TRG | The Bottom Line – 1/21

The RV industry historically has been the “canary in the coal mine” from an economic standpoint, often providing clues on both consumer and broad trends weeks and months in advance of broader trends. Indeed, the RV sales and rentals rocketed early in the COVID-19 pandemic, and this industry also was one of the first to experience pervasive supply chain shortages and labor availability issues. With that in mind, how is the RV industry fairing today? TRG traveled down to sunny Tampa, FL this past week to find out, having the opportunity to meet with RV manufacturers, dealers and consumers at the Tampa RV Super Show, the largest annual RV retail show in the U.S. The biggest sequential change based on findings from our trip and TRG’s Q4’21 RV Dealer Survey was a relative improvement in Towable inventories available at dealer lots. While not out of the woods yet, there has been a marked improvement in units available. Motorized inventory availability, however, continues to lag. While dealers report solid demand trends, very challenging comps have resulted in largely down YOY sales. This in part has been driven by an inability to stock units enough to meet demand. Consensus is that it will be late 2022 or into 2023 before the inventory issue is resolved, unchanged from our prior quarter assessment. Overall, though, those value-priced units are easier to get your hands on these days, which is telling from a production build standpoint.