What happened
Shares of Camping World Holdings (CWH 2.52%), which sells recreational vehicles (RVs) and related products and services, rose just shy of 10% in the first hour or so of trading on May 4. At roughly 11:30 a.m. EDT, the stock was still holding on to a mid-single-digit gain. The big news driving the early excitement was the company's pre-market earnings release.
So what
Camping World Holdings' revenue totaled roughly $1.56 billion in the first quarter of 2021. That represented a huge $530 million increase compared to the same period in 2020, which amounts to a slightly more than 50% year-over-year improvement.
On the bottom line, earnings went from a loss of $0.22 in the first quarter of 2020 to a profit of $1.40 per share in the same period in 2021. Camping World Holdings is clearly doing much better than it was a year ago, and investors are right to be pleased.
Image source: Getty Images.
But there's even more good news. For starters, Wall Street consensus estimates were calling for revenue of $1.3 billion and earnings of $0.69 per share. Investors tend to like it when companies beat analyst expectations.
Meanwhile, Camping World Holdings also drastically increased its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) guidance, upping the range from $640 million to $690 million to $770 million to $810 million. Investors tend to like it when companies provide improved guidance, too. It was pretty much all good news today.
Now what
Basically, Camping World Holdings nailed the first quarter. And that doesn't even take into consideration all of the growth initiatives that have taken shape in recent weeks, including:
- retail-store acquisitions
- the purchase of a campground-booking service
- an investment in an RV media business
- the ability to accept Bitcoin
- an update on a peer-to-peer RV service
- an 8.6% boost to the company's dividend
Long-term investors have a lot of reasons to be pleased with what's been going on here, and the company's financial results are just icing on the cake. Indeed, if the stock hadn't been up by more than 450% over the past year (pricing in a lot of positives), the gain today might have been more dramatic.
