Powersports Up 30%, RV Down 15% — What Boat and Building Dealers Should See

Patrick Industries just posted a 30% jump in powersports revenue, to $128 million. In the same quarter, its RV revenue fell 15%. Same company. Same three months. Two very different customers.

Patrick's Powersports Revenue Jumped 30%. Its RV Revenue Fell 15%.

Patrick Industries booked $975 million in third-quarter 2026 net sales, a hair under the $976 million from the same quarter last year. Buried inside that flat top line is a split that should matter to anyone selling boats, toys or storage: powersports revenue climbed 30% to $128 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 27.

Powersports is now about 13% of Patrick's total revenue. The company pointed to steady demand for utility-focused vehicles, more Sportech cab enclosures getting attached, and better sales of premium features like audio systems.

Now look at the other side of the same report. RV is still the biggest market at 37% of third-quarter revenue, and RV revenue dropped 15% to $362 million while industry wholesale shipments fell 13%. Marine went the other direction: up 14% to $171 million, or 18% of company revenue. Housing came in at $314 million, up 4%.

One supplier, one quarter, three different answers. And the profit story underneath is stranger than the growth story.

The Growth Line and the Profit Line Went Different Ways

Patrick's operating income fell to $50 million from $66 million. Operating margin dropped to 5.1% from 6.8%. Net income landed at $21 million, or 64 cents a diluted share, against $35 million, or $1.01, a year earlier.

The adjusted numbers are calmer. Adjusted operating margin held at 6.8%. Adjusted diluted earnings per share rose to $1.03 from $1.01. Adjusted EBITDA grew 3% to $116 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin widened 40 basis points to 11.9%.

Here is my read on that, and it is opinion: you can grow a category and still make less money overall. Mix, cost and one-time expenses move the bottom line even when the top line looks fine. If your own numbers show more units and less gross, you are living in the same story.

So why is the utility side holding while the big-ticket side slips?

Why Utility Vehicles Held While RVs Slid

CEO Andy Nemeth said the company's strategic market diversification and its focus on product solutions for customers "continued to drive resilient results in the third quarter." He said marine, powersports and housing growth helped hold total revenue flat even as RV shipments weakened.

President Jeff Rodino pointed to "sustained strength in utility vehicle demand" and said it aligns well with the company's cab enclosure offerings. He also named the drag on buyers: elevated fuel costs, high interest rates and inflation have weighed on consumer confidence.

There is an inventory detail in there too. Patrick said RV makers and dealers have kept field inventory tight as retail demand softened. My read: the channel is not being stuffed.

Two other items from the quarter. Patrick also launched Patrick Printing Solutions, a platform that prints graphics and textures straight onto panels made of composite, wood and other materials. And its all-stock merger with LCI Industries is still in motion: a definitive agreement was signed June 30, 2026, the Form S-4 registration statement was declared effective by the SEC on Oct. 19, and a special shareholder meeting is scheduled for Nov. 18.

None of that changes your Tuesday. What changes your Tuesday is what the split says about who is still walking onto your lot with money in hand.

What This Means If You Sell Boats or Outdoor Buildings

Everything in this section is my opinion, built on the numbers above. My background: Over $75 million in online sales, built two companies to eight figures, and built multiple 8-figure sales teams.

Picture a boat dealer with a small floor: a few pontoons, a couple of wake boats, used runabouts out front. Marine revenue at the supplier level rose 14% to $171 million. That does not mean your showroom is packed. It means the category is not dead, and the people still buying are not all shopping the cheapest unit on the lot. My read: your used inventory and your practical family boats are carrying the month, and the premium units are the ones sitting. So the question is what you do with the traffic you already have.

Now picture an outdoor building dealer — garages, carports, storage structures. You sell to the same household budget as the boat guy. Those buyers are being squeezed by elevated fuel costs, high interest rates and inflation, and when money tightens, the big seasonal purchase gets pushed. The interesting part of this report is that the utility-focused side held up while the big discretionary side fell. My read: buyers are still spending, but they are spending on things they use every week instead of three weekends a year. That is a positioning problem, not a demand problem.

Third scenario. Picture a dealer who sells boats in summer and storage or outdoor structures on the same lot, with one phone number and one sales team. If every lead gets the same follow-up, the practical buyer goes to whoever answered first while your rep is still writing up a quote on the big unit.

The pattern is the same in all three: the money moved toward the practical purchase. Your follow-up has to move with it.

How to Use This This Week

1. Sort your last 90 days of sold deals into two piles. Pile one is the weekly-use buyer — the family that fishes every Saturday, the guy who needs storage now. Pile two is the occasional-use buyer. Write down the average gross on each pile. Twenty minutes, and you will know which side your money is coming from.

1. Check your response time on your last 20 internet leads. Open your CRM or your phone and find the first outbound touch on each one. Write down the gap in minutes. If you have no timestamps, that is your answer.

1. Rewrite your first follow-up text around use, not price. For a boat dealer, open by naming yourself and the dealership, mention the unit they looked at, then ask whether this is a weekly-on-the-water boat or a few-times-a-season boat, and say the answer changes what you would show them.

1. For an outdoor building dealer, add a use question to intake: ask whether the building will be used daily for storage or work, or more seasonally, and explain that the answer changes which size and options make sense.

1. For a boat dealer with a unit that has been sitting, try a two-line text: say the unit has been on the lot longer than you would like, tell them that if they are a weekly-on-the-water family this is the one you would put them in, and offer three photos and the real number.

1. Enforce a five-minute rule for one week. Whoever is on the desk answers the phone and the web form within five minutes during business hours. Put a tally on a whiteboard. At the end of the week, compare your appointment-set rate to the week before.

1. Watch one number: the percentage of your leads that get a second contact within 48 hours. Not revenue. That is the number that moves when the market splits like this one did.

Mistakes to Avoid

• Don't read the 30% powersports jump as proof that everybody is buying. That is one supplier's revenue line, and its total sales were flat.
• Don't run the same follow-up on the practical buyer and the premium buyer. They are two different people with two different reasons to say yes.
• Don't let a flat top line convince you nothing changed. Patrick's total revenue barely moved while the mix underneath it moved hard.
• Don't wait for spring to fix your response time. The buyer who called in October is not going to call back in April.