Forest City-based Winnebago Industries is seeing immediate results from its purchase of a company that makes towable recreational vehicles.
Winnebago bought Grand Design Recreational Vehicles in October to be able to offer a product that’s popular among younger buyers. Company president and CEO, Michael Happe talked about the impact of the $500 million purchase in a quarterly conference call for investors Wednesday.
“At the end of Q-1 we delivered strong revenue and net income growth, while margins remained steady. Consolidated revenues were $245.3 million. An increase of 14.5 percent year-over-year, driven primarily by strong growth in our towables business,” Happe said. The Grand Designs
line made an early impact on the company. “Our top line results benefited from approximately three weeks of Grand Design sales — which contributed $25.8 million of revenue,” according to Happe. He says they also saw improvement in their other lines.
“Motorized retail registrations on a unit basis achieved near double-digit growth for the quarter,” Happe said. “And toward the end of the quarter we were encouraged by the material improvement in retail registrations and backlog for the Class A product line.” Happe said they are focused on driving greater and more consistent product quality and customer service.
“Gross profit overall for Winnebago Industries was steady for the quarter. However, we are confident that we will realize the increasing benefits from the profitability of the Grand Design line in future quarters,” Happe said. The 2017 first quarter net income was $11.7 million, or 42 cents per diluted share. That’s an increase of 37.2 percent for the same period last year.