continue to drive facility consolidation, taking decisive action across multiple facilities to optimize our footprint. These actions, along with a lower indirect spend and reduced salary labor, drove sequential adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of 40 basis points to now 11% in the quarter. To support ongoing cost reduction, we intend to continue to optimize our facility footprint in calendar year 2026 by targeting underutilized space for reduction. All our additional actions are helping continue our momentum toward the targeted 85 basis point overhead and G&A reduction for 2025. I'll now move on to the results by business.

RV OEM net sales totaled $503 million in the second quarter, with North American RV sales up 5% and overall RV sales up 3% year over year, driven by market share gains across our top five product categories. This growth was partially offset by a decline in North American RV wholesale shipments, as dealers remain cautious with inventory levels after this previous quarter's restocking. Nonetheless, long-term trends supporting the outdoor lifestyle remain strong. According to KOA's 2025 Camping and Outdoor Hospitality Report, over 11 million new households have entered the camping market since 2019, and 72 million Americans are expected to take an RV trip this year, reinforcing a solid foundation for future demand and favorable demographics.

A successful adoption by OEMs of our recent innovations, like our Chill Cube 18K air conditioner, anti-lock braking systems, 4K window series, Sun Deck, and TCS suspension system, continue to drive share gains during the quarter. Recently, we engaged in a collaboration with Keystone Krueger, the best-selling fifth-wheel RV, where we highlighted the capabilities of our new Chill Cube. In this collaborative effort, Keystone and Lippert sent our marketing teams to Dust Valley, California, where we showcased the Chill Cube's cooling power, energy efficiency, and quiet operation in one of the most extreme environments in the U.S. The marketing and social media campaigns were released early last month. The Chill Cube and other market-leading innovations that are so critical to customers continue to drive adoption among OEMs, reinforcing our value proposition across all price points.

Well-received innovations and continued market share gains increased organic content for travel trailer and fifth wheel by 2% year over year, continuing our trend of organic content expansion despite stiff mix headwinds. Our ability to continuously grow content, even amid this ongoing shift towards smaller single-axle trailers, underscores the strength and relevance of our portfolio. Many of our components, such as axles, chassis, suspension systems, and appliances, are critical to the units, not to mention critical to safety, reliability, and convenience for the consumer, making our products difficult to remove in any decontenting environment. Combined with our large-scale procurement of the raw materials required for these products, low-cost manufacturing, and strong OEM relationships, our offerings remain a solid choice for partners seeking reliable, high-value solutions and continued innovation in the space.

Looking ahead, we're confident we can capture additional content opportunities and anticipate that organic content growth should return to 3% to 5% annually in a normalized wholesale environment. Turning to the aftermarket, net sales were $268 million for the second quarter, up 4% year over year, primarily driven by product innovations and the expanding Camping Lobe relationship in the RV aftermarket. We continue to see strong demand for Purion appliances, particularly in air conditioning, where the Chill Cube and the rest of our AC lineup continues to gain share in the aftermarket. We've already sold three times more ACs in the aftermarket through six months of 2025 than we did of all of 2024. This is a testament to our incredible aftermarket sales teams and technical teams that assist dealerships with a service and winning sales programs.

As our aftermarket products continue to see increased adoption, in part through more and more OEM placement over the years, it helps fuel our long-term growth strategy in this segment. As OEM content grows and more RVs exit their warranty periods, demand rises in parallel, further supporting this is a growing U.S. RV ownership base, ultimately creating a larger installed base which generates recurring product and service opportunities for our business. Our partnership with Camping World also remains a key aftermarket growth driver, with sales in their stores up over $7 million year to date, indicating strong retail momentum and customer demand as a result of our in-store collaboration with the Camping World team. This continued strength highlights the impact of strategic alignment and collaborative execution as we increasingly strengthen our retail presence with the largest RV dealer in the world, both in stores and online.

In addition, we are also working on similar projects with many other dealerships across the country to apply our Lippert parts in-store concept. We also continue to invest heavily in the long-term growth of our aftermarket by building on our service and training functions. Our dealer tech training programs are an important piece of our aftermarket growth strategy as they help to ensure that our products are supported correctly after the sale to retail, strengthening our pull-through with dealer service centers. Last year, we completed service on over 1,500 mobile service repairs, which adds to aftermarket revenues. We are set to exceed that this year, and later on this year, we are adding new standalone service bays in Alabama, California, and to our existing Indiana facility, which will help us attract even more customers for service and upfit of our new innovative products.

