Participants

Lindsey Christen; Chief Administrative and Legal Officer, Secretary; Camping World Holdings Inc

Marcus Lemonis; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer; Camping World Holdings Inc

Matthew Wagner; President; Camping World Holdings Inc

Thomas Kirn; Chief Financial Officer; Camping World Holdings Inc

Joe Altobello; Analyst; Raymond James Financial Inc

Alex Perry; Analyst; BofA Securities Inc

Craig Kennison; Director of Research Operations, Senior Research Analyst, Consumer & Automotive; Robert W. Baird & Co Inc

James Hardiman; Analyst; $Citigroup Inc(C-N)$

Noah Zatzkin; Analyst; KeyBanc Capital Markets

Tristan Thomas-Martin; Analyst; BMO Capital Markets

Scott Stember; Analyst; ROTH MKM

Ryan Brinkman; Analyst; JPMorgan Chase & Co

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Camping World Holdings conference call to discuss financial results for the fourth quarter and the year ended December 31, 2024. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that this call is being recorded and the reproduction of the call in whole or in part is not permitted without written authorization from the company.
Joining on the call today are Marcus Lemonis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Matthew Wagner, President; Tom Kirn, Chief Financial Officer; Lindsey Christen, Chief Administrative and Legal Officer and Brett Andress, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. I will turn the call over to Ms. Christen to get us started.

Lindsey Christen

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. A press release covering the company's fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2024, financial results was issued yesterday afternoon and a copy of that press release can be found in the Investor Relations section on the company's website.
Management's remarks on this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These remarks may include statements regarding our business plans and goals, industry and customer trends, inventory expectations, the expected impact of inflation, interest rates and market conditions, acquisition pipelines and plans, capital allocation and anticipated financial performance.
Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section on our Form 10-K, our Form 10-Qs and other reports on file with the SEC.
Any forward looking statements represent our views only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. Please also note that we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call, such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share diluted, which we believe may be important to investors to assess our operating performance.
Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and on our website. All comparisons of our 2024 fourth quarter and fiscal year results are made against the 2023 fourth quarter and fiscal year results unless otherwise noted. I'll now turn the call over to Marcus.

Marcus Lemonis

Thanks, Lindsey. As we entered 2025, we knew it was really important to fortify and strengthen our company. We successfully raised $330 million of growth capital in October. And last week, we amended and extended our RV floor plan facility with an additional five years by adding $300 million of runway. Our floor plan now totals $2.150 billion.
As we deploy capital across growing our used inventory in multiple dealership M&A transactions expected to close by the end of spring, we are reaffirming our guideposts to deliver 10%-to-15%-unit growth on used, low single digit growth on new, significant improvement in total gross profit and a 600 to 700 basis point improvement in SG&A.
We ended 2024 with record combined new and used market share, hitting 11.2%. We're seeing combined unit momentum carry into our early 2025 results and expect to set a new record at 12%, selling over 130,000 units, up from 121,500 in 2024. The early '25 results through today are encouraging with healthy mid-single digit growth. Early indications of 2025 continue to show a consumer that is focus on affordability and value price units both on the new and used side. It's our belief that the ASP will improve through the core selling season as it historically does, and we continue to target an annual ASP of [40,000] on new and [32,000] on used.
As a reminder, that's going to fluctuate quarter to quarter with the first and second quarter being driven by family camping, lower priced units and then accelerating into Q3 and Q4. As part of fueling that growth, our used procurement process is in full swing with both January and February setting respective records in each month. We expect the purchase volume to accelerate over the next several months as we enter our core selling season.
If the 10-year treasury yield continues to stabilize and reduce, we expect to see additional retail finance rate relief for our customers, allowing them to take on more unit while maintaining a monthly payment that fits their budget. It's my expectation that our company will experience explosive EBITDA growth in the first quarter compared to the prior year. That's going to be driven primarily by gross margin and gross profit dollar improvement along with significant SG&A improvements. Look, we have two goals for the year. It's very simple: sell more RVs and make more money.
I'll now turn the call over to Matthew.

Matthew Wagner

Thank you, Marcus. As mentioned, we continue to experience solid momentum in both our new and used businesses, achieving record levels of both new and used market share during the fourth quarter. 2025 has been off a very encouraging start with our used same store sales increasing in the high teens during January and new same store unit sales up low single digits, both in line with our expectations.
We never like to directly cite weather as a factor. It's no surprise that February weather patterns have been erratic. But once the weather broke, we were very pleased by the pent-up demand we experienced, as this past weekend was one of the best sales weekends in our history, regardless of the month.
We anticipate that used same store unit sales will track positive double digits in February with new same store units down modestly. While still early, our positively evolving view on the health of the broader RV industry remains in place, as does our growing pipeline of dealership acquisitions with multiple LOIs either under contract or in process. Year to date, we've acquired four rooftops with an additional two rooftops closing today. We intend to close in another four to six rooftops by the end of spring.
As we enter 2025, we remain focused on judiciously reestablishing our used business, maintaining our dominance as the market maker in the RV industry, all while expanding upon the tremendous progress we have made in Good Sam, service and our new and new unit market share metrics.
We continue to see a variety of very defined factors within our control next year, largely independent of what takes place across the broader industry or the broader economy. We remain confident in the guidepost we provided last quarter as we march towards a meaningful earnings recovery in 2025. I'll now turn the call over to Tom.

