Camping World at J.P. Morgan Auto Conference: Strategic Market Gains

On Tuesday, 12 August 2025, Camping World Holdings Inc. (NYSE:CWH) presented at the J.P. Morgan Auto Conference 2025, outlining its strategic initiatives and financial performance. The company discussed significant market share gains and future growth prospects, while also addressing challenges such as interest rate impacts. CEO Marcus Lemonis expressed optimism about Camping World’s trajectory, highlighting both successes and areas for improvement.

Key Takeaways

• Camping World achieved over 20% year-over-year growth in both new and used RV units.
• The company aims to reduce its leverage ratio to 3.9 or below within 24 months.
• Strategic focus on revitalizing the used RV business and leveraging data-driven approaches.
• Anticipates a potential increase in new RV retail sales in 2026.
• Emphasizes disciplined capital allocation and debt reduction.

Financial Results

• Market Share Gains: Camping World outpaced the market with over 20% growth in new and used RV units.
• Revenue Growth: Continued growth in July, with new unit sales up high single digits and used unit sales up over 20%.
• Average Selling Price (ASP): Sequential increases in ASPs for both new and used units, suggesting pricing stabilization.
• SG&A Improvement: Aims to improve SG&A as a percentage of gross profit by 300 to 400 basis points, revising from an initial 600 to 700 basis points target.
• Cost Reduction: Reduced headcount by 1,000 employees and consolidated 16 locations, with plans to cut an additional $10 million to $15 million in costs.
• Leverage Target: Paid down $70 million in debt, aiming for a leverage ratio of 3.9 or below.

Operational Updates

• Contract Manufacturing Strategy: Focuses on entry-level price points to drive volume and increase turns on new RVs.
• Used RV Comeback: Revitalizing the used RV business following model year deflation in 2024.
• Data-Driven Approach: Utilizing data and AI for pricing and predictive models to optimize market share.
• Rooftop Productivity: Enhanced productivity through consolidation of underperforming locations.
• Headcount Reduction: Strategic reductions to improve efficiency and performance.

Future Outlook

• New RV Pricing: Expects a 3% to 6% increase in new RV prices for model year 2026.
• New RV Units: Industry expected to sell approximately 360,000 new units in 2026.
• Interest Rates: Anticipates a 0.5 to 1 point decrease in interest rates, though not factored into current forecasts.
• Inventory and Capital Allocation: $600 million invested in used inventory, focusing on cash accumulation and debt repayment.
• Good Sam Growth: Exploring opportunities within the Good Sam business, including acquisitions and partnerships.

Q&A Highlights

• Market Share: Camping World’s market share is at its highest, driven by increased data utilization.
• Consumer Behavior: Notable change in consumer behavior with strengthening business in the last 60 days.
• Competition: Confident in outperforming competitors as they begin to recover.
• Loan Durations: Average RV loan durations are 180 to 240 months, with an average life of 4 to 4.5 years.
• Interest Rate Impact: Interest rates affect the price point of purchases, not the decision to buy an RV.

Camping World remains focused on strategic initiatives and financial discipline to drive long-term growth. For more detailed insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full conference call transcript.

Full transcript - J.P. Morgan Auto Conference 2025:

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Okay. Once again, I’m Ryan Brinkman. Thanks for coming to the twenty twenty five JPMorgan Automotive Conference. Very excited to get going with our next presentation from Camping World, including seated to my left, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Marcus Lemonis and Brett Andress, to his left, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Marcus and Brett, thank you for coming.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: You got it. Thank you.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Okay. I wanted to start with the significant market share gains that you’ve experienced year to date in both new and used units. And the quarter just concluded, you were up more than 20% year over year in both new and used RV units in a new RV market that we estimate may be down double digit. So can you talk about what is driving that performance? Is it that you have the same type and price point of RVs that people want?

Can you also talk about what is not driving that outperformance? You took some time on the last earnings call to refute the notion that you were discounting much more heavily than the industry. So what’s behind the sales surge? How much of it is same store? And how are you doing it?

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: Yeah. Correct. So so definitely not not discounting, to your point. When you look at the margin percentages that we put up in both new and used in the second quarter and and year to date as well. But when you think about what’s driving both new and used market share, on the new side, it’s really a continuation of the contract manufacturing strategy that we set out years ago that had a lot of good success in 2024 hitting price points that really the industry hadn’t seen in April.