We demonstrate the robustness of our technical service team that assists dealers and our other customers in the aftermarket. For the first half of 2025, our service ecosystem had 600,000 views of Lippert branded tech support seminars, 28,000 individual completions of technical training classes, and over 1 million visits to our Lippert branded technical service pages, demonstrating our reputation as a trusted dealer partner. We plan to continue to foster these efforts to bolster service support as dealers consistently express their appreciation and tell us we provide the most comprehensive technical support in the entire industry. Turning to adjacent industry, second quarter sales increased 10% year over year to $336 million, largely due to our recent acquisitions, Freedman Seating and Trans/Air, that expand our presence in the bus market, as well as some nice organic growth in utility and cargo trailer markets with our axles and suspension products.

This growth is partially offset by ongoing softness in the marine market as dealers continue to prioritize inventory rebalancing. We expect softness in the marine market to continue for the balance of the year. We remain committed to product innovation and recently launched a new line of modular replacement pontoon furniture for marine aftermarket consumers, giving boaters a cost-effective way to refresh their boat without purchasing a new unit. We also launched a brand new pontoon ladder system this quarter, which has had great success already making its way into several key pontoon brands as the marine manufacturers enter all their key dealer shows this month. Utility trailers continue to represent meaningful long-term content potential.

With approximately 600,000 utility and cargo trailers produced annually, we were well positioned through the strong relationships with leading OEMs to leverage our axle manufacturing and suspension products expertise, as well as getting them to start considering advanced technologies and content such as anti-lock brakes (ABS), Touring Coil Suspension (TCS), and tire pressure management systems. Axle and suspension components represent the largest single content category in these trailers, and our leadership in this area remains a key competitive advantage. With the transportation industry, our window systems and glass products are contributing to content growth across on-highway, off-highway, school bus, and transit bus platforms. The bus market, in particular, continues to demonstrate durability with approximately 70,000 units produced annually and a growing need for fleet replacement across states and municipalities.

As mass transit continues to expand, we believe this will remain an attractive market and look forward to further expanding this portfolio in the quarters to come. Lastly, as I mentioned in my opening comments, Freedman Seating is now entering the heavy-duty commercial bus product market with brand new seating solutions that could have meaningful impact on the business. Turning to capital allocation, we remain focused on sustaining a strong financial foundation while driving growth and returning capital to shareholders. In the first half of 2025, we generated $155 million in operating cash flow, supported by improved working capital discipline. Additionally, as of June 30, we had $192 million in cash, $595 million of availability on our revolver, and net debt of approximately two times EBITDA, positioning us well to pursue strategic acquisitions, invest in innovation, and navigate a dynamic environment with flexibility.

We also returned capital through $1.15 a share of dividend. We also are excited to announce that we have executed $128 million in share repurchases year to date through August 1, with $200 million of remaining capacity under our newly authorized $300 million program. This continues our consistent and disciplined capital deployment strategy we've executed and balances long-term investment with near-term returns, driving shareholder value across market cycles. Moving to culture, one of our key competitive advantages has played a significant role in reducing employee turnover and fostering a more engaged, committed workforce. Retention is important, but retention combined with high engagement is where the true value lies. We believe helping our team members find meaning and purpose at work by supporting both their personal and professional goals creates an X-factor type advantage that contributes to long-term stability and operational excellence.

To be specific, over the last four years, we have been working toward a bold goal, and that goal is by 2025 for every team member to have written personal goals and be actively pursuing them, because we believe that when our people grow personally, that the business will grow as a result of more engagement. We also believe that business can and should be a force for good, demonstrated by the hundreds of community service events organized by our culture and leadership team. Through these service events, thousands of our team members collectively have served over 125,000 hours of volunteer service each year. This effort reinforces a core belief at Lippert: when people unite around a shared mission, their impact extends far beyond the bottom line.

Not surprisingly, we found that retention rates in team members who serve are twice as high as those who haven't been involved with these serving events. Service is not only good for the community; it's good for business. As we look ahead to the second half of the year, we remain cautiously confident. While inflation and tariff uncertainty continue to pressure consumer behavior, we're encouraged by our ability to respond quickly and thoughtfully. That said, we remain confident in our ability to align our cost structure, capital deployment, and production cadence with real-time market conditions. This is what we have done successfully in past cycles while continuing to grow our market shares in all our end markets. July 2025 sales were up 5% year over year, and we anticipate that to be the trend for the rest of Q3.