Thomas Kirn

Thanks, Matt. Turning to the financials. For the fourth quarter, we recorded revenue of $1.2 billion an increase of nine percent driven primarily by an 8% increase in new unit sales and an 11% increase in used unit sales. New vehicle gross margin of 15.2% was driven primarily by lower promotional support compared to the prior year period.
Used vehicle gross margin continued to sequentially recover to 18.7% in the quarter as we continue to bring fresh used inventory back into the system at a more accelerated but prudent pace. Good Sam capped off a productive 2024 with revenue growth of 1% and nearly $95 million of EBITDA. The business is poised for solid earning growth in 2025 as we lap claims cost increases related to the roadside assistance business. Within product services and other, our core dealer service revenues continued to show growth.
We remain encouraged as product sales returned to growth in the quarter despite top line pressure from the sale of our furniture business during the second quarter. We had an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.5 million compared to a loss of $8.9 million last year, with the primary driver of the year-over-year improvement coming from accelerated used inventory procurement and new unit market share gains.
SG&A for the quarter was in line with our expectations as a percentage of gross profit, excluding higher than expected insurance claim costs in the quarter. We've continued to make adjustments to our cost structure in January as we work toward our full year target of improving SG&A as a percentage of gross profit by at least 600 basis points.
I'm excited to report we ended the quarter with about $288 million of cash, including $80 million of cash in the floor plan offset account. We also had about $339 million of used inventory net of flooring and another $166 million of parts inventory. Finally, we own about $169 million of real estate without an associated mortgage. I'll turn the call back o Marcus for final thoughts.

Marcus Lemonis

Thanks, Tom. Our team's conviction stems from our current outperformance of our competitors, our growth in market share, the significant white space we see and our belief that 2025 will be a much better year within our control. I'd like to open up the call for Q&A.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Joe Altobello, Raymond James.

Joe Altobello

Thanks. Hey, guys. Good morning. First question on new ASPs, Marcus. You sounded pretty constructive on that this morning. Is that simply a factor of rates coming down and so a buyer can afford a more expensive unit with the same monthly payment? Or is there some other maybe mix dynamic going on there?

Marcus Lemonis

No, I think that what we've seen in previous years is that the ASPs usually start the year a little lower. We go to the Tampa Super Show and all these shows around the country and you have people buying lower priced units. As we accelerate into the year, particularly the back half of second quarter and three and four, those ASPs start to rise as that family camper dissipates into a larger fifth wheel buyer, C-Class, B, et cetera.
I think the point that I wanted to make on the 10-year treasury is when you look at the fluctuation in the 10-year treasury, there's a direct correlation to the retail buy sheet, ultimately the retail sell sheet that our consumers see around the interest rate of their purchase. And as the 10-year treasury stabilizes it hopefully reduces, I think it's down to like 4.3 up from down from 4.8 just not too long ago, we tend to see rate reductions from our retail lending community.
As those rate reductions come down, in some cases, a quarter to a half to a full point, that allows the customer to go from a $13,000 unit to a $16,000 unit and not see a tremendous difference in payment. As we look towards the balance of the year, we believe that the goal of 40,000 on the new side and 32,000 on the used side will be modestly accelerated by that factor.

Joe Altobello

Got it. Okay. And just to follow-up on SG&A to gross profit, you mentioned this morning, again, another 600 or 700 basis points of improvement this year. How much of that is from the growth in profit dollars and thereby volume driven versus some discrete cost savings?

Marcus Lemonis

Yeah. There is a little coming from just the improvement in overall gross profit. That's just a math equation. But truth be told, when we provided the guidepost last year, we knew all of us as a management team knew that we were going to have to make some difficult decisions, towards the top of 2025 to give us the ability to achieve the 600 to 700 basis points. And we were a little quieter about it, obviously, during the holidays because we had to make some very difficult decisions around headcount, but it was always anticipated in our plan.
As we go through the year, we are absolutely committed to the 600 to 700 basis points. It's one of the material inputs to us achieving the explosive EBITDA improvement. If at any point in time, the market, the overall general economy doesn't give us what we expect, we are already prepared to recalibrate our SG&A month-by-month, quarter-by-quarter to ensure, to be clear, to ensure that we deliver the 600 to 700 basis points that we're committing to on an annualized basis.