Right? So being able to pro proliferate the SKU count down into those more entry level type products, move that volume, increase the turns on the new side. And on the used side, it really was, I’d say, a a comeback, if you will, from what we experienced in 2024. So 2024 was the first year in the history of the RV industry that had model year deflation on the new side. So that caused us to step away.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: Yeah. I think I think a more scientific, to double down on his comment. I think a more scientific way to think about how we manage the business is we start with the most important part of the consumer’s decision making, which is the monthly payment. And we reverse engineer understanding what the monthly payment is. We reverse engineer the entire strata of new and used inventory based on price, based on term for financing, and based on interest rate to understand where that price band is going to live.

And I think a lot of our competitors tend to avoid that. And they think about selling big ticket items where they’re going

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: to

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: make, in their mind, good money. For us, it’s about velocity and lifetime value. And if we were just a stand alone RV dealer, much like you see some of the public autos, and we didn’t have a robust retail and fixed operations business, and we didn’t have Good Sam, Our strategy may be a little different, but there’s kind of two two markets that we’re serving and why that science matters. The first market is we’re serving the first time buyer market and really trying to attract people into our funnel, into our lifetime value proposition because we know that if they buy from us, even the smallest, least expensive unit, we’re gonna see them for more than a decade. We’re gonna see them trade three times.

We’re gonna see them buy warranties, roadside assistance, memberships, credit cards from Good Sam, and they’re gonna visit our retail business. So that’s kind of target number one. Target number two is focusing on the 5,600,000 RVers that we know are in circulation. And if anybody is wondering why the RV market has hit a trough in the last twenty four months, it has zero to do with people leaving the lifestyle. In the twenty five years that I’ve been doing this, the number of RVs in circulation has never gone backwards.

What does happen is that historically, the trade cycle for buyer would be three and a half to four years. When you see a bottoming out in new shipments or in retail registrations, rather than making the assumption that the industry is passe or it’s a fad, we would encourage you to look at the installed base, confirm that it’s growing, and then understand that the trade cycle went from three and a half to four and a half or five years. You pick up like a eighteen to twenty four month window. The reason that I make all those points is that our our market share is the highest it’s ever been, but it’s largely because it’s the most data that we’ve ever had as a company. We don’t expect the collection of data and the usage of data for us to get any less sophisticated.

And we think the market share opportunity both on the new and used side, particularly with how we’re integrating AI into pricing modules and predictor models, could only get stronger.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Thank you. And what is the very latest, do you think, in terms of, you know, retail demand and and the consumer behavior? How did demand progress throughout 2Q for Camping World and maybe for the industry as a whole? And what are you observing at your stores so far here in 3Q? Do you tech do you detect any changes in underlying consumer behavior?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: Yeah. I do detect a change in the last sixty days. Our business is getting stronger. And we we heard a lot today in meeting on what with one on ones that, you know, we’re at the trough. We’re at the bottom.

We don’t believe we’re at the bottom anymore. We believe we’re whatever however many steps there are to a mid cycle to a top, we believe we’ve already started to climb the stairs. Our business, as you mentioned, was up 2020% new, 20% used in the month of June. We we saw that trend relatively continue into July. New was up high single digits.

Used was up plus 20. And we’re seeing most importantly, we’re seeing growth in our average selling price again, which we hadn’t seen in a while.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: On the new side?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: On both. New and

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: used. Sequentially.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: Yes. Both new and used.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Not a

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: lot, but enough to give us the indication that whew. Thank goodness. Enough to give you

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: an indication that you may not track down 10 to 12 for the full year?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: Enough to give us an indication that the the year over year gap should get smaller. Brett and I, we disagree not about a lot of things. And him and Matt are in one camp. They think the ASP full year, year over year is gonna be 10 to 12. I think it’s gonna be high single digit.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: I think it I think it was a nice try, Ryan, but we we are definitely seeing the seasonal progression, if you will, of the ASP trends that we expected to see, which is they bottom out in that second quarter, that May, June time frame, and they start to pick up month to month.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: And if memory serves me correct, I think new ASPs were down 10.4% in the second quarter. And what I had to plug into my model to get to down 10 to 12 for the full year was, like, 11 and a little bit in the back half. So because the first quarter was down, like, 4.4 or something like that. So that sounds encouraging. Encouraging.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: Yeah. The the comps get harder, and I think it’s important to note that it’s 40,000 in it’s 40,000 in q three and forty four thousand Yeah.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: Four three

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: four four.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: Memory in q four. Here’s what I would tell you. Rather than getting really focused on what it was, what’s the offset to that? The offset to that is we need explosive volume, and we need gross profit. And so for us, it’s about are we serving every customer?

