REV Group, Inc. - Annual Report: 2019 (Form 10-K)

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended October 31, 2019

OR

Commission File Number 001-37999

REV Group, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (414) 290-0190

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. YES ☐ NO ☒

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. YES ☐ NO ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. YES ☒ NO ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files). YES ☒ NO ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). YES ☐ NO ☒

The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the Registrant was approximately $335,366,217 based on the last reported sale price of such securities as of April 30, 2019, the last business day of the Registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter. For purposes of this calculation, shares of common stock held by each executive officer and director and by holders of more than 5% of the outstanding common stock have been excluded. However, the registrant has made no determination that such individuals are “affiliates” within the meaning of Rule 405 under the Securities Act of 1933.

The number of shares of the Registrant’s Common Stock outstanding as of December 16, 2019 was 62,319,486.

Portions of the Registrant’s Definitive Proxy Statement relating to the Annual Meeting of Stockholders, scheduled to be held on March 4, 2020, are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Report.

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Cautionary Statement About Forward-Looking Statements

This Annual Report on Form 10-K may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “predict,” “project,” “target,” “potential,” “will,” “would,” “could,” “should,” “continue,” “contemplate,” “aim” and other similar expressions, and include our segment net sales and other expectations described under “Overview” below, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, including, but not limited to increases in interest rates, availability of credit, low consumer confidence, availability of labor, significant increases in repurchase obligations, inadequate liquidity or capital resources, availability and price of fuel, a slowdown in the economy, increased material and component costs, availability of chassis and other key component parts, sales order cancellations, slower than anticipated sales of new or existing products, new product introductions by competitors, the effect of global tensions and integration of operations relating to mergers and acquisitions activities. We disclaim any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K or to reflect any changes in expectations after the date of this release or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any statement is based, except as required by law. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that we expected, including:

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Website and Social Media Disclosure

We use our website (www.revgroup.com) and corporate Twitter account (@revgroupinc) as routine channels of distribution of company information, including news releases, analyst presentations, and supplemental financial information, as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Regulation FD. Accordingly, investors should monitor our website and our corporate Twitter account in addition to following press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts. Additionally, we provide notifications of news or announcements as part of our investor relations website. Investors and others can receive notifications of new information posted on our investor relations website in real time by signing up for email alerts.

None of the information provided on our website, in our press releases, public conference calls and webcasts, or through social media channels is incorporated into, or deemed to be a part of, this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our website or our social media channels are intended to be inactive textual references only.

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PART I

Unless otherwise indicated or the context requires otherwise, references in this Annual Report on Form 10-K to the “Company,” “REV,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to REV Group, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.

Item 1. Business.

REV is a leading designer, manufacturer and distributor of specialty vehicles and related aftermarket parts and services. We provide customized vehicle solutions for applications including: essential needs (ambulances, fire apparatus, school buses and municipal transit buses), industrial and commercial (terminal trucks, cut-away buses and sweepers) and consumer leisure (recreational vehicles, referred to as “RVs,” and luxury coaches). Our brand portfolio consists of 29 well-established principal vehicle brands including many of the most recognizable names within our served markets. Several of our brands pioneered their specialty vehicle product categories and date back more than 50 years. We believe that in most of our markets, we hold the first or second market share position and approximately 62% of our net sales during fiscal year 2019 came from products where we believe we hold such share positions.

The specialty vehicle market is a complex and attractive market characterized by: (i) numerous niche markets with annual sales volumes generally between 3,000 and 25,000 units, (ii) highly customized vehicle configurations addressing unique customer applications and (iii) specialized customer bases and distribution channels (both dealer and direct). We believe the specialty vehicle market has historically been serviced by niche companies, which has created an opportunity for market leadership by efficient producers with the ability to scale resources, such as REV. We believe that our focus on manufacturing best practices and operational improvements, supply chain management, product innovation, and life-cycle value leadership strengthen our market position and ability to compete which provides an opportunity for market growth and margin expansion.

Our products are sold to municipalities, government agencies, private contractors, consumers and industrial and commercial end users. We have a diverse customer base with our top 10 customers representing approximately 22% of our net sales in fiscal year 2019, with no single customer representing more than 5% of our net sales over the same period. We believe our diverse end markets are favorably exposed to multiple secular growth drivers such as: rising municipal spending, a growing aged population, growing urbanization, growing student populations, the increasing popularity of outdoor and active lifestyles and the replacement of existing in-service vehicles including legislated replacements.

