Jason Lippert
Analyst · Thompson Research Group. Please go ahead, Kathryn. Your line is now open
Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to LCI’s first quarter 2022 earnings call. On the heels of an amazing 2021 we carry forward our momentum to deliver record top line and earnings performance. Our wide range of innovative offerings, coupled with our ongoing focus to providing best-in-class customer service and experience continue to be key competitive differentiators, accelerating growth in our aftermarket, marine and adjacent businesses alongside RV. As these other businesses continue to flourish, we are reinforcing our ability to drive countercyclical growth, helping position us to deliver strong profitability over the long term. We ended the quarter with a record $1.6 billion in revenues up 64% year-over-year with strong demand across the markets we serve supporting double-digit revenue growth in each of our core markets. Our recent acquisitions added approximately $79 million in net sales for the quarter helping expand our market share. RV OEM sales increased 84% during the first quarter of 2022, compared to 2021 reaching nearly $1 billion, primarily different by strong demand for RVs. Secular megatrends driving the popularity of the outdoor lifestyle are now well established as KOA’s camping survey has recently shown that 57 million households camped in 2021. RVs have quickly become an even more attractive alternative to the skyrocketing cost of air travel and hotel lodging. The industry continues to innovate and within the explosion and popularity of peer-to-peer rentals, many new opportunities have opened up, which didn’t exist prior. According to a recent RVIA survey, 46% of new RV buyers plan to list their vehicle on rental sites like Outdoorsy, which gives RV owners an effective way to help offset the cost of ownership. The significant new trench should help further support the long-term growth of the industry, creating a new lane for our veers to come into the lifestyle along with new revenue streams in our well-established aftermarket business. We deliver strong content growth across the board as our teams continue to bring new features and existing products and altogether new technologically sophisticated products to market. In the first quarter content for total RV increased 40% to a record $4,854 while content for motorhome RV for the first quarter of 2022 increased 25% to $3,144. As I mentioned in prior calls because we had more access to inventory over the last 12 months, we gained significant market share in several of our core product categories as some supplier peers in the industry struggled. The industry remains on track for another strong year, despite some recent slowness that will likely continue through the back half of the year. Retail demand is solid and is the industry inventories level stabilize. We are keeping in constant communication with our OEM and dealer partners to maintain appropriate levels of production. We’ve invested heavily in automation and continuous improvement projects over the past 12 months throughout our business, which has driven our great efficiency gains. And it’s important to note that over the last two years, we didn’t add much building capacity as volume skyrocketed in 2020 and 2021. We only really invested in second and third shifts to increase our output in our core product lines. This has allowed us to have a much more flexible cost structure that enables us to quickly adapt to any upward or downward swings and volume while helping us maintain solid levels of profitability. All this combined with our guidance of our veteran leadership team should help us successfully navigate through any future operational headwinds while maintaining high standards of quality and service that our customers have come to expect from Lippert. Moving to aftermarket. Revenues grew 35% year-over-year supported by a combination of organic and inorganic growth. We are making great headway with the integration of Furrion. We are finding amazing ways to utilize the advanced appliance line up to bring bold new programs to our existing customer base. Our aftermarket business has benefited remarkably from the growth of the RV industry. According to the RVIA study, I referenced earlier 89% of all RV owners purchase aftermarket parts or accessories after buying an RV with over half of those customers, buying multiple aftermarket products at once. This trend will be very favorable for us and our business is approximately 500,000 RVs currently on the road, enter the repair and replacement cycle every year, creating an incredible growth trajectory for the aftermarket business over the long-term. In addition to millions of RVs entering their repair and replacement cycle, we should see a higher use case due to significant running that is now taking place that will drive more wear and tear, and ultimately a higher frequency of repair and replacement parts. We have made significant preparations in our aftermarket business. We be ready for this additional growth. As the aftermarket grows, our goal to create the best possible customer experience will become more critical. With the summer season, right ahead of us, we are excited to continue expanding our customer experience programs, leveraging them to interact with customers and collect feedback to enhance our products and services. To that end, we are holding our second Lippert Getaway rally later this year in Pine Mountain, Georgia, to follow up on the resounding success of our inaugural rally held last year. Finding ways to creatively engage the RV consumer has led to a great return on investment for our business. Helping us build