Joe Altobello

Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Alex Perry, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Alex Perry

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a strong quarter here. In the press release, Marcus, I think you mentioned we see green shoots unfolding across the broader RV landscape. I guess, what is informing that? And specifically, what's been the feedback from show season? Have you been up year-over-year? Any significant variations in terms of the mix of sales during show season versus last year?

Marcus Lemonis

I'm going to break that down into two distinct sections. I think first is we're excited to see the shipments that the manufacturers have recently reported. And I think it's important to note that in a lot of cases, Q1 shipments acceleration is really a function of dealers restocking their inventory. We are dissatisfied with where the current stocking levels are of dealers across the country in an effort to grow the industry again. And when we look at retails and shipments, we think that it's really important that the dealers have inventory on the ground to be able to sell.
When we look at how we build our inventory, we typically like to be more prepared than most as we head into March 1. So our inventory position tends to be typically and traditionally a little bit more robust so that we don't miss out on opportunities going into it. It looks as though the industry maybe taking on a little bit of that same philosophy. We want to have a little bit of temperance to make sure that what you see shipping in the first quarter doesn't just continue in the second quarter, third quarter and fourth quarter if the retail volume doesn't track with it.
We think there's probably a $15,000 to $20,000 difference in terms of where we want dealers to restock. That includes ourselves. That bodes well for the manufacturers. When we talk about other green shoots, we continue to see good foot traffic in our stores, good lead volume, and we're really looking for quality over quantity. Our conversion, from leads is slightly better than last year and our margins are better. It's also important to note that we use a really interesting tool to determine how excited people are on the industry, and that is the value of used inventory in the marketplace.
And we've had to continue to slightly increase the values that we're willing to pay for used because consumers are holding on to their units. We always get nervous when we can buy cheap because that means people are wanting to exit. But we're seeing a little bit of the opposite right now, which is giving us comfort that the RV is excited again, we're seeing people in our stores again, we're seeing leads again and people are paying for units without thinking they're just going to buy some distressed asset.
The inventory overall in the marketplace also looks cleaner. Yes, ours is clearly cleaner than it was a year ago, but we think the same applies where there's not as much distressed inventory going into the year. So if the manufacturers can maintain discipline around what they produce, if dealers can take a little bit more of a hedge on putting inventory on the ground to satisfy the consumer demand that's out there, and if the used values could stay strong, absent some crazy macro environment, we would expect a materially better year, at least from a sentiment standpoint for the industry.

Alex Perry

Really helpful. And then I guess just my follow-up question. Can you just talk about the change in your inventory mix sort of year-on-year on the new side? It sounds like seasonally you expect more content in units in 3Q, 4Q. Can you just talk about any big changes in the new inventory that has led to the significant market share gains? Thanks.

Marcus Lemonis

I think one of the secrets to our system, and Matt has been the architect for years, is we don't buy the inventory that we want to buy. We buy in stock the inventory that the consumer wants to buy. And if the consumer wants to buy a less expensive unit or a used unit, we are totally agnostic. Our goal is to sell 130,000 units this year. We don't care the length, the size, the weight, newer used, the price. We just want a volume of transactions.

Matthew Wagner

Yeah. Just to even elaborate upon that a bit more, Alex. As we've oftentimes displayed that chart that shows personal consumer expenditures and RV monthly payments as a percent of that, where we just have built our entire inventory strategy off targeting certain price points, more specifically monthly payment price points to ensure that we're capturing whatever a consumer can afford within each segment.
So when we think about our exclusive brand line of the contract manufacturing that we've been so disciplined and focused on over the past, goodness, decade-plus now, we fine tune that to such a point where all of those assets that we showed at our Tampa investor event are amongst the best performing assets that we have in our entire portfolio right now. And that's inclusive of the Class B that we have, the Class C, the travel trailers, the fifth wheel, whereas that just serves as our proof points that we're hitting the right price point to ensure that we're inducing these customers to be able to come back into this lifestyle or to enter into the lifestyle for the very first time.

Marcus Lemonis

It's important for everybody to understand that we are very focused on ASP, but the only reason that ASP matters to us is because of the gross profit dollars that are generated from that. But not having the right unit on the ground and not selling the transaction that the consumer wants results in no dollars. And so we want to find the balance between being very creative about finding ways to move up ASP, but we do not want to alienate or lose transactions to other competitors or quite frankly, not have the consumer pull the trigger.
So when you look at how we're building our new in the early part of the year and our used in the early part of the year, it's very much of a science on where the leads coming from, how are we restocking, where are we converting, where are we not converting, where do we need to lean in and where do we need to lean out.
Let's not forget that the general macro economy hasn't really changed in the last four or five months. And some could argue that it's a little -- has a little more friction inside of it. So when we wake up every single day and we're looking at the dashboard of all of those different metrics, we are modifying the inventory on order, modifying the units that we purchase on a daily basis to be real time responsive to what the consumer is telling us.
I think a lot of times companies write a playbook for the year and they're unwilling to change because they're so dedicated to what they wrote on a piece of paper. Our company functions a little differently. And we also think that there's the possibility that there's going to be some new pricing adjustment. I'm sure Matt will address that a little later or now.