Our business model utilizes our unique scale to drive profitable organic and acquisitive growth. We seek to gain market share by delivering high-quality products with customized attributes tailored to our customers’ product specifications, while simultaneously reducing costs and shortening delivery lead times. We aim to achieve this by standardizing and optimizing certain processes across our segments via our proprietary REV Production System (RPS) and in areas including: procurement, engineering and product development, lean manufacturing, market analysis, talent management and training, and aftermarket parts sales. We believe our manufacturing and service network, consisting of 20 manufacturing facilities, 8 Regional Technical Centers (“RTCs”) and 4 aftermarket parts warehouses, provides us with a competitive advantage through the sharing of best practices, manufacturing flexibility based on relative facility utilization levels, access to geographically diverse labor pools, delivery costs and lead times, economies of scale, customer service capabilities, and a complementary distribution system. Our business consists primarily of design, engineering, technology application, integration, and assembly activities, which require relatively low levels of capital expenditures. Furthermore, our broad presence across the specialty vehicle market and large manufacturing and distribution network are important differentiators in our ability to grow through acquisitions. We seek to make synergistic acquisitions that further enhance our existing market positions or enter REV into new, attractive product segments. In the past 13 years, we have completed 16 acquisitions. We believe we have the opportunity to grow and enhance the earnings profile of acquired businesses by expanding access to sales distribution channels, consolidating acquired businesses into our existing operations and by introducing RPS and scale into the newly acquired businesses to drive profitable growth.

To enhance our market-leading positions, we complement growth from strategic acquisitions with iterative product development and new product launches across our three segments. Product development is primarily designed to provide our customers with high-quality products that have varied and unique feature sets and product capabilities at attractive price points. In addition to product development, our businesses are continuously adapting and customizing our vehicles to meet individual customers’ needs and applications. In our RV business specifically, our new model design cycle follows similar timelines as the automotive industry, whereby new models and configurations are introduced or upgraded annually.

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Our management team has significant experience in highly specialized industrial manufacturing and aftermarket parts and services businesses. We continue to focus on initiatives to accelerate growth and improve our profitability. These initiatives include: improving brand management, developing new products, strengthening distribution, leveraging a centralized enterprise-wide procurement strategy, growing adjacent and aftermarket products and services, improving production processes within our facilities, driving down total cost of quality, implementing value-based pricing strategies and reducing fixed costs.

Our fiscal year is from November 1 to October 31, with fiscal quarters ending on the last day of January, April, July and October.

Our Products and Markets

We primarily sell new specialty vehicles which we design, engineer and assemble in our production facilities. Our aftermarket business consists of parts sales and service. We believe the majority of our new vehicle sales represent the replacement of in-service vehicles which are past their useful life, with additional sales derived from fleet expansions, new customers and new product introductions.

Our Fire & Emergency segment sells fire apparatus equipment under the Emergency One (“E-ONE”), Kovatch Mobile Equipment (“KME”) and Ferrara brands and ambulances under the American Emergency Vehicles (“AEV”), Horton Emergency Vehicles (“Horton”), Leader Emergency Vehicles (“Leader”), Marque, McCoy Miller, Road Rescue, Wheeled Coach and Frontline brands. We believe we are the largest manufacturer by unit volume of fire and emergency vehicles in the United States and have one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of products including Type I ambulances (aluminum body mounted on a heavy truck-style chassis), Type II ambulances (van conversion ambulance), Type III ambulances (aluminum body mounted on a van-style chassis), pumpers (fire apparatus on a custom or commercial chassis with a water pump and water tank to extinguish fires), ladder trucks (fire apparatus with stainless steel or aluminum ladders), tanker trucks and rescue and other vehicles. Each of our individual brands is distinctly positioned and targets certain price and feature points in the market such that dealers often carry, and customers often buy more than one REV Fire & Emergency product line.

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Our Commercial segment is a leading producer of small- and medium-sized buses, Type A school buses, transit buses, terminal trucks and sweepers in the United States. We serve the bus market through the following principal brands: Collins Bus, ENC, ElDorado National, Federal Coach, Goshen, Champion and World Trans. We serve the terminal truck market through the Capacity brand and the sweeper market through the Lay-Mor brand. Our products in the Commercial segment include cut-away buses (customized body built on various types and sizes of commercial chassis), transit buses (large municipal buses where we build our own chassis and body), luxury buses (bus-style limo or high-end luxury conversions), sweepers (three- and four-wheel versions used in road construction activities), terminal trucks (specialized vehicle which moves freight in warehouses or intermodal yards and ports), and Type A school buses (small school bus built on a cut-away chassis).

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Our Recreation segment serves the RV market through seven principal brands: American Coach, Fleetwood RV, Monaco Coach, Holiday Rambler, Renegade RV, Midwest and Lance. We believe our brand portfolio contains some of the longest standing, most recognized brands in the RV industry. Under these brands, REV provides a variety of highly recognized motorized and towable RV models such as: American Eagle, Bounder, Pace Arrow, Verona, Weekender and Lance, among others. Our products in the Recreation segment include Class A motorized RVs (motorhomes built on a heavy duty chassis with either diesel or gas engine configurations), Class C and “Super C” motorized RVs (motorhomes built on a commercial truck or van chassis), Class B RVs (motorhomes built on a van chassis), and towable travel trailers and truck campers. The Recreation segment also includes Goldshield Fiberglass, which produces a wide range of custom molded fiberglass products for the RV and broader industrial markets. Within our Recreation segment, we have some of the most well-recognized Class A diesel and gas motorized RV brands in the market.