We also continue to maintain our full-year 2025 forecast for North American RV wholesale shipments at 320,000 to 350,000 units, and we plan to remain steadfast to our approach to achieve growth in this environment, grounded in what we can control. In addition, we believe the toughest part is behind us, as the team has done an incredible job right-sizing the business and continuing to right-size after the falloff in RV volume in 2023. We believe we are putting ourselves in a great position for success as we come out of the cycle and off the bottom as volume begins to get back to a more normalized level. In closing, we operate a diversified and durable business, supported by a rich history and culture rooted in servant leadership, operational discipline, and strong execution from an experienced leadership team.

While the external environment may remain somewhat volatile in areas, our strategy hasn't changed. We've successfully navigated cycles like this before and have recently demonstrated that we've done it again. Our competitive moat is even more valuable at certain times, positioning us to continue driving market share gains and long-term growth. As always, and probably the most important thing I can say on these calls is that none of these results and accomplishments would be possible without the phenomenal consistency of our leadership teams across the business. The dedication, ingenuity, and passion of our people continue to move Lippert forward and provide outstanding results. I'm as proud as ever as what we're building together, and even more excited for what's to come. I'll now turn the call over to Lillian, who will provide more detail on our financial results.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Jason. During the quarter, Lippert's industry-leading innovations, strong competitive advantages, and successful M&A drove net sales growth, while our ability to mitigate tariffs and advanced cost-savings initiatives delivered resilient margin performance despite mixed headwinds. Our consolidated net sales for the second quarter were $1.1 billion, an increase of 5% from the second quarter of 2024. OEM net sales for the second quarter of 2025 were $840 million, up 5% from the same period of 2024. RV OEM net sales for the second quarter of 2025 were $503 million, up 3% compared to the prior year period, driven by market share gains and an increased mix of higher content fifth-wheel units. These results were partially offset by the overall continued shift in unit mix towards lower content single-axle travel trailers.

Single-axle trailers do remain in an atypical portion of production, but we expect this trend to normalize once consumer demand recovers. Content per towable RV unit was roughly flat year over year at $5,234, and content per motorized unit was up 1% to $3,793. Towable RV organic content grew 1% sequentially and 2% year over year, supported by the share gains we delivered in the top product categories we supply to RV OEMs: appliances, axles and suspensions, chassis, furniture, and windows, as well as the continued adoption of recent innovations like our ABS, TCS, and best-in-class appliances. This growth offset the impact from the continued shift to smaller single-axle trailers. Adjacent Industries OEM net sales for the second quarter of 2025 were $336 million, up 10% year over year, primarily due to sales from acquired businesses within transportation, which represents $32 million in the quarter.

This is partially offset by lower sales in North American Marine, as sales were down 15% due to the impact of inflation and still high interest rates on retail demand. Based on current visibility, we expect this softness to continue. Aftermarket net sales for the second quarter of 2025 were $268 million, an increase of 4% compared to the same period in 2024, primarily driven by product innovation and the expanding Camping World relationship within the RV aftermarket, partially offset by lower volumes within the automotive aftermarket. Gross margins for the second quarter of 2025 were 24.4% compared to 25.3% for the prior year period. The decrease was primarily due to executive separation costs related to the departure of our Chief Legal and Human Resources Officer and changes in product mix for both OEM and aftermarket segments.

Consolidated operating profit during the second quarter was $88 million, or 7.9%, a 70 basis point contraction over the prior year period. Excluding executive separation costs, operating margin was nearly flat compared to the prior year. This reflects our successful tariff mitigation strategy, where we offset $15 million in tariff and freight impacts through diversifying our supply chain, assistance from our vendors, and pricing pass-through. Our operating margin was further supported by ongoing cost improvement actions, including facility consolidations and overhead reductions, demonstrating steady progress toward our 85 basis point target. These initiatives largely offset headwinds from lower margin product mix and contractual price decreases tied to commodity indices. The operating profit margin of the OEM segment decreased to 6.2% in the second quarter of 2025, compared to 6.4% for the same period of 2024. Excluding separation expenses, OEM margin improved 10 basis points to 6.5% year over year.