Are we building lifetime value? And are we improving our GPUs? Okay.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Well, that leads well into my next question, which was a little bit of an unpacking of the impact of lower new RV ASPs on SG and A as a percentage of gross profit. You’d started the year looking for a 600 to 700 basis point improvement in SG and A as a percentage of gross. You’re still looking for an improvement, but now more like 300 to 400, right, I think. And so what needs to happen within your control to get there? Or alternatively, you just mentioned maybe a little bit of a tailwind on on on the market.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: Yeah. The six to 700 basis point goal, it has not and will not change. Historically, pre COVID, we operated with a 73 to 74% SG and A as a percentage of gross. That is absolutely where we need to be. And so there’s two ways to think about getting there.

The first is we need the ASPs to be back up closer to 38,000. They don’t have to get back to 40, which is where they were in ’24. But we do need them to be 38,000. The second is we’ve had to make some material unfortunate structural changes to our business. We are sadly down about a thousand people.

And we started to focus on rooftop productivity. And the rooftop productivity is up significantly. We consolidated 16 locations. We cannot sit here today and pin it all on ASPs. It’s a huge driver.

It’s 90% of it. But we can’t control the ASPs. The consumer’s gonna tell us what they wanna buy. Our job is to put the right product on the ground that they wanna buy that they can afford to get them in our system. What we have to do is we have to make more structural changes to our cost structure.

We committed on the last call to take out another 10 to 15,000,000 annualized. What I would love, which will help us just generally speaking, is as the used business continues to grow And if we can get to a fifty fifty new to used mix, that will have a massive impact even if new ASPs don’t get to 38,000 because of the amount of gross profit generated on a used transaction in comparison.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Where are you finding the ability to reduce headcount? Because I imagine the Salesforce can’t be cut if the units are up 20%. Right?

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: Correct. So we’ve we’ve done a a very careful analysis of our store base over the last, you know, twelve to eighteen months looking at locations that, on a relative basis, were underperforming from either top line or bottom line perspective and then looked at our surrounding footprints in those areas and found a lot of, I’d say, very unique opportunities for us to consolidate those locations, keep our market share where it’s at, continue to grow that, grow revenue, and also, you know, keep the you know, I I I’d say, you know, a a good amount of the people who are performing very well in those boxes combine those two to make that accretive. And so that’s consolidation’s been, you know, I’d say the biggest driver, and there’s also been a lot of focus on on corporate.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: Yeah. We will have just so we’re clear in case anybody that’s working in one of my stores is listening, we will have headcount reduction for those folks that don’t perform. I’d rather have the folks on the floor that sell and service and work their butts off every day eat more. And so we run our organization like a meritocracy. And so you can actually sell more units with less people if the people that are left are the right people.

And so we will have you know, we naturally go through our shedding in the fall and and that that’s actually happening as we sit here today. Thank you. Maybe a very high level discussion about 2026.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: I mean, it sounds like you’re still targeting the 600 to 700 bps. It’s just you’ve pushed it out maybe. Can you get there in ’twenty six? And then what other expectations do you have about how the company might perform or how the industry might perform? For example, what happens with new RV prices next year?

Where do you think new RV units are going next year? Relative to the things that are within your control, where do you see the I biggest

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: know what I’m going say. I want to let you go first. So Brett controls our IR messaging, so I’ll let him set it up, then I’ll smash it.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: No. No. No. It’s it’s okay. So so when we’re you know, when we think about 26 from from a high level sitting here today, you know, from a I’ll I’ll start with the two pieces.

On the new side of the business, and Marcus will have, I I think, a different slightly different opinion in this. It’s a healthy internal debate we have. More more so of more of the same, if you will, from the new side. Right? You know, hard to underwrite significant changes in interest rates at this point, significant changes in ASP and affordability dynamic.