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Our Markets

We operate primarily in the United States in the fire and emergency, commercial and recreation markets, which represented approximately 94% of our overall net sales for fiscal year 2019. For fiscal year 2019, our net sales to international markets (including Canada) amounted to $140 million, representing approximately 6% of our overall net sales for fiscal year 2019. We sell internationally through dealers and agents to end markets that utilize U.S.-style chassis and product configurations. In December 2017, we established a joint venture with China’s Chery Holding Group in Wuhu to manufacture RVs, ambulances and other specialty vehicles for distribution within China and select international markets. These products will be sold in China and internationally through Chery’s existing distribution network.

Fire and Emergency Markets

Fire and emergency products are used by municipalities and private contractors to provide essential services such as emergency response, patient transport and fire suppression, among other activities. Nearly all fire apparatus and ambulances are customized in some form; however, they share many common production and component attributes, such as similar manufacturing and engineering processes, raw materials (aluminum, lights, wire harnesses, paint and coatings, among others). The sales prices for our fire and emergency products can vary considerably given their highly customized nature, but generally range from $200,000 to $650,000 for pumper trucks, $500,000 to $1,200,000 for aerial fire trucks and $65,000 to $350,000 for ambulances. Demand is driven primarily by the replacement of in-service fleets, as well as by factors such as a growing aged population and a growing overall population (driving increased patient transportation and emergency response needs), new real estate developments, taller buildings (requiring more aerial vehicles), international airport growth (requiring Federal Aviation Administration-specified ARFF vehicles), and higher municipal funding levels. Local tax revenues are an important source of funding for fire and emergency response departments in addition to Federal grant money and locally raised funding. We estimate that ambulances have useful lives of 5-7 years and generally operate on a 24/7 schedule, driving significant annual mileage which ultimately leads to a replacement sale or remount service as their underlying chassis wears out. We estimate that pumper trucks and aerial fire trucks have useful lives of 10-12 years and 20-30 years, respectively, and that despite operating at a lower level of annual miles driven, these vehicles become obsolete before they mechanically wear out due to technological advances over those time periods.

We believe that a growing aged population, longer life expectancy, urbanization and the increasing use of emergency vehicles for non-critical care transport are all positive trends for the ambulance market.

Commercial Markets

REV’s Commercial segment addresses a broad variety of products and end markets. The transit and shuttle bus markets include applications such as airport car rental and hotel/motel shuttles, paramedical transit vehicles for hospitals and nursing homes, tour and charter operations, daycare and student transportation, and numerous other applications. We believe the commercial bus markets we serve will sustain positive long-term growth supported by growing levels of urbanization which will require increasing commercial bus usage, increased government transportation spending, an aging and growing U.S. population driving demand for shuttle buses, a necessary replacement cycle of public and private bus customers and the introduction of new bus products.

The demand for school buses is driven by the need for student transportation primarily in the United States and Canada. Within this market, we believe important demand drivers are the increasing number of students, the replacement cycle of in-service vehicles, substitution by private contract companies as the provider of student transportation from school districts (thus requiring the purchase of new buses) and legislated replacements. Insurance providers and state legislatures are increasingly requiring replacement of non-conforming vans which often drives a substitution purchase of our Type A product because of its numerous legislated safety features and benefits versus traditional van products.

Terminal truck demand is driven by replacement of in-service fleets, growth in trade and the increased use of intermodal freight services and warehouses. We anticipate ongoing growth in global trade will result in higher future intermodal freight traffic growth. Sweeper demand is also driven by replacement of in-service fleets by contractors and rental companies as well as growth in infrastructure and construction spending. Sweepers are used in various applications within the construction and road and highway infrastructure markets.

The sales prices for our bus and specialty vehicles can vary considerably, but generally range from $45,000 to $80,000 for Type A school buses, $45,000 to $190,000 for shuttle buses, $200,000 to $500,000 for transit buses and $25,000 to $165,000 for other specialty vehicles. We estimate that Type A school buses have useful lives of 8-10 years, that shuttle buses have useful lives of 5-10 years, that transit buses have useful lives of approximately 10-12 years and other specialty vehicles have useful lives of 5-7 years.

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Recreation Markets

The RV industry includes various types and configurations of both motorized and towable RVs of which we currently manufacture and sell Class A (diesel and gas), Class B, Class C motorized RVs and towable campers. Motorized RVs are self-contained units built on motor vehicle chassis with their own lighting, plumbing, heating, cooking, refrigeration, sewage holding and water storage facilities. Class A RVs are generally constructed on purpose-built chassis for reaction travel complete with engine and drivetrain components. We then build the vehicle body, and design, fabricate and install the living area and driver’s compartment of these motorized RVs. Class B RVs are built on a consumer van chassis with the entire living area contained within the existing van frame. Class C RVs are built on consumer truck or van chassis which include an engine, drivetrain and a finished cab section. In Class Cs we design, fabricate and install the living area to connect to the driver’s compartment and the cab section. Super Class C RVs are heavy duty Class C motorhomes built on a commercial truck chassis that can be used in conjunction with other outdoor or sporting activities because of a larger towing capacity.

Within the Recreation segment, we also design and manufacture a portfolio of towable travel trailers and truck campers under the Lance brand name. These trailers and campers are comprised of a self-contained living area with their own heating, lighting, plumbing, cooking, refrigeration, sleeping and bathroom facilities but excluding a motor vehicle chassis. These products require the RV owner to utilize a motor vehicle to pull or carry them between destinations.