The aftermarket segment delivered a 13.5% operating profit margin, down from 15.5% in the prior year period, driven by mix in investments in capacity and distribution processes to support growth for the aftermarket segment. However, on a sequential basis, aftermarket margins expanded nearly 500 basis points, which was stronger than the prior year's sequential improvements. GAAP net income in the second quarter was $58 million, or $2.29 earnings per diluted share, compared to net earnings of $61 million, or $2.40 per diluted share in the prior year period. Net income in the second quarter of 2025, adjusted for executive separation costs, was $60 million, or $2.39 earnings per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was $121 million, or 11% of net sales.

Non-cash depreciation and amortization was $60 million for the six months ended June 30, 2025, while non-cash stock-based compensation expense was $11 million for the same period. We continue to anticipate depreciation and amortization in the range of $115 to $125 million during the full year 2025. At June 30, 2025, our company's cash and cash equivalents balance was $192 million, compared to $166 million at December 31, 2024. For the six months ended June 30, 2025, cash provided by operating activities was $155 million, down $30 million from the second quarter of 2024. Investing cash inflows included $22 million used for capital expenditures and $98 million used for the acquisition. We also announced a $300 million share repurchase program during the quarter, underscoring our commitment to balanced capital allocation and shareholder returns.

This authorization provides substantial flexibility to repurchase shares opportunistically while maintaining our financial strength for strategic investment and acquisition. During the quarter, we returned to shareholders $38 million through share repurchases and $29 million through our quarterly dividend of $1.15 per share. Year to date, through August 1, 2025, we returned $187 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. As of June 30, 2025, our net inventory balance was $710 million, down from $737 million at December 31, 2024. At the end of the second quarter, we had outstanding net debt of $756 million, 2.1 times pro forma EBITDA, adjusted to include LTM EBITDA of acquired businesses and the impact of non-cash and other items as defined in our credit agreement. For the month of July, sales were up 5% versus July 2024 due to acquisition sales and pricing offset by lower North America RV production.

As we think about the balance of the year, I want to remind you that historically the second half tends to be lower than the first half, and we expect that to be the case this year as well, even with the addition of our recent acquisition. For Q3, we expect overall revenue to be up 5% year over year, and this reflects total revenue, including our recent acquisition. We also continue to maintain our full year 2025 forecast for North America RV wholesale shipments at 320,000 to 350,000. For Q3 2025, we expect RV OEM sales to be up about 4 to 5% over prior year. We also expect Q3 EBIT margins to be similar to 2024 levels.

Looking to capital allocation for the full year of 2025, capital expenditures are anticipated to be in the range of $50 to $70 million as we continue to focus on investing into the business and innovation. We continue our aim to utilize our balance sheet to pursue strategic opportunities that help us capture profitable growth and deliver shareholder value, while maintaining a long-term leverage target of 1.5 to 2 times net debt to EBITDA and maintain our commitment to returning cash to shareholders. In closing, we remain on track to organically achieve our $5 billion revenue target in 2027 and return to double-digit operating margins as our operational flexibility, strategic diversification, and effective cost management, along with a strong balance sheet, enable us to deliver sustainable and measurable shareholder value. That is the end of our prepared remarks. Operator, we are ready to take questions. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Lillian. To ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press *2. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. The first question comes from Daniel Moore of CJS Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Good morning, Jason. Morning, Lillian. Thanks for taking the questions.

Morning, Dan.

Speaker 0

Good morning.

Speaker 3

Let's see a couple of things. One, to start with, just first inventory levels. Dealer inventories, both RV and marine, from your perspective, clearly dealers remain cautious, had some significant destock in Q2. Just trying to get a sense for where you see inventories today and what the potential impact of a restock could look like once demand starts to improve in those two end markets. Then a quick follow-up. Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Dan. I think that, you know, the inventories, like you mentioned, the dealers have been pretty cautious. I think on top of that, the OEMs have been extra cautious as well. I think those two things are going to lead, and that momentum's been building for the last year and a half. When you look at going forward, I think that cautiousness is going to continue and the discipline is going to continue. When it does lift, I don't think we're going to come out of this quickly. I think it's going to be a slow and gradual, steady rise once we start seeing the business lift. On the marine side, probably a little bit more cautiousness there and discipline on the OEM side as well. I think they're more in the middle innings in this destocking and just inventory rebalance versus the RV dealers.