Could it get better? Absolutely, it could. But I think it’s more prudent for us to think about more of a flattish industry for 2025 and us for 2026 and us continuing to outpace that and gain share similar to what we did in ’twenty four and ’twenty five. On the used side, there’s a very clear line of sight, we believe, to us continuing to grow used units double digits. And that speaks to the value proposition of used, I think, that we’ve demonstrated in this environment.

It also speaks to the the relatively low amount of share that we haven’t used relative to the size of that market and relative to where we are with new at 30%. We’re at about 8% or so unused. So that’s that’s more of an idiosyncratic opportunity for us that that we see a a pretty healthy line of sight to continue to execute on regardless of what the industry does.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: And then new pricing?

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: And the new pricing, so far, what we’re seeing so far with model year ’26 coming in and and onto our lots is about three to 6%. I would say there’s probably a outside probability of additional price increases should tariffs maybe start to trickle in in a more pronounced way in the back half. But right now, three to 6% is what we’re orienting around on a like for like basis on the new side.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Very helpful. Thank you.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: Well, I

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: I agree with the pricing. I think the used the runway unused is is exponential. As we get better and smarter about the procurement and get sharper on the pricing from the onset, we think that there’s at least a half a turn left in our LTM turn. Our LTM turn was like 3.2. We think we can get 3.7 to four.

We have 684,000,000 on the ground today, and our used business is up materially. So we think we’re gonna find that high watermark. On the new side, this is where there’s a heavy debate in our in our building. I think the rest of the camp believes that it’s gonna be more of the same, and I expect there to be I think that that the new retail could be closer to $3.63 65, a significant jump in 02/1926. But still relative to history, very low.

Very low. In fact, pre COVID, the industry was doing 445,000 units. So when we talk about $3.60 and everybody’s a little nervous about that number, I’m not. There’s one principal reason why I feel strongly about this. If you study the trade cycles of RVers over the history of time, they’re three and a half to four years.

And when you look at these troughs in the market, the troughs are created by people just deciding not to trade. In this particular trade trough, which is what I call it, there’s really three functional things that happened. One, people that bought in 2020, 2021, and 2022 during COVID paid a premium for their unit. Everybody knows that everything was selling at a higher price than it is today. That created a little bit of negative equity, a lot of negative equity for consumers.

Two, the interest rate environment in the first two thirds of COVID was close to free money. And when people came back to trade last week, last month, or last year, an 800 credit score is still looking at a seven nine nine rate. Number three, with the pricing on new moving around so much, the used market hadn’t really stabilized. We believe after two clear pricing strategies, ’23 to 24, which is a drop, ’24 to ’25, which was a stabilization, and ’25 to ’26, which is an increase, shows me that the new values have stabilized. With all that being said, I think you’ll see a little bit of a flurry of people that bought in 2021 and ’22 finally trading after sitting on the sidelines for longer than normal.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: I wanna follow-up on the the interest rate comment. I think a lot of people here at the conference are maybe more familiar with, light vehicle average loan duration, like sixty eight months. Maybe just let us know what the average duration is for an RV loan and the impact that interest rates can have on monthly payment there relative to light vehicles. What has been the impact of the higher rates? Has that been really driving a lot, do you think, of the new ASP pressure?

And as interest rates come back down, what implications will that have for unit volume, ASPs, SG and A as a percentage of gross? And and what have you maybe baked into that 360,000 unit assumption relative to interest rates?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: So I think interest rates and I’m praying to the gods so that my floor plan interest is lower. But I’m hoping that we see a half a point to to to a point between now and the same time a year from now. I have no idea what the cadence is gonna be, but that’s my hope. That’s not in my forecast and our financials, but a portion of that, probably half of it, is how I get to three sixty.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: Yeah. And I would say, you know, we are was it it is we just spoke about 26. I would say we’re hopeful rates would start to come down, but I think hope has been a a little bit of a a tired strategy across the industry for a couple of years now. So we’re expecting that to be more of the same. But when we think about, you know, the impact on ASPs and and really what’s driving that that that drive down to affordability, it’s it’s two things.

It’s the interest rates, to your point, and it’s the a it’s it’s the the invoice cost. On the interest rate side, the the normal term of these loans is anywhere from one hundred and eighty to two hundred forty months. But the average life of the paper is anywhere from four to four and a half years.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: I wanna make sure people heard that because Ryan pointed it out. If a light duty is sixty eight months, we’re two ten to two forty. Yeah. There are some that take a hundred and eighty months. So when you think about our average selling price at less than $40,000 in the $40,000 or lower and you’re financing that unit anywhere from a hundred and eighty to two hundred and forty months.