RVs are a consumer leisure purchase and therefore factors that drive demand include: consumer wealth (including the value of primary housing residences and the stock market level), consumer confidence, availability of financing and levels of disposable income. We believe end customers tend to be brand-loyal and repeat buyers who make decisions based on brand, quality, product configuration (primarily floorplan design, features and product styling), service availability and experience and price. Lifestyle trends are expected to support the growth of the RV market. We believe RVs are becoming more popular through increased interest in nature-based tourism and a growing preference for adventure travel among the growing urban populations. According to the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, or RVIA, RV sales will continue to benefit from the aging “baby boomers” as more people enter the primary RV ownership age group of 55 to 70 years old. In 2018, about one million new camper households were added to those who consider themselves annual campers, with an estimated 7 million new camper households in the U.S. since 2014. In addition to the growth tied to aging demographics, there are approximately 45 million active U.S. campers, many of which are outside the aforementioned demographic, representing an opportunity to expand the RV customer base. In any given year, the macro demand drivers of an aging population and popularity of travel will be impacted by the shorter-term cyclical demand swings for RVs that are caused by changes in consumer sentiment due to factors that include consumer wealth, confidence and the availability of financing.

The sales prices for our RVs can vary considerably, but generally range from $30,000 to $500,000. We estimate that RVs have useful lives of 8-15 years.

Customers and End Markets

Our end markets include the municipal market (vehicles for essential services such as emergency response, patient transportation and student transportation), the private contractor market (privately owned fleets that provide transportation services), the consumer market (vehicles for transportation and leisure needs) and the industrial/commercial markets (vehicles for transportation, construction projects and global port and intermodal transportation applications). Based on aggregated available industry data, we estimate that the combined size of our annual addressable markets is approximately 101,000 vehicles.

Our top 10 customers combined accounted for approximately 22% of our net sales for fiscal year 2019, with no customer representing more than 5% of our net sales in the same period. We and our predecessor and acquired companies have operated in our businesses for many years, and many of our brands have been trusted names in the marketplace for decades. As a result, we benefit from many long-term customer relationships.

Approximately 48% of our net sales in fiscal year 2019 were made directly or indirectly to governmental bodies, including municipalities, such as fire departments, school districts, hospitals and the U.S. federal government. In fiscal year 2019, our approximate direct or indirect net sales by end market was as follows: 48% government, 30% consumer, 10% private contractor and 12% industrial/commercial.

For fiscal years 2019 and 2018, approximately 97% and 99%, respectively, of our net sales were to customers located in the United States and Canada.

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Growth in our end markets are driven by various macro-economic and demographic factors including:

Our Strengths

We believe we have the following competitive strengths:

Market Leader Across All Segments with a Large Installed Base— We believe we are a market leader in each of the fire and emergency, commercial and recreation vehicle markets. Approximately 62% of our net sales during fiscal year 2019 are in markets in which we believe we hold the first or second market share positions. We believe we are the largest manufacturer by unit volume of fire and emergency vehicles in the United States. We also believe our Commercial segment is the #2 producer of small- and medium-sized commercial buses as well as Type A school buses in the United States. We believe we are also a leading producer of transit buses, terminal trucks and sweepers. Within our Recreation segment, we are one of the top producers of Class A diesel and gas motorized RVs. We are also a leader in high-end Class B and Super C RVs under the Midwest and Renegade brands. We also believe we have one of the highest quality travel trailer and truck camper product lines under the Lance brand name.

We estimate that the replacement value of our installed base of approximately 250,000 vehicles across our segments is approximately $36 billion, which we believe is a significant competitive advantage for both replacement unit sales and aftermarket parts, which we estimate to be $830 million of potential sales, and service sales, as brand familiarity drives customer loyalty and fleet owners frequently seek to standardize their in-service fleets through repeat purchases of existing brands and product configurations. For example, one of the largest municipal fire departments in the United States has the vast majority of its fleets of ambulances and fire apparatus standardized on REV branded product configuration and feature sets that satisfy this customer’s unique specifications and standards.

Broad Product Portfolio and Well-Recognized Brands— Our product portfolio is comprised of high-quality vehicles sold under 29 well-established principal vehicle brands that in many instances pioneered their market segments. For example, we believe the first Type A yellow school bus was developed and sold by Collins Bus and the first Type I ambulance was developed and sold by Horton. We believe our portfolio is comprised of complementary product offerings in adjacent markets and enables us to attract and retain top dealers who in many instances sell multiple REV brands in their territories. Our vehicle platforms are highly customizable and can meet nearly all product specifications demanded by our customers. In each of the markets that we serve, we believe our brands are among the most recognized in the industry, representing performance, quality, reliability, durability, technological leadership and superior customer service.