Matthew Wagner

I mean, we've had a lot of conversations with manufacturers. And of course, we keep a very close beat on exactly what the anticipated changes will be in invoice pricing in the near future and over the next year. And we have reason to believe based upon this different imposing tariffs that could ultimately impact some of new invoice pricing, the manufacturers will probably be looking at raising prices on new model year changeover, which should be about June 1, if not perhaps even raising prices in anticipation of that, just because someone's going to ultimately have to endure whatever these tariff price increases could be.
There's some chatter out there that maybe it's about 3%, which we're frankly okay with that. And we're okay with that in so much as that's a healthy modification in this industry and it enables us to further pivot into the used marketplace. Whereas long as those values between new and used continue to spread, we have greater sense of confidence that we can continue to procure more and more and perhaps even more aggressively than we have, knowing that there's even greater delta between current model year new pricing and used units out in the marketplace.

Marcus Lemonis

Yeah. One advantage that we ultimately get out of that as well is because of the way we bring inventory into our channel and have for years. I don't want to use the word frontload our inventory, but we try to stock our shelves pretty solidly as we head into March. And I think other people may take a different approach. So the inventory that we have on the ground today is devoid of some of those potential tariffs. The used inventory that we have on the ground is only going to get, I think, in our opinion, if the tariffs do happen, is only going to become more important to our business.

Alex Perry

Perfect. That's incredibly helpful. Best of luck going forward.

Operator

Craig Kennison, Baird.

Craig Kennison

Well, hey, good morning. Really appreciate the guidance commentary and overall efficiency of this call. It's been super helpful already. Maybe just if you look at '24, Camping World had tremendous market share gains on the new side. You talked about some of the drivers for that. I'm just wondering to what extent your guidance anticipates further market share gains in new?

Marcus Lemonis

It's our expectation that we end positive for the year regardless of how much traction we get on the used side. And it's always a balance to drive the new and the used at the exact same time because A, you have a limited amount of capital and floor plan and a limited amount of customers. And so what we're really trying to do is maximize the yield on whatever inventory we're investing in and maximize the margin ultimately getting us back to a kind of earnings potential that we all demand and expect from ourselves.
We also, at the same time, don't want to give up market share. But we want to be very intelligent about the kind of units we bring in. We want to be smart about making sure that we're defending against what the competitors are doing, but not at the expense of our P&L and not at the expense of our margins.
And a good chunk of our new gains last year were a result of us pulling back to far unused. We've said it since we went public, and Matt and I are in lockstep on this that we are agnostic to what type of unit that we sell. What we know is that we did 11.2% in overall combined market share last year. And we expect to sell no less than 8,500 to 9,000 more units in 2025 with an internal goal and a lot of compensation based on it of getting to 12% market share, which would be a new record for us.
We have an ultimate goal in the next four or five years to get to [15] And every single percentage point means that we have to incrementally sell 10,000 more units. That's our core focus right now, sell more units and make more money.

Craig Kennison

Great. And then over the last several years, you've made a lot of investments in your used platform. But then last year, you made a tactical decision to avoid a lot of depreciation and slowdown in that market. Maybe just remind us of the platform that you have built and why you think it's a strategic advantage?

Matthew Wagner

Simply put, it's really the best way that we could enable customers to get real time values of the assets that they own today through the Good Sam RV valuator. And that's a platform that we've developed over a decade plus worth of work and gosh, two decades worth of information of just predicting should be residual value curves off of all the assets that have flowed through our entire environment. And over the last five years, we've gotten a lot better at tracking what's going on around us.
And even more specifically, over the last two years, we've been very good about understanding the peer-to-peer marketplace, which that's really the most nebulous portion of the entire used market of what happens when a neighbor wants to sell their asset to another neighbor and what's the value that's being ascribed to that asset. That's the one component that we've been zeroing in on and focusing more and more to ensure that we're able to anticipate even to a greater extent what these residual values should be.
And I can tell you, Craig, every single day we wake up and we get at least 2,000 customers raising their hands saying that they wanted the value on their asset. Some of them are prepared to sell. Some of them are looking for just some sort of valuation because they had a total loss claim with an insurance claim or a variety of other purposes. But I can tell you, there's no end to the amount of opportunities that we have to buy that many more assets. We're continuing to just fine tune in this entire machine.
And to some extent, there's some human capital gating items whereby you still have to have that one to one communication with this customer that's interested in selling this asset and there's still paperwork required to go through a payoff with a bank or ultimately work with a local DNB to transfer that ownership. So we continue to get better on the runway over the next five years-plus.