When I hear people describe our industry as, like, it’s a luxury, it’s really not. It’s it’s a it’s a the average payment’s in that $2.39 to $3.39 range for a vacation. And so people don’t necessarily think about it as a luxury. However, discretionary dollars do matter. And so when a rate comes down a quarter of a point and my mortgage drops, it’s not whether I’m going to be in the RV lifestyle or not.

It’s can I have a bigger, more feature benefited unit? That’s why I keep coming back to interest rates don’t determine whether people are in our industry or not, but it does determine what they buy, what the price point is.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: And and and what we watch, you know, carefully along with, I’m sure, everyone else is is the ten year given that these loans have about a normal duration of about five years. They’re priced essentially off of the ten year, but more so the five year. And so there’s two direct benefits from lower rates. One, on the prime rate, every 25 basis points is about $9,000,000 of cash flow back into our business on essentially SOFR, whether it be the term loan or whether it be the floor plan or the mortgage line that we have. And then, you know, depending on what the market does with with the ten year, we’ll we’ll see, but that’ll dictate retail rates, right, which will actually dictate consumer demand.

So I think there’s there’s a couple ways if we want to be optimistic about next year, which we are, to win from an interest rate standpoint.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Great. Thank you. You know, you recent you recently published slide deck that lays out your case for a mid cycle earnings power of the company, envisioning $520,000,000 of EBITDA with 200 stores. You have 200 like 199 stores, I think. But Bloomberg consensus has you at $278,000,000 of EBITDA this year, $373,000,000 in ’twenty six million, dollars $420,000,000 in ’twenty seven When do you think the industry gets to mid cycle?

And what are your descriptions of mid cycle? Because it’s easy to say how many units of new RVs, but there’s so much else that goes into it like the ASPs, what’s going on in the used market. You know, how do you define mid cycle, and when do you think we can get to mid cycle?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: 400,000 units is how I would define mid cycle and 400,000 new units. And I know that you wanted to bifurcate the new versus the used. The used is pretty predictable. It ranges between 725,950. The $9.50 was at COVID during COVID, so it’s a little exaggerated.

That business is very predictable. And the way that we want you to think about our business is like layers of cake. At the bottom layer, the most important layer, the thing that holds everything up is the Good Sam business. And our Good Sam business, for those of you that are not familiar, it’s an annuity business. Roadside assistance, warranty, insurance, club, credit card, it’s a $100,000,000 EBITDA business.

The next most profitable part of our business is our service and parts operation. 72% margins on the labor, 37% on the blended parts. That business tends to stay within a tight band no matter what’s happening with the market. Then you go to the used business, and the used business is foundationally solid. We know we had a tough ’24.

We elected to pull back. You’re seeing that growth. We expect that growth to continue so that we could have a more predictable earnings power. The cherry on top is what happens on the news side. And the difference between us making $350,000,000 or $450,000,000 and $500,000,000 is, is the industry selling 330,000 units or 400,000 units plus?

And that’s really how to think about the cycle. Everything else inside of our business is bolstered by it when it happens, but it isn’t really as much of a driver as people would think. The installed base of 5,600,000 RVers, that’s what the first three layers are built on. The last layer is built on first time buyers coming into the market.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: And I wanna make yeah. And I I wanna make one important point on that mid cycle analysis and that earnings power is that there is and and I think it’s underappreciated, but there is really no significant onus, if at all, for ASPs to bounce back dramatically from where they are today. Right? So they don’t have to go back to 40. They don’t have to go back to 40.

They can be back to that 38, 39 type range. And so that, I think, to us, you know, is just another buffer, if you will, in terms of how we, you know, try to conservatively think about the earnings power of this business through a cycle.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: I wanted to maybe ask about these one franchise store strategy that you’ve gotten into in a bigger way in recent years. Maybe talk about what is driving that. I thought that was one of the differentiating factors previously was that unlike in the light vehicle industry, you sell multiple brands, Mark, across. But it does seem to be behind some of the share gain here. So what has been the the result of of that strategy?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: When we look at the top 100, 150 trade areas in The US, depending on the saturation of that market and the difficulty to travel it, I e a Houston, a Dallas, a Chicago, and LA, it’s difficult to have more than one Camping World in the market. If you went to, like, Des Moines, Iowa or Panama City, Florida, you don’t need to have, you know, more than one. And what was frustrating to us is that we see high levels of registrations in certain markets, And we we don’t wanna cannibalize ourselves, but we wanna but we do wanna sell more. And so this idea came to us a couple of years ago that if I thought about the Camping World store as the hub, what are the spokes that are off of it? And we started to test different, what I would call side by side strategies.