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Selling into Attractive, Growing End Markets— Each of our segments serves end markets that are supported by what we believe to be favorable, long-term demographic, economic and secular trends. We believe that the growing aged population in the United States will increase demand for products across all of our segments, as older demographics are a key demand driver for products such as emergency vehicles and RVs. In the municipal Fire & Emergency segment, increasing legislated changes requiring useful life replacement cycles will create a source of recurring demand for our products as in-service vehicles achieve mileage or age limits. Our Commercial segment is poised to grow as a result of government subsidies for alternative fuel source transportation and increasing urbanization within the United States which is expected to drive greater demand for commercial buses. We believe demand for our school buses and our fire and emergency vehicles will grow with increasing state and local government spending. We also believe our RV segment is poised for long-term industry growth driven by increased interest in camping among older and younger generations and market unit recoveries to historical average levels for certain product categories. Additionally, we believe the current U.S. camper base of 45 million people represents an opportunity to expand the RV customer base. Though our net sales for all the specialty vehicles we manufacture are primarily derived from sales in the United States, similar positive market dynamics exist in other parts of the world, providing an opportunity for future global growth in each of our segments. Only approximately 6% of our net sales in fiscal year 2019 were from sales to customers outside the United States.

Unique Scale and Business Model— As the only manufacturer of specialty vehicles across all three of our product segments and one of the largest participants in our markets by net sales, we enjoy a unique position relative to many of our competitors that we believe provides a competitive advantage and an enhanced growth profile. Many of our products contain similar purchased components, such as chassis, engines, lighting, wiring and other commodities which increases our leverage with and relevance to key suppliers as compared to our competition. The operational processes across our different products are based on common elements, such as chassis preparation and production, body fabrication, product assembly and painting which allow us to develop best practices across our manufacturing system and implement those processes to drive operational efficiency. Our platform also allows us to leverage the combined engineering resources and product development resources from our broad network to bring new products, features and customer specific customization to market faster. Our business model makes us more desirable to our distribution channel partners as we are able to provide them with a full line of products to address our mutual customers’ needs across a wider variety of price and product feature elements which gives dealers the opportunity to sell to a larger customer base and grow their sales and earnings. Additionally, our scale allows us to more efficiently amortize investments in service locations, parts sales infrastructure and information technology tools, among others.

Business Model Produces Attractive Financial Characteristics—Our core production processes are design, engineering, component integration and assembly in nature, creating a business model that includes a variable cost structure, low required levels of maintenance capital expenditures as a percentage of net sales, structural ability to drive attractive levels of return on invested capital and strong revenue visibility in certain product categories with longer backlogs. Based on our long-term historical results of operations, we estimate that across all three of our segments, approximately 83% of our cost of goods sold is comprised of direct materials (including chassis) and direct labor, which are typically variable in nature. Because these costs are associated with the specific production of our vehicles in each period, they are typically adjusted within a given period based on production levels in that period. Our remaining cost of goods sold is comprised of certain indirect labor and overhead costs which are fixed or semi-variable in nature because these costs are not linked to specific vehicle volumes in a given period. The time required to adjust these levels of spending is longer and management decisions regarding these costs are typically made based on longer term trends and forecasts. In addition, our selling, general and administrative expenses are primarily comprised of salaried payroll expenses which we structure around the level of demand in our markets and based on each business’ sales distribution characteristics. Finally, certain of our businesses carry a relatively long-duration backlog which enables strong visibility into future net sales which can range from two to twelve months depending on the product and market. Where this backlog visibility exists, we are able to more effectively plan and predict our sales and production activity.

Experienced Consolidator with Proven Ability to Integrate Acquisitions—Over the last 13 years, we have completed 16 acquisitions across our Fire & Emergency, Commercial and Recreation segments and continue to actively consider future potential acquisitions that complement and expand our current product portfolio. Our scale and plant network, strong end market positions, extensive distribution networks, access to low cost capital and reputation as an active and effective strategic acquirer, position us favorably to continue to grow and enhance value through strategic acquisitions. The specialty vehicle market is highly fragmented with a large number of smaller producers, within our existing markets as well as in new markets where we believe there would be synergies with REV. We believe all these attributes position REV as an acquirer of choice in the specialty vehicles market.

Our Growth Strategies

We plan to continue pursuing several strategies to grow our earnings, expand our market share and further diversify our revenue stream, including:

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Drive Margin Expansion Through Controllable Operational Initiatives— We are focused on driving operational improvement initiatives across the organization to increase net income, free cash flow, Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EBITDA over the long term. We believe we have an improving enterprise-wide culture focused on continuous improvement, implementing measurable performance targets and sharing of best practices across the entire organization. We continuously strive to identify and act on additional profitability improvement initiatives in many of our business units.

Develop Innovative New Customer Offerings— Due to the specific customer requirements for our products, we are continually enhancing and customizing our product offerings by introducing new features to enhance customer utility across a variety of price points. We seek to expand our addressable market by developing innovative products and services that extend our market leading combination of features, performance, quality and price to new customer bases, new markets or new segments of existing markets. We believe our process of constant innovation will not only help us increase net sales but also achieve lower costs and generate higher margins as our new products are frequently designed to leverage existing procurement relationships and for ease of manufacturability. In addition, there are multiple natural product adjacencies where REV has valuable brand equity, leading technology and cost positions where we believe we can generate strong demand for new products.