Marcus Lemonis

Yeah. The excitement around the opportunity does not eliminate the prudence around the acquisition itself. We will not compromise the necessity to improve our terms on used and improve our margins on used. And while we can buy a ton, it still has to be calibrated with the right demand cycle on the other side, because we know that the used margin, a return to used margin from a traditional level is our path to explosive profitability growth.

Craig Kennison

That's really helpful. Thank you.

Operator

James Hardiman, Citi.

James Hardiman

Hey, good morning. So a lot of great color so far, much appreciated. Had a couple of follow ups to some of the things that you've said. So, sounds like you guys had a hell of a month of January. February, a little bit of moderation. You called out some weather. I guess as we think about the go forward, would you expect that to look more like January, more like February? It sounds like based on your guidance somewhere in between but maybe walk us through the thinking there.

Marcus Lemonis

Yeah. When we look at month over month over month, obviously, we know that March will be one of our biggest months in several years, to be honest. We think we could set some records there over the last several years. I don't want anybody to get concerned about February because we're not concerned about February. In some cases, though, some of those sales move into the backlog of March.
And so when we go into March, we have a couple thousand units that are already scheduled to deliver. So one of the things that weather does is it moves around where the delivery can happen. Yeah, there were some days, actually there were probably eight of them in February where we had more than 10% of our store base closed at various times. Those things aren't great. We never want to anchor on those things.
But when you miss out on some of the transactions, you start to build up pent up demand. Matt had mentioned earlier what our last weekend was in between Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It was gangbusters for us. And while the weather wasn't great everywhere, it wasn't zero or three degrees with snow in Pensacola, Florida. So we did suffer through that a little bit.
What was exciting for us is we were high fiving each other on Monday morning that the playbook that we're executing for 2025 looks very, very sound and that we know we're going to make it up. And those couple of hundred units will make them up. I think what's showing up in March already is giving us fuel to know that we'll have a very solid quarter.

James Hardiman

Got it. Really helpful. And then, Marcus, you talked a little bit about rates and how the ten years has been coming down, you know, somewhat unpredictable. But maybe if we if we sort of cut through some of the noise here today versus a year ago, where are sort of the average rates for your consumers? And I guess more importantly, heading into the selling season, what type of a tailwind should we expect from a rate perspective?

Marcus Lemonis

The overall retail rates, which ultimately, we care about more than anything because that's what the tenure is based on, is about 50 to 100 basis points lower than it was a year ago. It also depends on who that lender is. And in some cases, certain lenders that are looking to grab market share, have been a little bit more aggressive than that.
One of the nuances of our company compared to maybe others is that we have a consolidated retail lender portfolio of banks. And we try to really give them more disproportionate business as opposed to spreading it everywhere to be able to enjoy a different structure on term or a different structure on rate or no payments for 90 days. We know that that's really important to us. But I would say generally speaking, it's about 100 basis points better than one year ago today.

James Hardiman

Got it. Much appreciated.

Operator

Noah Zatzkin, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Noah Zatzkin

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess first, new gross margin came in a bit better than we expected. So just as we look out through 2025, could you remind us how you're thinking about kind of full year new gross margins and used gross margins?

Matthew Wagner

Yeah. Noah, we didn't say quite clearly on there is that in 2023 in Q4, we had received quite a bit of support from manufacturers, which is where if you look at a year-over-year comp, it was down year-over-year. But yes, 2024 Q4 did come in a little bit higher than some that were anticipating a little bit lower. We did receive some additional manufacturer support, however, far less year-over-year, like literally 30% of what it was a year ago.

Marcus Lemonis

Almost half actually. Even less than half.

Matthew Wagner

So when we think of how much better we performed, I feel pretty good about where we ended up. However, if you're at a forecast out for 2025, what those gross margin profile should be, we're still focusing on that 13.5% to 14% gross margin range on the new side, and we really haven't deviated from that for the entirety of the year.

Marcus Lemonis

And then on the used side, we're still expecting to end the year with an average of north of 19. We're looking for velocity right now and to eliminate aging and to continue to be a market maker. But I would suspect that you're going to see nice sequential margin improvement on the used side as we go through the balance of the year. The first quarter is always a little softer just because it's a little slower outside and then it accelerates from there.

Noah Zatzkin

Got it. Very helpful. And then maybe just one more. Given, I guess, the acquisitions you're expecting to close by spring, could you just kind of remind us how you're thinking about the full year from a kind of net dealership add perspective? Thanks.

Marcus Lemonis

Yes. Today, we're sitting and I think we report we are going to report in our filing, Tom, is it 203 as of this morning?

Thomas Kirn

Yes.

Marcus Lemonis

203 in the filing?

Thomas Kirn

204.

