In its report Tuesday announcing earning for the first quarter of fiscal 2021, THOR Industries cited strong growth in net sales and earnings.
The company reported $2.54 billion in net sales, an increase of 17.5 percent year-over-year. That includes $1.89 billion in North American RV net sales and $602.5 million in European RV net sales.
“We are pleased to report a solid start to our fiscal year with strong year-over-year growth across all of our major metrics, including net sales, gross margin and net income attributable to THOR. Our backlog continued to increase in the first quarter, setting a record, while dealer inventories continued to decline as many of our product shipments are going directly to fill existing end-customer orders. To address the increase in demand, we have increased production levels. Even with our higher production output and deliveries, demand and backlog for our RV products continue to grow,” said Bob Martin, president and CEO of THOR Industries.
“We are working hard to manage through temporary supply chain issues, which are currently common across the entire RV industry. We are confident that once these temporary supply chain constraints are mitigated, our shipments will increase further. We also believe it will take a number of months of production to first fill dealer presold orders before we will begin a restocking cycle to help our dealers get their inventory back to a more historically normal level,” added Martin.
North American Towable RV net sales were $1.39 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2021, compared to first-quarter net sales of $1.20 billion in the prior-year period. The increase was driven primarily by an increase in unit shipments, partially offset by a change in product mix.
North American Motorized RV net sales were $493.9 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2021, compared to $415.9 million in the prior-year period. The increase in motorized net sales for the quarter was driven primarily by higher unit sales in THOR’s Class B and Class C motorhomes.
European RV net sales were $602.5 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2021, compared to $493.0 million.
“We believe the long-term growth potential for the RV industry remains very positive,” said Martin. “While it is certainly true that the impact of COVID-19 has brought new buyers into our industry, both THOR, specifically, and the industry, generally, were attracting new buyers and saw strong demand independent of the pandemic. People have shown that they appreciate the long-term value proposition RVs offer – affordability, a vacation in a controlled environment, freedom, and outdoor fun. We also believe that the desire by consumers to ‘control their own destiny’ and have safer, socially distanced vacation activities has been a key factor in driving recent RV demand and will continue to be a factor for the foreseeable future.
“On December 1, 2020, the RVIA updated their most-likely forecast and now expects an increase of 18.7 percent in calendar 2021 shipments over their most-likely estimate for calendar 2020 shipments. We support their forecast and believe there is potential for upside to this forecast based on current industry conditions,” Martin added.
