Photo: Camping World, Bellevue, Michigan. | Wikipedia
By Jason Epperson
CHICAGO — The Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd law firm announced Friday that a class action has been initiated behalf of purchasers of Camping World Holdings stock during the period between March 8, 2017, and August 7, 2018.
The complaint charges that Camping World and certain of its officers, directors and controlling shareholders have violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The defendants are said to have made false and misleading statements, failing to disclose adverse information regarding Camping World’s financial condition. Specifically, controls over financial reporting suffered from weaknesses, and that the Company’s financial results had been misstated.
In October 2016, Camping World went public in a $261 million initial offering. In the months that followed, the company engaged in a number of strategic acquisitions, including retail stores for outdoor sporting supplies and accessories that would be built through acquiring brick-and-mortar assets of the bankrupt Gander Mountain Co. The suit further alleges that the Gander stores encountered integration setbacks, adversely impacting the Company’s earnings growth and profit margins. It also suggests that the focus on the new acquisitions pulled focus from the company’s core RV business, which began experiencing decelerating growth as the Company began losing market share to competitors. All of this information is said to have been withheld from the market, artificially inflating the CWH stock to a high of $47.19 per share.
Camping World admitted to as much earlier this year. On February 27, a release was issued revealing that Camping World had “recently identified material weaknesses in [its] internal control over financial reporting” and that the company would need to revise prior reporting periods due to various “errors.” In effect, CWH restated and reduced its 2016 basic earnings per share from $0.11 per share to $0.08 per share, a decrease of 37%. On March 1, 2018, Camping World announced that it would be unable to timely file its 2017 Form 10-K, at which point the stock dropped more than 10%.
On May 8, Camping World reported anemic financial results for the quarter ending March 31, 2018, and revealed adverse trends in its core RV business indicating that it had lost significant market share to its competitors. At that point, the price of CWH stock fell another 17%. On May 22, Camping World replaced its auditor of 13 years, causing the price of the stock to decline another 10%.
Finally, on August 7, 2018, Camping World reported another quarter of disappointing financial results, and revealed that problems in its Gander operations were more extensive than previously disclosed. On this news, the price of Camping World Class A stock fell $3.17 per share, another 14%, to close at $19.04 per share on August 8, 2018.
Plaintiff seeks to recover damages on behalf of all purchasers of Camping World Class A common stock during the Class Period (the “Class”). The plaintiff is represented by Robbins Geller, which has extensive experience in prosecuting investor class actions including actions involving financial fraud.
Camping World Holdings (CWH) stock closed at $21.36 on Friday.
