RV shipments fall 14% in March as towables decline

Total RV wholesale shipments fell 14% year over year in March to 32,162 units, with year-to-date 2026 shipments down 12%. Towable shipments declined 16% and travel trailers fell 17%, while motorhomes rose 9% on stronger Class C and Class B volumes. Baird cut Q1 estimates for LCI Industries and Patrick Industries, and RV earnings reports begin this week with Camping World on Wednesday and Patrick Industries on Thursday.

Analysis

The key read-through is not just weaker retail demand, but a sharper reset in the parts mix. Towable softness tends to hit the aftermarket-heavy, higher-volume channels first, which pressures inventory turns and dealer ordering before it shows up cleanly in reported EPS; that usually creates a lag of one to two quarters where suppliers see slower price realization even if end-demand stabilizes. The small motorized outperformance is not enough to offset the mix deterioration because it is a lower-unit, lower-velocity segment for the supply chain.

For LCII and PATK, the risk is less about one bad print and more about the guidance language around backlog, destocking, and working capital. If dealers are still cutting inventory into peak spring/summer selling season, suppliers can get hit by both volume deleveraging and unfavorable absorption, which is where margins often step down faster than consensus models assume. That makes this more of a medium-term earnings revision story than a one-day tape reaction.

CWH is the cleaner relative-value beneficiary if the consumer is becoming more price sensitive, because downstream retailers can use promotions and financing to hold unit sales while pushing mix and used inventory. The contrarian angle is that a weak wholesale read does not automatically mean weak retail sell-through; if dealer inventories are already lean enough, shipments can undershoot demand for a few months, creating a false negative for suppliers while supporting replacement activity later in the year. The setup therefore favors fading supplier optimism into earnings rather than shorting the entire RV complex indiscriminately.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Short LCII into the next 1-2 earnings windows; use a defined-risk put spread to capture likely estimate cuts and margin compression while limiting upside risk if inventories were already normalized.
• Underweight PATK versus a broad industrial basket for the next quarter; the cleaner expression is a pair trade long a diversified cyclical with less RV exposure, short PATK, to isolate RV revision risk.
• Trade CWH tactically long into the print only if management confirms tighter dealer inventory and stronger retail conversion; otherwise fade rallies, since the stock can benefit temporarily from downstream promotions even while suppliers deteriorate.
• Buy downside protection on LCII/PATK ahead of earnings via short-dated puts or put spreads; the catalyst window is days-to-weeks, and implied volatility should be favorable if management commentary confirms destocking.