We've heard some really good, talked to some of the big dealers recently and there's been some, you know, Blue Compass went on RV Business recently and talked about a really strong May and June, or a May and June in the last two years. They said it was the best May and June that they've had. That's really positive. They said July was really strong. Camping World reported their numbers were fairly strong on units. I think we're just in a position where they're going to continue to be cautious and disciplined and that's good and healthy for the industry. When it does lift, it's going to be kind of a slow and steady rise.

That's really helpful. Just trying to triangulate the commentary from a margin perspective. EBIT margins, I think, Lillian, you said flattish for Q3 year over year. You also sort of gave the updated tariff impact of 290 basis points before any mitigation efforts. Just trying to understand, is the tariff impact maybe greater than what we thought previously? If you have any thoughts in terms of what kind of an overall net margin target might look like for fiscal 2025, given kind of one quarter left to go, would be super helpful. Thanks again.

Speaker 0

Yeah, sure, Dan. Maybe some color around both the tariff impact and also just margins in general. When we're thinking about the tariffs, there's going to be margin compression from the perspective that we're not mitigating margins. We're mitigating the cost of the tariff with the actions that we're taking. That does put pressure just mathematically on the margins as we go forward. The other thing I would call just in terms of some things driving some of the margin activity as we look to Q3, and it'll be improving as we get to Q4, is we did just acquire some pretty meaty acquisitions with Freedman Seating and Trans/Air. There is some cost associated with integrating and onboarding these organizations and streamlining to get the synergy.

That's also going to be a little bit of an overhead on the margin as we look to Q3 and a little bit obviously to Q4 as well. We're continuing to work on the cost mitigation actions that Jason spoke of in his remarks, targeting that 85 basis point overall improvement for 2025. We do have some of those other factors overhanging on the margin.

Speaker 3

Yeah, if you add the mixed headwinds as well, along with the tariffs that have created rising steel prices and aluminum prices domestically. As you know, how we're indexed with a lot of our component pricing to our customers, we chase that price going up until it stabilizes. Then we get whole once it stabilizes and starts either retreating or once it stays at the peak. We have a bunch of things that we're working against there, but all those things will right-size in time.

Very helpful. I guess, did I hear correct that Q3 should be flattish on a year-over-year basis from an operating margin perspective? I just want to clarify that.

Speaker 0

Correct.

Speaker 3

Okay. Very helpful. Excellent. I'll circle back with any follow-ups. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you.

Speaker 1

The next question comes from Joseph Altobello of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Since we're talking about tariffs, I'll start there. It looks like the impact went from about 180 basis points last quarter to now 290. What was the biggest driver of that increase? What's a good annualized number to use from a tariff standpoint?

Speaker 0

Yeah. Joe, the biggest change, if you recall, our last earnings call was the second week in April. It was right after the initial liberation day. We had assumed at that time that China tariffs would be at 20%. We've since settled, or I should say the government has since settled at 30%. That's going to be the biggest driver of change from the last time that we talked. I think just kind of taking these and annualizing it is a fair representation for the tariffs on a go-forward basis. Again, we believe that through the mitigation efforts that we have, both from the resourcing, onshoring some of the product, resourcing to other nations, and then pricing pass-throughs as appropriate, we do feel confident that we have mitigation plans in place so that we will not have an overall impact to the business on a go-forward basis.

Thank you. Just to shift over to sales, it looks like, you know, up 5% in the quarter, a little bit better than I think you had guided. Is there any impact either to Q2 or Q3 or both from the earlier RV model year changeover this year?

Speaker 3

I don't think so. Can you be a little bit more specific there?

Yeah, it sounds like the changeover happened in June this year versus, let's say, July last year.

Yeah, I mean, the model change startup is usually slow, you know, slow to start, but I would say no, there's no, there was no impact. We'll see that, you know, we'll see that happen over the course of the next 12 months. That'll be where the impact is.

Okay, thank you. Got it, thank you.

Yep.

Speaker 1

The next question comes from Craig Kennison of Baird. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Lillian, you mentioned the trend towards single-axle towable RVs, maybe close to a bottom. I'm just wondering if you can give us a sense for what mix normally is of single-axle and where it is today, and then confirm whether it's, maybe based on your orders, whether that trend is back in a good direction.