Enhance Sales and Distribution Model— We believe that we are an attractive specialty vehicle OEM partner for dealers due to the breadth and quality of our product offerings, our brand recognition, our ability to produce products at varied price and feature points, as well as our aftermarket support capabilities. We intend to continue to leverage this strength to enhance our distribution network through selectively adding dealers in new territories, strengthening dealers in our existing network and expanding our direct sales and service capabilities in targeted markets. Our goal is to partner with the leading dealers in each market and to provide the necessary resources to ensure our partner dealers can best position REV products to compete successfully within their regions. We will also continue to optimize our go-to-market channel strategy (e.g., distribution or direct sale) based on the specific market dynamics and customer composition by region. We have historically focused on customers within the United States; however, we believe there is demand internationally for our products and may seek to expand our distribution globally.

Accelerate Aftermarket Growth— Our end users’ large in-service fleets create strong demand for aftermarket parts in order to keep vehicles running and to support their residual value. We have formalized an aftermarket strategy and have created a dedicated management team to oversee our aftermarket business. We have established a web-based technology platform to provide our customers with real time data on parts availability and pricing for each of the vehicles we manufacturer. In 2019, we invested in our aftermarket services network infrastructure with the implementation of Salesforce Service Cloud to automate the management of customer service cases and parts sales on a 1:1 level at scale.

Pursue Value Enhancing Acquisitions— We seek to pursue acquisitions which enhance our existing market positions, facilitate our entry to new product categories and/or markets and achieve our targeted financial returns. We have a long history of acquisitions with 16 transactions completed over the past 13 years. Given our leadership positions within our markets and our existing facility, service and distribution network, we believe we have many inherent advantages in making acquisitions and have demonstrated the ability to identify, execute and integrate acquisitions while realizing synergies. We believe that we have a clear acquisition strategy in place, targeting acquisitions with significant synergies to drive long-term value creation for shareholders. We will seek acquisitions of companies with strong brands and complementary products and distribution networks that align well with our aftermarket strategies and provide strong synergies with our existing business. In addition, we will target acquisitions which further diversify or broaden our product offerings and geographic reach, and simultaneously produce attractive financial returns.

Our Initial Public Offering

On January 26, 2017, we announced the pricing of an initial public offering (“IPO”) of shares of our common stock, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on January 27, 2017. On February 1, 2017, we completed the IPO of 12.5 million shares of common stock at a price of $22.00 per share. The Company received $275.0 million in gross proceeds from the IPO, or approximately $253.6 million in net proceeds after deducting the underwriting discount and expenses related to the IPO. The net proceeds of the IPO were used to partially pay down the Company’s existing debt. The Company redeemed the entire outstanding balance of its Senior Secured Notes (the “Notes”), including a prepayment premium and accrued interest, plus it partially paid down a portion of the then outstanding balance of its revolving credit facility. Immediately prior to closing of the IPO, the Company completed an 80-for-one stock split of its Class A common stock and Class B common stock and reclassified the Class A common stock and Class B common stock into a single class of common stock, which was the same class as the shares sold in the IPO.

Our Equity Sponsor

The Company’s primary equity holders are funds and an investment vehicle associated with AIP CF IV, LLC, which the Company collectively refers to as “American Industrial Partners,” “AIP” or “Sponsor” and which indirectly own approximately 54.3% of REV Group’s voting equity as of October 31, 2019. AIP is an operations and engineering-focused private equity firm headquartered in New York, New York.

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Distribution

We distribute either through our direct sales force or our well-established dealer network, consisting of approximately 500 dealers. Substantially all of our dealers are independently owned. Whether we sell directly to the customer or through a dealer depends largely on the product line, the customer base and applicable regulations. We provide our direct sales force representatives and dealers with training on the operation and specifications of our products. We strive to keep our direct sales force representatives and dealers up to date on our product offerings and new features as well as market trends. We believe our scale enables us to dedicate certain sales and marketing efforts to particular products, customers or geographic regions, which we believe enables us to develop expertise valued by our customers.

As one of the leaders in each of our markets, we believe our distribution network consists of many of the leading dealers within each segment. We believe our extensive dealer network has the ability to meet the needs of end customers with high to low value-added products, such as vehicles, equipment, components and parts and services, at a variety of price points and order sizes. As a result, most of our dealers have sold our products for over a decade and are serving a well-established installed base of end customers, creating cost advantages and entrenched positions due to customer loyalty. We also periodically assist our dealers in composing bid packages for larger opportunities that involve our product lines. We continue to grow and enhance our distribution network into underserved areas. In addition, we evaluate export opportunities from time to time in select international markets through our direct sales force and our established international dealerships and agents.

Fire & Emergency Segment

We sell our ambulances through internal direct sales personnel as well as a select group of independent dealers in the United States. Our direct sales force is responsible for sales to key Accounts that operate in multiple states or require a direct OEM relationship to service their business. Approximately 56 independent dealers provide full coverage of the U.S. domestic market and provide both sales and service to our customers. We believe our dealers hold the leading position in their assigned territories, providing us with a significant competitive advantage. In addition, we participate in Government Services Agency (“GSA”) Schedules Program and we export to most of the international markets that participate in this program. These include countries in the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean basin.