And what we learned through the entire process is with certain manufacturers, Jayco is one of them, Forest River is another one, That we can open up a small, low cost, low fixed cost, low footprint store, Jayco of Macon or Forest River of Minneapolis. And they could be a mile or two away from our existing Camping World store. They operate differently. They don’t say Camping World anywhere on them. The facilities look different.

There’s no retail experience. And the incremental revenue that we generate are for people that either, a, don’t wanna buy from Camping World because they wanna buy from what they call a local dealer. And or a high proficiency of product knowledge from the salesperson because they’re focusing on one brand and not seven. We have seen from an NOI standpoint, they’re they’re some of our better ones because they don’t come with all the bells and whistles around it. How much we want to invest in that going forward?

We still think there’s tons of white space for Camping Worlds. I mean, just tons. And as we get back into acquisition mode again, we think that still the prime primary priority is to open up Camping World stores. And then if we find these tuck in markets where we can make some small acquisitions where we can change the name without putting a bunch of capital in to Forest River of or Jayco of or Keystone of. Happy to do that.

I’d like

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: to ask about the health of the competition. There have been some years in the past where the health of the competition has impacted Camping World. Positive side, you’ve been able to buy some Lazydays stores, etcetera. But also, there were times where you were concerned that they were overextended on inventory, what that could do to used pricing, and so you kind of pulled back on used acquisition, impacted your volumes. And because you painted a picture on the 2Q call of your volume growth being so differentiated, up 20% and the market is down double digit, I just thought to ask and you also mentioned that the reason why you might be doing better is because you’ve got the RVs that people want, the lower ASP units.

They don’t I’m thinking, well, they might be, like, out over their skis on inventory. They might need to slash prices. And if they do do that, it could it could hurt, you know, Camping World. So I just thought to ask how the competitors are doing and if it’s a positive or negative for you.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: Yeah. So so the way I would characterize it, and, Marcus, feel free to jump in, is I would I would characterize them as essentially frozen to a certain extent or or paralyzed from a certain extent, whether it be from a working capital standpoint or willingness to to to to procure inventory, whether it be new or used, which I think is a a a pretty, you know, large distinction from what you described earlier, which was having too much inventory, right, and having this kind of wall of inventory over inventory situation, which we’re through that. Right? That was kind of a a period of time in ’22 and ’23. So now we’re essentially, as an industry, kind of, you know, trudging along the bottom with, I think, you know, the risk appetite, if you wanna frame it up that way, from other dealers.

And our view is just is not there. We’re playing offense, we’re, you know, we’re taking advantage of that.

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: We need the other dealers to be healthy. It’s just a it’s a better environment for the consumer. A more competitive landscape gives the consumer confidence that they’re getting the best deal and the best price. So that’s that’s really important, at least to me, to keep the industry strong. I think the dealers sat back in the ’24 and ’25 and didn’t take a lot of inventory risks.

And if you look at the shipments in the last sixty days, they’re starting to get stronger. The confidence of other dealers are starting to get stronger. And we don’t believe that the strength of our competitors comes at the expense of us. We think the boats rise for everybody. We have a little bit of a head start.

We do know there’s a number of dealers that maybe are thinner on working capital than they’d like to be, but I I see them resuscitating themselves here. We did buy those Lazydays stores. And, you know, typically, our model has been to buy distressed assets. That’s been sort of my go to move for for twenty five years. Those Lazydays stores, just to give everybody a just an example, it’s a public company.

It still trades out there today. We bought five of their locations. The trailing twelve months of those five were negative 10,000,000 when we closed on them in February. We opened them full stop in March, and through July, those same five stores have made 5,000,000. The environment’s the same.