real trust and real relationships with the people who keep coming back to the Lippert brand. Our OneControl system has created one million RV health reports for consumers this year, our care center and call centers eclipsed one million communications last year and our social media platforms accumulated over 850 million impressions last year alone. Our first quarter adjacent market revenues rose 42% again, driven by heightened demand in our RV business, along with strong content growth. The rollout of electric faminies [ph] and new furniture product lines over the past year has been an incredible success bringing a new level of convenience to boaters. With the boatinventories remaining low all over the country, marine shows ample runway for growth as we continue to expand market share through our industry leading brands like Lewmar and Taylor Made. Just like an RV, we are working to expand our marine customer experience programs as we head into the summer boating season. And our Captains Group now goes over a 1,000 members. As we continue to broaden our offerings across the recreation space, we will aim to build similar customer experience support groups to help serve as many consumers as possible. Our international business grew 15% for the first quarter 2022, compared to 2021 as RV production in European markets is softening from the impact of the semiconductor shortage. Caravan registrations decreased 13% with registration in Germany, the largest market down 8% for the quarter. Ship shortages will continue to challenge our European RV business into early next year, but will likely extend the demand tail over the longer term. I’ll now move on to our innovation highlights with younger tech savvy consumers continue to stream into the outdoor lifestyle. Our focus on innovation has become critical to our success. To compliment the additional capabilities we’ve been rolling out to our OneControl platform, which has seen a 400% increase in usage in this past year, we just launched a complete redesign of the OneControl app. This redesign features a range of updates we are developing using customer feedback collected through our Lippert Scouts RV consumers crew. The new design enhances the functionality of the system, providing critical notifications quickly and efficiently through the new interface. And it’s also seamlessly integrated with our wider suite of safety products. In addition, our users are now getting regular vehicle health reports that report on the status of features and service opportunities for their RV. With our 100 talented engineers in [indiscernible] technologies operation, we are continuing to work on extending the capabilities of the platform and overall ecosystem to support evolving customer preferences, ultimately improving the entire user experience. On top of our innovation, our focus on culture has proven to be a major differentiator for Lippert. In order to increase production to meet heightened demand across our businesses over the last two years, we’ve worked tirelessly to onboard about 3,000 new team members. This is where our culture initiatives and leadership development programs have come into play. These programs have made Lippert into a place where people are grown and developed intentionally. As we do this, people choose more often to stay over the long term. And when we retain team members over the long term key metrics in the business improve greatly, including safety, efficiency, quality and innovation. As a result of the meaningful resources we have put toward culture and leadership development, our retention rates have grown significantly reducing our overall labor costs as turnover diminishes. Emphasizing the importance of health and wellness in creating wellness programs inside the company is another way we’ve been able to support our team members. For our Northern Indiana facilities, we’ve just introduced our Mobile Care Unit to provide free onsite services, including a acute care, chronic disease management, and well-being resources for team members in need. The Mobile Care Unit will be staffed with medical professionals and we making routine visits to approximately 30 facilities in the Northern Indiana region where we have about 7,000 of our team members. We’re excited to continue offering additional layers of aid for our teams and the Mobile Medical Care Unit is only the first of several programs we have set this year to start helping our team members move the needle on their health and well-being. Moving on to capital allocation, we are maintaining our focus on integrating our recent acquisitions and paying down debt. At the same time, we are continuing to invest in innovation and operational enhancements to drive efficiency, quality and profitability throughout our business. In the first quarter of 2022, we allocated $25 million to growth in automation CapEx, and expect to spend additional $15 million on growth and automation CapEx in the remainder of the year. In closing, I’d really like to thank again, all of our team members for their ongoing dedication and commitment towards delivering quality products to our customers while achieving record results to drive our business forward. Our teams all over the business have done an amazing job working through all the challenges and headwinds that made business so much more difficult than what we were used to pre-COVID. So thanks to all of our teams for helping us win big in 2021 and 2022 so far. We look forward to continuing our progress into 2022 as we work to create value for our customers and shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Brian Hall, our CFO, to give more detail on our financial results. Brian?