Marcus Lemonis

204. And so we're closing on -- we closed on one last week too. I would expect us to add 6 to 7 at a minimum. We are very much focused on the capital allocation. With taking the capital raise back in the fall, we made a commitment to the investors that we were going to be exponentially more rigorous in looking at growth opportunities until we were able to prove out the thesis of 2025.
We need to see continued same store sales improvement, continued SG&A reductions and don't want to do anything that's going to add to that -- to add any risks to those results. As we look at the guidepost that we provided around new, used margins, SG&A, it's resulted in whatever the market is telling us they're expecting us to earn for 2025. Our internal focus is aligned with that, and we're not going to do anything to compromise that outcome.

Noah Zatzkin

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Tristan Thomas-Martin, BMO Capital Markets.

Tristan Thomas-Martin

Hello. Good morning. What are you assuming for kind of 2025 industry retail demand?

Marcus Lemonis

You want to take that, Matt?

Matthew Wagner

Yeah. We've maintained, for the last few months that we anticipate retail demand being relatively flat year-over-year within a pretty tight band, which would be somewhat anomalous based upon, gosh, history in the industry. So we'd end up probably being in that 350,000-ish number on retail sales. We'd anticipate that wholesale will have to be right around there, if not even slightly higher. And so much as if we want to support 350,000 retail sales, the industry will probably have to throw off about 355,000 to 360,000 wholesale shipments because of the scarce supply of rolling stock inventory that exists amongst all the dealerships right now.

Marcus Lemonis

Yeah. To reaffirm that, we think there does have to be a gap between the amount of shipments and the amount of retails just because restocking does need to happen. I think whether that ends up being [$3.45 or $3.50] on the retail side, there's going to still have to be, I think, a 10,000 to 15,000 difference between those two just to put things back on the shelf.
If we get a little tailwind, that number could pop up to $3.55. And if we get a little bit more inflation noise, other dealers may struggle a little bit more because they don't have the capital that we have to go out and buy used to mitigate any of those issues. So we're again, we're really focused on our $130,000 to make up and mix of that we're agnostic to, but we think that [$3.45 to $3.55] could be that retail range with wholesale being higher than that.

Tristan Thomas-Martin

Okay. And then just a question about the model year '26 is, are the OEMs still kind of hyper [fixes] on the most affordable units? Are we beginning to maybe mix shift a little bit higher?

Marcus Lemonis

I missed a word in there, sorry.

Matthew Wagner

On what kind of units?

Tristan Thomas-Martin

Well, I'm just saying, are we starting to see the OEMs maybe add a little more content, mix shift a little bit higher ASP wise with the model year '26 focus compared to the model year '25?

Matthew Wagner

I haven't heard that there's going to be additional contenting of these assets rather just for the same like-for-like asset that potentially the pricing could be as much as 3%, maybe even 5% higher compared to model year 2025. But obviously, it's still relatively early and we have until June for the towable manufacturers to switch over to model year 2026.
The motorized manufacturers, however, could start switching over the next two months or so, if not sooner, in which case, those prices have largely remained static, devoid of any sort of Ford chassis price increases, which I've not heard of any sort of recent developments there.

Marcus Lemonis

I would argue that they probably would be hedging adding any content in light of the fact that a tariff could potentially cost them some COGS. I would be surprised if anybody was thinking about adding anything more to it and furthermore, maybe even looking ways to value engineer their unit more to try to absorb some of that increase.
I don't know if they'll be able to, but I don't see them adding stuff, which is one of the reasons why our retail business continues to do a little better. Our retail business continues to do well when manufacturers the content and then we want to accessorize and put different things inside of units. If you go back and you look at the history of the Camping World, it did the best when manufacturers didn't add every single thing to the unit. So when we see manufacturers either have, tariff issues or content issues or pricing issues, Camping World retail ends up being a little bit of a benefactor in that regard.

Tristan Thomas-Martin

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Scott Stember, ROTH.

Scott Stember

Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Marcus, can you just clarify when you said that you expect explosive EBITDA growth in the first quarter?

Marcus Lemonis

I'm not sure I understand the question. Do you want me to define that for you?

Scott Stember

Yeah. Just give us a sense of what we should be looking at. And --

Marcus Lemonis

No, we don't provide guidance. We don't provide guidance. And explosive is a very intentional word. Last year, we, I think, only put $8 million on the table. And I'm expecting no less than 3x to 4x on that number.

Scott Stember

Okay. Got you. Got it. And then just looking at the 600 to 700 basis points of SG&A leverage, is there anything you can provide us, just some guideposts for EBITDA for the full year?

