RV manufacturing to slow down during second half of 2022
6/11/2022
https://www.rvtravel.com/analyst-exp...ng-slow-1056b/
“It looks as if the Great RV Manufacturing Slowdown of 2022 is about to begin.
Kathryn Thompson, CEO of Thompson Research Group, said her firm’s analysis of the current and future RV sales market shows its time for RV manufacturers to apply the brakes to new-unit production.
Officials at Thor Industries, the largest producer of RVs in the world, supported Thompson’s analysis while discussing Thor’s third-quarter earnings.
Thor Industries’ leaders said they agreed with Thompson that RV dealer lot stocking levels are most directly affected by rising interest costs, while consumer demand is driven by inflation factors like fuel costs, groceries, and utility bills.
Thompson said the net result of all those factors is that Thor would have to slow their RV manufacturing by about 25% for the rest of 2022 in order to not blow past its full-year wholesale RV shipment estimates.
“Management indicated the company has not reduced production to that level yet but had already pulled back on towable production in April to adjust volumes downward,” Thompson said. “We expect a gradual decline downward through the summer as the industry gauges retail demand, with potential for significant deceleration above the 25% declines near the end of the year.”
It’s worth noting that Thor recently announced that it has achieved the number one spot among RV manufacturers in the building of Class B motorhomes as that category’s growth continues to surge among new RV purchasers. In 2021 Class B RVs represented about 22% of all motorhome registrations in North America. By April 2022, that had grown to 30.5%.
To illustrate even further, in 2020 Class B motorhomes were 16% of the market, up from 11% of the market in 2019.”