Our fire apparatus business uses its direct sales force and its dealer network comprised of approximately 70 dealers in the United States and Canada and approximately 25 international dealers to sell its products. We have continued to grow our distribution network into underserved areas. As such, we believe there are significant opportunities to grow our dealer footprint to serve this market. We believe that with our new product and expanding dealer network in this area, we will begin to capture additional market share going forward.

Commercial Segment

We utilize dealer distribution in markets where a local, experienced dealer is available to sell and service our vehicles. Selling through a dealer can be more cost effective than utilizing direct sales personnel in some cases. As a result, we continually evaluate potential dealer relationships to determine if the addition of a dealer in a given region would be advantageous to net sales and our market share. In addition to our dealer network, we also utilize direct national accounts, such as transit agencies, school transportation contractors, national childcare providers, hotels, rental car and parking lot operators, nursing and retirement homes and church organizations.

The Capacity brand utilizes a combination of a direct sales force, international agents and dealers to market its products worldwide. Capacity also utilizes an extensive network of dealers in the United States and Canada.

The Lay-Mor brand is principally marketed in both commercial and rental markets through the manufacturer’s representatives and distributors who are supported by our internal sales efforts with key customers, such as national equipment rental companies and government agencies. Our direct sales personnel work directly with national customers to ensure that Lay-Mor equipment meets customers’ specifications and is qualified for sale throughout their national network.

Recreation Segment

We sell our RV products through a national independent dealer network with internal sales personnel responsible for direct engagement with these dealers. RV purchases are sensitive to wholesale and retail financing, consumer confidence and disposable income, making them discretionary products. The largest RV buying group is people between the ages of 35 and 54, with an average age of all RV owners of 45, according to the RVIA. Many buyers of RVs are brand loyal, repeat purchasers who make decisions based on brand, product configuration (primarily floor plan design, features and product styling), service and price. This buying group is expected to grow as the wealthy baby boomer generation continues to age. For many of these buyers, a motor home purchase is the second biggest purchase in their lifetime; therefore, the shopping timeline is longer than other consumer purchases. The buying process normally starts with online searches, followed by show visits and eventually a dealership visit for the purchase.

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Manufacturing and Service Capabilities

We currently operate 20 manufacturing facilities, 8 RTCs and 4 aftermarket parts warehouses across the United States with approximately 5.7 million square feet of manufacturing and service space. We believe that our factories are among some of the most efficient and lowest cost production facilities in each of our markets due to the production processes that we employ, our purchasing scale and the high unit volume throughput. In addition, approximately 83% of our cost of goods sold are comprised of direct materials (including chassis) and direct labor, which are typically variable in nature. Because these costs are associated with the specific production of our vehicles in each period, they are typically adjusted within a given period based on production levels in that period. Our products within each of our segments and across the enterprise share a centralized sourcing model and employ certain common engineering and manufacturing processes. Through our manufacturing infrastructure, we leverage our capabilities and scale in procurement, new product development, design, assembly and painting processes. We also leverage best practices in quality control and worker safety across our segments.

We strive to instill a manufacturing culture of continuous improvement through our proprietary RPS and other initiatives. Many of our direct labor employees are taught lean manufacturing principles or other operational best practices to improve the efficiency of their production processes and enhance their employment experience. The commonality and scale of RPS across all of our factories in the areas of chassis production/preparation, product assembly and flow processes and “body” and apparatus design and manufacturing allows us to share efficiency and operational best practices across our segments.

Our RTC footprint is strategically placed throughout the United States and our locations are staffed with technicians and customer service representatives to support our approximately 250,000 installed base of vehicles. Our RTCs complement our dealer network to provide our end users with the parts and service that they need to keep their fleets operating and to meet the demand of their customers. The services that we provide at our RTC locations include normal maintenance and service activities, damage repair and rebuilding services. Rebuilding services include manufacturer certified repair and apparatus remounting processes that can extend the life of a vehicle and reduce the total cost of ownership for our end users.

Engineering, Research and Development

We believe our engineering, research and development (“R&D”) capabilities are essential to ensure we remain competitive in the markets in which we operate. We continue to engage in new product development, enhancement and testing to improve both existing products and the development of new vehicles and components.

Virtually all of our vehicle sales require some level of custom engineering to meet customer specifications and evolving industry standards. In the Fire & Emergency segment, engineering and development activities include the design and production of customized equipment to meet the specific needs and applications of our customers. In the Commercial segment, the design and functionality of our buses and specialty equipment is constantly updated to improve passenger safety, functionality, access and comfort. In the Recreation segment, overall design, floorplan layout, functionality and amenities require frequent updating to address changes in consumer preferences and to enhance our existing product offerings.

R&D costs are expensed as incurred and included as part of operating expenses in the Company’s consolidated statements of operations. The Company’s R&D costs include only those incurred for the design of a new vehicle platform that is made commercially available to a broad portion of our end markets. Our R&D expenses do not include the costs to design and develop specific customized products to individual customers or end users. These costs are included as normal production costs associated with the sale of the specific product for which they were incurred. R&D costs totaled $4.8 million, $6.5 million and $4.2 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively.

