Winnebago Industries, Inc. (NYSE:WGO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And so we believe our inventory is fresh as fresh as it can be. We believe that the inventory volume in total is appropriate. And we will continue to partner with our dealers to make sure that they are comfortable with the inventory they are carrying. But we anticipate any further destocking on our brands of RVs to be lightly incremental going forward. We don’t anticipate any significant further drops. And retail volume and optimism will really be, we think, the determining factor for dealers to begin taking more inventory onto their lots in the months to come

Scott Stember: Got it. And then last question. Looking at Motorized, your backlog was down a bunch but dealer inventories were up. How much of that was related to the ERP issue? And I remember at your open house meeting, Mike, you did talk about maybe on the Class Bs that some of the inventory was getting a little bit rich. Is it a combination of both of those items?

Michael Happe: Our Class B inventory in the field is probably in the neighborhood of 15% to 20% lower today than it was a year ago. So any previous comments about tightness probably were specific to potentially certain SKUs. Again, we’re – the motorized business has been a little bit different from the towables business in terms of inventory comps year-over-year. The towables business was probably the part of the industry that a year or so ago was more rich in terms of the volume of inventory, but also probably more challenged in terms of the mix with prior model years and lower-tier brands whereas the Motorized segment fell to low levels in those – that 2021 and the beginning of calendar 2022 period, but because of supply chain challenges around chassis, we really haven’t had the need to correct field inventory levels in the motorized segment to the degree that we’ve had to on the towable side.

So again, I am comfortable with where our motorized field inventory stands today. I’m comfortable with where our towables field inventory stands today. And again, we look forward to earning the business of the dealers going forward to increase lot share. We have run some selective promotions around floor plan inventory rate support here as we ran into Open House. But we don’t anticipate having the need to do that extensively throughout the ‘24 year.

Scott Stember: Got it. That’s all I have. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Craig Kennison with Baird. Your line is open. Craig Kennison, your line is open.

Bryan Hughes: So, let’s come back to Craig. Let’s move to the next one. We will come back to Craig later on in the call.

Operator: Our next question comes from Joe Altobello with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Joe Altobello: Thanks guys. Good morning. I guess first question on the lending side. Are you seeing or hearing of any lenders becoming more cautious from a retail perspective?

Michael Happe: Joe, good morning, this is Mike. We are not hearing material weakening of retail financing in our business at this time. I would say the headwind that probably is most prevalent at retail for our dealers, especially with existing customers is some of the challenges around what to do with that existing unit that an existing customer has that they would like to trade in. In some cases, depending on when they bought it, they are in a negative equity situation and may have to write a sizable check to get out of that current product and upgrade or get into a new product. And so I would say the trade-in headwind is probably a much bigger factor than any retail financing challenges that we are seeing at the present time.

Bryan Hughes: And the availability is there, just to echo what Mike said. The availability is there, but the cost is certainly up, as you can imagine, right, Joe. So, we are seeing retail lending rates now with eight, nine handles and even some with lower credit ratings getting into double digits. So, that higher cost is certainly a factor.