As 2023 RV retail sales continue to lag 2022 levels by about 21%, Brown & Brown Dealer Services has seen its business retract as well.
In an earnings call Tuesday with analysts, Brown & Brown CEO Powell Brown said the company’s Dealer Services business faced headwinds from lower vehicle inventory levels and higher interest rates.
In the company’s retail segment, Brown said the Dealer Services slowdown accounted for about 2% of organic growth retraction in the second quarter.
The results continued a slower pace for Dealer Services since the end of the second quarter of 2022, Brown said.
“We had mentioned this back during the Q1, as well as Q4 of last year, that we did anticipate some headwinds for dealer services in the first quarter,” he said. “We did see that it was probably in the range of about 50 to 100 basis points in that range. … We saw (headwinds) through the third quarter and fourth quarter and kind of now continuing through the impact in kind of the back end of last year was about 1% by the course.”
Brown said as the second half of 2023 is underway the insurance company is not seeing continued Dealer Services headwinds. He said the slowdown over the past year involved circumstances out of the division’s control.
“We are very, very proud of those businesses,” Brown said. “They performed really well, just go into a little bit of a cycle right now, but they are great businesses and we made significant investments in there over time.”