What’s different is that we understand the used game and we understand the service game. And so as we look to grow our business, which we’re starting to crank back up into growth mode, we wanna make sure that our existing stores are performing better. We need more productivity per rooftop. We’re really finding white space either with differentiated product lineup or geography, and that we’re, you know, we’re capitalizing on whatever weakness may be out there. But we do need the other dealers to be stronger, and we think they’re getting stronger faster.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Okay. I’ve got some more questions, but why don’t I pause and see if there might be any in the audience for Marcus and Brett? Maybe while they’re thinking of a question, I’ll ask on capital allocation priorities. You raised some equity a while back. You used it, I think, in combination of parking it in the floor plan, but also to acquire used vehicle inventory.

You know, as you generate cash going forward, as the EBITDA recovers, what is your prioritization still toward kinda, you know, debt pay down? Or or what are you thinking?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: 3.9. That’s where I need to get the leverage in the next twenty four months back to 3.9 or below. And that’s a combination of improve improving the earnings. Our motto this year was sell more and make more. We’re gonna have that motto in ’26.

We will sell more, and we will make more in ’26. And build cash on the balance sheet and have the appropriate amount of debt pay down. We’ve paid down $70,000,000 in the last, call it, eight months, nine months. I had a goal of we had a goal of getting to a 100,000,000. You know, we still wanna obviously shoot for that goal, but building cash on the balance sheet is is priority one and making more money.

Brett Andress, Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Camping World: Yep. No. Agree.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: By building cash in do you really is the floor plan an offset account? Is that what you mean?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: You say No. Just literally having investors like the ones in this room see cash on the balance sheet. When they look at the debt, they see net debt leverage coming down. They know that that cash is not essential to the operations of the business. So it’s not like we’re robbing Peter to to pay Paul.

We wanna have good working capital in our used and our we own about $250,000,000 net of net of mortgage without mortgage. We have another $200,000,000 of parts, and we have about $600,000,000 of used. We ended the quarter with about a $11,818,000,000 of cash. I’d like to see that number continue to grow, and I’d like to see our debt continue to pay down. But three point nine, I’ll just keep saying it internally and externally.

We gotta get back to 3.9 or below fast.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: One thing I wanted to ask on is I mean, you’ve been very acquisitive over the years, and this is, you know, a sector roll up opportunity. There’s a lot of things to be said for that. You get the volume purchase discounts whereas competitors don’t. On the other hand, we’ve also seen you buy stores and close stores at the same time. And is that because you didn’t anticipate closing the stores?

Or are you accomplishing something by opening and closing by like enhancing your geographic profile, buying better locations? Or or how should we think about the the pace of acquisitions kind of going forward?

Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Camping World: I’ll start with the the first. Every acquisition that we make doesn’t always work out. And out of every 20, you know, one could not work out. And what you’ll find with our company is when we make a mistake, we don’t need to have pride of authorship where we just double down and and continue to not have it work. Two, we’re also picking up brands when we consolidate markets, when we buy a dealer.

And so if you take a a big store in Dayton, Ohio as an example and we buy somebody not, you know, 30 miles away, we know that if we do put them together, we end up building a giant supercenter. I think the last piece is this business, in its DNA, is an acquirer. We don’t really know how to do anything else. We operate and we acquire and we operate and we acquire. Our goal was to try to scare $7,000,000,000 in top line this year.

That’s definitely a goal for next year. I know we don’t put out guidance, but that’s a goal. Part of the way we do that is we have to have ASP growth, we have to have same store sales growth, And we have to have acquisition growth. And what we want to be careful that we don’t do is we don’t ever make acquisitions that are just going to chase revenue. So if you told me that we could go buy a big motor home dealer who makes good money and the guy just wants to throw us the keys, we would probably pass.

That’s not in our DNA. We don’t that’s not that’s like asking McDonald’s to buy to, you know, to buy a hot dog company. That’s just not what they do. And so we we have to stay disciplined and we have to stay true. We think our earnings power is gonna come in the next twelve months from used, from growth in ASP on new, and from some innovative things that we’re working on in Good Sam, which doesn’t get talked about enough.

And whether that’s opening up different parts of the risk profile of Good Sam or making acquisitions or getting into flow through partnerships with big private equity that wants to have loan origination and wants to make money, Good Sam really needs to be a spark. Used needs to be a spark, and the ASPs have to come back.

Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan: Okay. Well, great. We are out of time, so please join me in thanking Marcus and Brett. Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.