| It's no secret that the pandemic was good for recreational vehicle (RV) sales. When no one was flying and everyone was tired of looking at the same walls in their homes, lots of folks took the plunge and bought an RV. Sales for manufacturers and retailers boomed. But in 2022, as things returned to normal, RV sales couldn't keep up their frenetic pace. That makes analyzing the dividend safety of Camping World Holdings (NYSE: CWH) an interesting exercise. Free cash flow exploded in 2020 but dropped dramatically in 2021 and 2022, as the pandemic likely cannibalized sales for several years into the future. However, this year, free cash flow is forecast to spike back to over $400 million. I'm a little skeptical that free cash flow will rocket as high as Wall Street thinks it will, as earnings and revenue are both projected to be lower in 2023. So we have two years of declining free cash flow, which the Safety Net model most definitely does not like. Furthermore, because free cash flow was a minuscule $29 million last year, the $105 million in dividends paid to shareholders gives us a sky-high 362% payout ratio. In other words, for every $1 in free cash flow that Camping World took in, it paid shareholders $3.62. That's not sustainable, and the stock's dividend safety rating gets penalized as a result. |
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