Jason Lippert
Analyst · Thompson Research
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to LCI’s second quarter 2021 earnings call. We delivered another incredible quarter as we continue to drive record results in 2021. Demand across the recreational space remains at an all time high with no end in sight to the waves of new consumers entering the outdoor lifestyle. This quarter was historic for not just our company, but for the RV industry as a whole, as they hit a record of 153,100 RV unit shipments. At an annualized rate, the industry is set to shift near 600,000 units in 2021, even blowing past levels last seen in 2017. And we expect this trend to continue well into 2022 as inventories will likely remain at all time lows. Despite supply chain related headwinds continuing to impact our business, our teams have proven their operational expertise in mitigating the impact of production related challenges including rising input costs, to enable us to meet our customer demand. During the quarter, we achieved $1.1 billion in sales, up 108% year-over-year or 74% compared to second quarter of 2019 providing us with double and triple-digit growth throughout each of our respective business markets. This growth has been supported by our focus on executing our diversification strategy as we work to integrate our newest acquisitions including Challenger, Veada, Ranch Hand, Schaudt, and Trazcor. Additionally, we continue to drive market share expansion achieved strong content per vehicle growth as we further solidify our position as a global leader in the recreation space. Turning to our performance by segment beginning with RV OEM, sales increased 151% year-over-year or 56% compared to the second quarter of 2019 to $595 million for the second quarter driven by elevated retail demand throughout both North America and the international markets we serve. Preliminary results for July indicate no slowdown in this trend, despite supply chain and labor constraints, which continue to impact the rate of increase for the entire RV industry. Our RV chassis capacity has been significantly improved by the recent acquisition of Wolfpack allowing us to continue to meet the increased need for chassis as the OEMs keep gearing up production to meet retail demand. We are also leveraging our existing customer relationships and significantly increasing our revenue that one of our most recent acquisitions Trazcor. In addition, we continue to experience significant efficiency improvement through several recent automation projects and continuous improvement and lean initiative around the business. As demand remains at an all time high, we are focused on pushing our teams to rollout more continuous improvement projects that further increase capacity and improve quality, efficiency and profitability. Our RV margins were under pressure during the second quarter for a few key reasons. First, our commodities indexes lag by a quarter and these indexes dictate when customers get increases specifically around steel related products. Steel has risen to over twice as historical highs in a very short period of time and then we’ll simply take a few quarters to see these increases layer back in. That said the indexes will also lag on the backside and keep our prices higher and allow us to recover when steel prices start to move back down. Not only has labor been problematic for the industry with respect to a significant shortage where most of our facilities are located in Northern Indiana, but labor wage increases and overtime premiums are also at the highest level we’ve seen in the last couple of decades. Freight costs and logistics have also been pretty unpredictable. All that said, our teams have done an amazing job keeping up with wholesale demand without shorting our customers. The most importantly, the margin performance has been fantastic considering the amount of pressure we’ve seen around material, labor and freight against this record demand. Content per unit has also continued to trend favorably despite an ongoing wholesale mix shift towards smaller entry-level products. Content for towable RV increased 7% year-over-year to $3,621 while content per motor home RV increased 15% year-over-year to $26,044 year-over-year. Over the course of the last year, we have gained significant market share in a few core product areas on the business. We expect to continue driving content increases throughout 2021 as we further expand our market share and keep bringing innovative advancements to our customers. Turning to our Aftermarket Segment, total revenue grew $229 million in the second quarter, up 45% year-over-year driven in part by the performance of our RV aftermarket group and the CURT Group, as the team continues to work through record backlogs, as well as the successful integration of our Ranch Hand into our aftermarket portfolio. We believe the most important thing we have going for aftermarket businesses. The sheer record number of RVs entering the aftermarket population with about 1 million RV is being brought into use every two years now, it creates an incredible opportunity for aftermarket business, for repairs, service and upgrade opportunities with many of our products. Additionally, because of the new ownership trends, RVs are not being purchased solely for single-family use, but also for using the new peer-to-peer rental marketplace. These rental platforms serve as an amazing opportunity to introduce consumers to the RV lifestyle while also enabling our entire RV population to monetize their vehicle for an additional stream of income while not in use. The surge of popularity and peer-to-peer rentals speeds up the RV replacement cycle brings many more prospective customers into the lifestyle, as well as creates a case for heavier use. We believe this will inevitably create the need for more repair and replacement services, which enables us to leverage our wide product offerings and repair parts services network to meet this increasing consumer demand for upgrade parts and replacement parts. Turning to our adjacent markets, revenue for the second quarter increased 107% year-over-year or 60% compared to the second quarter of 2019 to $269 million. As Marine and other related markets continue to benefit from similar secular tailwinds driving growth across RV and the aftermarket segment. In line with RV, our Marine customers have been storing demand but have also been impacted by widespread supply chain issues. Thankfully, we are beginning to see the easing of some of these constraints. Our Marine business has continued to serve as one of the primary drivers of our diversification strategy supported by the strong performance of Veada and Taylor Made Marine enabling us to expand our market share in the space while also boosting content growth. Further, our deep industry relationships allow us a pipeline for our new Marine innovation that we continue to develop and add our – add to our Marine content. We also continue to grow our axle and suspension product line revenue significantly in the trailer market, which has added nicely to our top and bottom line. Our international businesses showed strong performance with revenues increasing 133% year-over-year or 226% compared to the second quarter of 2019 to $103 million. International demand for RVs remains elevated, which we’ve been able to successfully capitalize onto our numerous acquisitions we’ve made in the recent past in Europe. We believe this space will continue to grow meaningfully in the near future as it continues to see record demand. Innovation by our Europe teams, as well as the development of our aftermarket products in that market and our focus on Rail, Marine and Caravan industries in Europe should also bolster LCI’s results in the near-term. European markets in which we operate including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, I think continued that will be a delayed recovery consistent with North America. International customers are embracing the RV lifestyle as they embark on their summer holiday this month with the second quarter retail caravan registrations increasing 27.5% across Europe. Our long-term strategic initiatives revolve around innovation and product development, which play a critical role in establishing our position as an industry leader. As demand remains at record level, we have not let up on continuing to figure out how to add improve features and do existing products as well as to develop new products to further enhance the customer experience in the future. A prime example of our innovative capabilities is our continued evolution of our OneControl platform. By utilizing the OneControl platform, customers can now control an incredible range of vehicle function, from leveling and slide-outs to lighting and HVAC systems. In addition to our OneControl product, we anticipate great success over the next 12 months in the launch of our tire pressure management systems, battery systems, excellent suspension and innovations, our new ladder innovation, electric [indiscernible] and thrusters with the fine tune market, as well as our top roof for the Class B van market, which is the fastest growing segment of RVs in North America. With regards to capital allocation, we have maintained our focus on integrating our recent acquisitions and paying down debt, while pursuing strategic acquisition. At the same time, we are continuing to invest more heavily in innovation and optimizing our manufacturing footprint to ensure we have capacity to meet the heightened demand, while identifying cost efficiencies were possible. In closing, we want to thank all of our team members for their dedication and hard work. As we have continued to meet all time record demand for our products while delivering quality products to our customers. Our performance continues to be driven by the operational strength and tenure of our workforce guided by an incredible leadership team that keeps us on track and executing our strategic priority. We look forward to continuing down the path of industry outperformance as we keep delivering value for the stakeholders of our business well into the future. I’ll now turn to Brian Hall, our CFO to discuss in more detail our second quarter financial results.