Speaker 0

Yeah, good morning, Craig. Historically, the single-axles were probably in the mid to upper teens in terms of overall mix. We've been seeing over the last, call it 18 months, a gradual increase into the mid 20%. I think we were at 24% last quarter. In the second quarter, we've seen a little bit of an improvement there, where we're down to about 20%, 20.5% in the second quarter. It was nice to see that slight improvement. Hopefully, that trend does continue. I think, as we've talked before, overall expectations from the industry are that we will revert back to the larger multi-axle units just because they're so much more practical for the end consumer to be able to utilize the RV in the best way possible.

When we look at a trailing 12-month basis from a content perspective, having that elevated overall mix for the past 12 months does still pressure the content, but it was nice to see in the second quarter that there was a little bit of an improvement to get back to the multi-axle.

Speaker 3

Craig, we track that every week. Just last week, it was under 20%, it averaged under 20% for the week, which is a good sign to see. We've been tracking this for a long time. If you go back 10 years, it was just under 10%. It's been gradually growing over time. Like Lillian said, the last 18 to 24 months, it's been creeping over 20% up to 25% as a high. We're starting to see some retreating there. That's what we want to see. We'd rather see, honestly, less wholesale units and obviously bigger units and less single axles from a margin perspective.

That makes a lot of sense, but trying to reconcile that with the Camping World report, where they're clearly doing really well with the most affordable unit. I presume those are also single axle. Is it just a change in what manufacturers are building in anticipation of a change, or can you give us the sense that this is a consumer-driven trend change and improvement?

I think there's some of that, certainly. I don't know how well you can do it at an $89.99 price point or a $12,999 price point in terms of margin. I think that's the real thing. A lot of these, I would say the majority of these single-axle trailers are getting purchased by first-time buyers. The real hope here is that the longer-term trend is that they trade up and buy something bigger, that they stay in the lifestyle and buy a bigger trailer with more content. Camping World especially has put a lot of energy and resources into that strategy. Over the next couple of years, we see some of those first-time buyers that have bought over the last few years these smaller units trade up.

I guess, Jason, to that end, just looking at your aftermarket business, I know you've got this view that the pandemic era orders ultimately will lead to some reorders. How much data do you have that you can track, you know, aftermarket purchase activity among people who bought during that era? It does feel like you could get an echo effect benefit from all the activity at that time.

Yeah, I think there's probably less, you know, when you look at single-axle trailers specifically, I think that there's less aftermarket opportunity there because you're not, there's nothing really to fix up on those trailers. They're so bare when it comes to retail parts and accessorizing and upgrading and things like that. For example, they don't have recliners in those, and we put recliners in every single unit out there. You can't even fit a recliner in there. There's no furniture to speak of. It's just a dinette, which is a wood-based seat with some cushions on it. You might get a mattress here or there, but the real content adders and aftermarket come with some of the bigger units. We don't have data that tracks specifically all those buyers.

Our aftermarket continues to grow, and we're continuing to do more store sets with Camping World, and we've got a pretty significant total addressable market in the aftermarket, especially with RV and automotive. We're going to focus on continuing to sell dealers more products.

I guess just to follow up, are you seeing any aftermarket activity from people who purchased, let's say, 2020 or 2021? Is that consumer showing up to upgrade RVs through your aftermarket products?

It's really hard to tell. I would say that they have to be repairing and replacing. That is a big part of our aftermarket business. When parts and components don't work, they're going to need to come and get it fixed to a dealership likely, and some do it yourself in some cases. I'd say most of the time when our components break, and we've certainly put, I think we keep saying we put 50% more content into OEM vehicles since 2021, the more of those components that need repair and replacement in the aftermarket, the more are going to be likely to be ours. That's our aftermarket to get because they'll replace like for like.

Thank you.

Thanks, Craig.

Speaker 1

The next question comes from Patrick Buckley of Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking our questions. Within the 5% growth quarter to date in July, how much of that was from acquisitions, and how much of that was driven by price?

Speaker 0

I'd say a good portion of it was from the acquisitions, probably 3 to 4% of that was acquisitions related.

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. You touched a bit on this already, but as you try to think about tariff impacts moving forward, are there any specific product categories where you see opportunity to move more of the sourcing domestic, or I guess on the flip side, any categories that are structurally more weighted towards import?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think that's always one of the first things we're trying to figure out with resourcing. If we're going to move a product, if we can move it back to the U.S., it's where we have the plants and capacity to do that. It's just a matter of does the dollars and cents make it work and can we stay competitive? I can't tell you how many resources we've put toward the resourcing initiatives with people and on the quality side specifically, incoming inspection, because we've got a lot of new suppliers in the mix going to find new suppliers. Once we find them, we've got to validate them, and then there's a whole process when it comes to getting those first articles in and proving them at our place. There's just a lot of activity there.