Marcus Lemonis

You're looking for us to give you a forecast for EBITDA. We don't provide guidance, but I will reaffirm that based on the guideposts that we provided around new growth, used growth, margin expectation and SG&A expectation, if you take those things of low single digit on new, 10% to 15% on used, margins at 13.5% to 14% on new, margins at 18.5% to 19%, call it 19% unused and SG&A getting 600 to 700 points better. We feel really good that that calculus gets us to where the Street is. So we are reaffirming that what we're seeing out there in our guideposts are consistent.

Scott Stember

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much. And then just the last question on parts and service. Looks like definitely benefiting from the, I guess, the up work and just refit work on trade ins. Can you maybe talk about the pure customer pay work, what you're seeing there? It sounds like it was running at least modestly positive.

Marcus Lemonis

The customer pay work, it was not as good as we needed it to be in '24. And we don't really get a good measurement stick until we get into March and April because we have a pretty good [size of] stores that are north -- on the northern part of the country and people have them in storage and they have them in the wrapper. But we are expecting a better year because we're expecting consumers to use their RVs more frequently this year. That's an expectation that we have, and we obviously want to drive that, but nothing on the early days to provide any color that would be helpful.

Scott Stember

Got it. That's all I have. Thank you.

Operator

Bret Jordan, Jefferies.

Hey, good morning guys. This is Patrick Buckley on for Bret. Thanks for taking our questions. As we look at the '25 industry outlook, I guess, do rates need to come down and drive a significant recovery? Still a lot of uncertainty around rate cuts this year. So I guess, what do you guys see as the optimal macro backdrop for either the industry or maybe more specifically for you guys?

Marcus Lemonis

Well, I think there's two factors that ultimately drive the number north of $350,000. We haven't seen $400,000 in several years. And the price of the units themselves and the interest rates in combination with the [price] of the units create that perfect storm. We know that affordability is the most important thing for people today, and we know that discretionary dollars are not just flying around all over the place.
And so we'll need to see some stabilization on the pricing side, which we believe we have seen, and we'll need to see that 10-year treasury continue to, I would call it normalize, stabilize and reduce, which would allow retail rates to come down as well. Most people think that there's a direct correlation between the Fed rate and the interest rates that our consumers see.
Just as a reminder, our consumers' interest rates in the finance office are a derivative of the 10-year treasury. So getting some stabilization around that will be helpful. I think we would need far more of a reduction to get back over $400,000, far more. It could be as much as a whole another point to actually start to really juice it. From our perspective as a company, we like that there's this awkwardness around all of that because it allows us to capitalize a little bit more on the used side. But would we mind if the rates dropped a little bit more? We would not. We're not there yet today. I don't see that breaking 400 unless it's at least 75 to 100 basis points lower.

Got it. That's helpful. And then it sounds like the M&A pipeline is still fairly strong despite the cycle changing more positive. I guess, are you seeing multiples start to take higher? Or I guess how long can both of those trends last throughout the year?

Marcus Lemonis

Over the course of our business in the 20-something years we've been doing this, the multiples are essentially the same. And it really comes down to a dealer needing to get out for whatever variety of reasons that are out there. There are exceptions and outliers where we pay a super premium based on what market it's in, what brands they carry, what the facility looks like, what their cash flow looks like. But for the most part, the multiples are the same.
I want to reiterate one thing though. When we went out and raised capital, we made a commitment to not just have the cash leave. And if you listen to Tom's remarks between the cash on the balance sheet, how much inventory we own free and clear, how much parts inventory we own free and clear, how much real estate we own free and clear, our balance sheet is really, really strong.
Our focus right now is getting more out of our existing stores, more unit sales per rooftop because what that ultimately does is it drives the NOI, the net operating income of our business. And that's what we need to do to bring the leverage back in line. The number one focus and it's not part of our sales pitch.
The number one focus for all of us in the room today is to get our leverage down by the end of 2025 through a combination of keeping a lot of cash on the balance sheet, unlocking any debt assets and putting that cash on the balance sheet, delevering by paying down debt like we did at the end of last year and we will continue to do and driving our earnings. We don't like where our leverage is, period, end of story. And we're not going to take any risks or take any chances that are going to compromise our goal of a material reduction in our leverage.

Great. That's all for us. Thanks, guys.

Operator

(Operator Instrucitons)
Ryan Brinkman, JPMorgan.

Ryan Brinkman

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe regarding the M&A strategy discussed in the press release last week and on today's call, how should we think about the impact on leverage from the acquisitions as they close over the near term and a little over the medium term as you work to raise the EBITDA of the acquired locations? Could it even benefit leverage? How quickly would you say, you could lift the EBITDA margin of the stores that you're looking at to the corporate average?

Marcus Lemonis

Every single transaction that we are closing on in 2025, we expect to deliver positive EBITDA results being accretive to our business. And we believe that we have continued to learn, how to take a distressed asset like the ones we're buying from Lazydays and eradicate the unnecessary costs, put the used inventory on the ground, install our S&I process, put a real service and parts process in place and return cash to our shareholders. Just as a reminder, we paid really essentially less than book value for that. So we have a high, high degree of expectation that we're going to see explosive returns on investment in those transactions.