It's a lot easier when we can do that internally in the U.S. Unfortunately, there's still cost incentives outside of the U.S. to reshore and resource other countries outside of China.

Got it. One last quick one from us. Looking ahead to the $5 billion in revenues in 2027, is there a wholesale shipment volume number assumed for that or maybe a range there?

Yeah, our assessment there is that we just return to a normalized wholesale range. If you look over the last 10 years, it's averaged between 400,000 and 415,000. I think that's the assumption there. We do feel we'll get back there over the course of the next two to three years.

Great. Very helpful. That's all for us. Thanks, guys.

Thanks.

Speaker 1

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. The next question comes from Tristan Thomas-Martin of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning.

Speaker 3

Hey.

I just circled back to kind of the full year operating margin. I think last quarter you kind of implied you would see 85 basis points over 2024 is 5.8%. How are you thinking about that currently?

Speaker 0

I think we're still very confident in that from the perspective that we're tracking nicely for those cost saves, that 85 basis points. A lot of that's driven from footprint consolidation. We've already executed a good portion of that consolidation. There's still a little bit more to come as we continue to progress through the year. We're also continuing to focus, I think we talked on the last call, some pretty targeted efforts in terms of indirect spend and RFPs that we've been executing throughout the year. I feel really confident that we are on track to deliver that for the year.

Speaker 3

Tristan, we've talked about it, but we've executed closing California, Chesney, Michigan, and Westville, Indiana. Those are three that we've undergone. Obviously, there's costs and things to close those. We've got a few more on track this year, and a few more lined up for next year for second quarter. We've got a plan there.

Okay. Okay. To kind of ask it slightly differently, is the 85 basis points of kind of improvement slightly offset by a higher expected tariff impact, or does it imply maybe slightly lower than the whatever the 6 point whatever, or no?

Speaker 0

Yeah. As I mentioned earlier in the call, the tariffs, because we're focusing on the dollar mitigation, there is some margin compression on that just naturally, right? We're not going to put margin on top of the tariff cost and try to hold that. There is some margin deterioration because.

Speaker 3

On percentage.

Speaker 0

On the % because we're focused on mitigating the dollars.

Okay. Got it. Just a two-part industry question. First, how are you thinking about retail demand this year? Also, if we take your 320,000 to 350,000 wholesale range, and then I factor in your RV OEM sale plus 4% to 5% comment, which I'm assuming does assume some kind of price and content share, does that just imply a very weak or acute production volume?

Speaker 3

On the retail, it's obviously, we had some negative comps year over year last year and then coming into this year. It looks like it's stabilizing, and our plan is, our thoughts are that wholesale and retail will be pretty similar this year. That's where we're at on our retail thoughts.

Okay, and then kind of like 4Q kind of implied wholesale production?

Say that again.

4Q implied wholesale production, right? The 320 to 350 range you gave, kind of adjusting for the RV OEM up, I think 4 to 5 in 3Q. We're always finding that that implies a fairly soft 4Q for the industry. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 0

Yeah, typically that's pretty normal from a seasonality perspective. We're not expecting anything unusual in that regard.

Speaker 3

A lot of it's going to depend on these macro factors we keep talking about. If the environment starts to improve toward the end of the year, we could see some heavier restock by the dealers coming into the next selling season. We're hopeful for that. We're not banking on it. We've been in this rut for two years since the fall off in late 2022. We keep getting closer to the end of this, and the lift is coming in the next two to three quarters, likely.

Okay, thanks for taking all my questions.

Thanks, Tristan.

Speaker 0

Thank you.

Speaker 1

We currently have no further questions, so I'd like to hand back to Jason for any final remarks.

Speaker 3

I just want to say I'm really proud of the teams. I just had mentioned that we spent the last couple of years really right-sizing the business and working hard to recover from the dip that we had in the industry. I'm thankful to our teams, and it's good to see our ROIC and EBITDA into double digits now. We're going to keep working to improve that. Thanks all for coming to the call.

Speaker 1

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.