Ryan Brinkman

Great. Thanks. And you referenced OEMs looking to pass on some modest like for like price increases, looking to value engineer their products, maybe not add content given the impact of tariffs. Can you clarify if by that you meant the already announced tariffs on steel and aluminum and maybe separate to steel and aluminum tariffs? I'm curious what impact you expect the RV industry could see from potential 25% tariffs on all products imported from Mexico and Canada as soon as March 1 here potentially.
Most RVs for the US Market are, I think, assembled in Indiana or elsewhere in the US. So don't expect nearly the same impact as the light vehicle industry. But maybe you have a sense for the degree of parts that are installed on US built RVs that come from Mexico or Canada or what the impact could be on new RV prices present a headwind of demand? And relatedly, what impact there could be on used RV prices that maybe would even benefit your margin? What do you think about that?

Matthew Wagner

Yeah. The good news is that Lippert, which is the primary frame manufacturer, sources most of their steel and aluminum here in the US. But on the parts and pieces side, I mean, just as it's somewhat nebulous for you, it's going to be similarly hazy for us and so much as we don't know exactly when they're incurring those price increases. In a lot of ways, they're sourcing these products out futures market.
And to some extent, they're locking in these prices from different sources overseas. To what extent would a supplier actually incur those tariff price increases today versus six months from now, who knows, in terms of them passing along to the OEMs. If I'm a supplier, I would take advantage of that opportunity and perhaps raise prices even in anticipation of impending price increases.
But from the OEM's perspective, they know that they need to protect their margins to the best of their ability. And if you look through different OEMs, different gross margin profiles, obviously, they've been under somewhat pressure over the last couple of years. And if there's any sort of imposing price increase of any kind, they will have to raise prices.

Marcus Lemonis

Yeah. Let me also make one final comment on this topic. Most people assume that we're all operating on a level playing field and that tariffs would apply to everybody consistently. Our company does not operate on a level playing field. We do not buy RVs for the same price as everybody else. We have more cash than everybody else and it is not a fair fight.
So if tariffs continue to be a problem, they're a problem for everybody, but we tend to enjoy a different level of pricing than everybody else and will always maintain a competitive advantage over everybody else based on the volume that we do, based on the contract manufacturing we do, based on our ability to buy used more than anybody else. And so that kind of rigorous environment only works in our advantage because we can stand out in a crowd even more.

Matthew Wagner

The greatest yield truly being that used marketplace in particular, where that would represent more stabilization within the used environment and enable us to go out and more aggressively procure your used because the spread between new and used can be that much more substantial.

Ryan Brinkman

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

James Hardiman, Citi.

James Hardiman

Hey, good morning. Just, Matt, a point of clarification. I think you talked about higher insurance claims affecting that SG&A number in the fourth quarter. Any way you could quantify that? And then, as we think about that 600 to 700 basis point improvement in 2025, does that assume that those numbers normalize? Thanks.

Thomas Kirn

James, we quantified that in the release. It was about $6 million of a hit in the quarter year-over-year. And yeah, that is something that we would expect to normalize.

Marcus Lemonis

And then on the 600 to 700 basis points, while it's never a pleasant thing to say, it is really a reduction in force in different parts of our company that had been instituted starting in January. And we will continue to execute on that plan if we see anything that's taking us off or away from our achievement of that 600 to 700 market efficiency, labor, and the balance of our business and just tightening things down. We are going to achieve that 600 to 700 basis points come hell or high water.

James Hardiman

Got it. And then, speaking of hell or high-water, Marcus, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you're a lot more confident in sort of the used RV opportunity in 2025 that that's more of a video story, self-help story versus the new. Maybe talk about that. Is that an accurate characterization or how should we think about that?

Marcus Lemonis

We spent the last 12 months getting ready for January of 2025. I started to ramp up procurement in November and December a little lighter and then really cranked it in January and February. We bought more RVs in the month of January and the month of February than we had ever bought in those respective months. And we expect that to continue.
I think the reason that we feel so solid about it is that we know that we missed a lot of revenue and a lot of gross profit in 2024, and we don't apologize for making good decisions with our shareholders' money. But now that we have more of our shareholders' money, we have an obligation to deliver outsized returns and outsized increases in our EBITDA.
And the reason that we are so laser focused is we know that is our path primarily. The SG&A and the used performance is our path to getting back to our leverage where it needs to be and our earnings at least an acceptable level to us. It was unacceptable last year.

James Hardiman

Got it. Thanks, Marcus.

Marcus Lemonis

Okay. I think that's our last question. So thank you very much for joining. We continue to be enthused about our business and look forward to delivering our quarter one results in May. Take care.

Operator

This concludes the conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.