Suppliers and Materials

In fiscal year 2019, we purchased $1.5 billion of chassis, direct materials and other components from outside suppliers. The largest component of these purchases was for vehicle chassis, representing 29% of the total purchase amount. These chassis are sourced from major automotive manufacturers, including Ford, Freightliner, General Motors, and other original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”). These OEMs provide us with standardized, mass-produced chassis models, which we then convert for our customers under approved “authorized converter” agreements with the OEMs. We have tailored our products and processes to the specifications of these OEM agreements and have built customer expectations and planning around these designs. Therefore, we are reliant on a consistent supply of chassis and the maintenance of our status as “approved converters” in order to maintain our sales.

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We also purchase and utilize other materials in our production processes including: steel and aluminum in our apparatus and passenger compartment manufacturing, engines and drivetrain (transmissions, axles) components for our manufactured chassis in the transit bus, RV, fire apparatus and terminal truck businesses, lighting packages for our emergency and school bus products and HVAC systems and parts, seats and seatbelts, doors, lifts, electrical switches and components, hydraulic components and miscellaneous hardware. We also purchase materials that contain or are composed of certain raw or base materials such as paint, fiberglass parts and chassis body components, wood and wood parts, brass and certain other petroleum-based resins such as plastic.

We utilize a centralized sourcing model that includes a dedicated team of procurement professionals to complement our segment sourcing teams so that we can coordinate and leverage our purchases across a diverse supplier base. Our centralized sourcing model leverages our growing scale within our markets to achieve competitive pricing and ensure availability. Furthermore, we have historically integrated our acquired companies into our centralized sourcing model to lower their costs. We do not typically enter into sourcing arrangements that are more than 18 to 24 months in duration and we do not undertake defined purchase agreements requiring fixed commitments or “take or pay” requirements with our vendors.

We strive to maintain strong and collaborative relationships with our suppliers and believe that the sources for these inputs are well-established, generally available on world markets and are in sufficient quantity, other than chassis, such that we would expect to avoid disruption to our businesses if we encountered an interruption from one of our key suppliers.

Intellectual Property

Patents and other proprietary rights are important to our business and can provide us with a competitive advantage. We also rely on trade secrets, design and manufacturing know-how, continuing technological innovations and licensing opportunities to maintain and improve our competitive position. We periodically review third-party proprietary rights, including patents and patent applications, in an effort to avoid infringement on third-party proprietary rights and protect our own, identify licensing or partnership opportunities and monitor the intellectual property claims of others.

We own a portfolio of intellectual property, including approximately 51 patents, confidential technical information and technological expertise in manufacturing specialty vehicles. We also own approximately 400 registered trademarks in the United States for certain trade names and important products. Due to the markets in which we operate, we believe that our trade names are the most valuable component of our intellectual property. We believe that our intellectual property rights, confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions are adequate for our business and have an active program to maintain these rights. Our well-respected and widely recognized proprietary trade names include: E-ONE, KME, Ferrara, Wheeled Coach, AEV, HEV, LEV, Marque, McCoy Miller, Eldorado, Champion, Collins, Goshen Coach, ENC, World Trans, Capacity, Lay-Mor, Fleetwood RV, Monaco, American Coach, Holiday Rambler, Renegade and Midwest.

While we consider our patents and trademarks to be valued assets, we do not believe that our competitive position is dependent primarily on our patents or trademarks or that our operations are dependent upon any single patent or group of related patents to manufacture our products. We nevertheless face intellectual property-related risks. For more information on these risks, see “Item 1A. Risk Factors—Risks Relating to Our Business—Intellectual property risks may adversely affect our business and may dilute our competitive advantage.”

Environmental, Health and Safety Laws and Regulations

Our ongoing global operations are subject to a wide range of federal, state, local and foreign environmental, health and safety laws and regulations. These laws and regulations relate to water discharges, air emissions, the generation, storage, handling, use, release, disposal and transportation of hazardous materials and wastes, environmental cleanup, the health and safety of our employees and the fuel economy and emissions of the vehicles we manufacture. Certain of our operations require environmental, health and safety permits or other approvals from governmental authorities, and certain of these permits and approvals are subject to expiration, denial, revocation or modification under various circumstances. Compliance with these laws, regulations, permits and approvals is a significant factor in our business. We have expended resources, both financial and managerial, to comply with environmental laws and worker safety laws and maintain procedures designed to foster and ensure compliance, and we are committed to protecting our employees and the environment against the risks associated with these substances. However, our failure to comply with applicable environmental, health and safety laws and regulations or permit or approval requirements could result in substantial liabilities or civil or criminal fines or penalties or enforcement actions, including regulatory or judicial orders enjoining or curtailing operations or requiring remedial or corrective measures, installation of pollution control equipment or other actions, as well as business disruptions, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

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In addition, we may be responsible under environmental laws and regulations for the investigation, remediation and monitoring, as well as associated costs, expenses and third-party damages, including tort liability and natural resource damages, relating to past or present releases of hazardous substances on or from our properties or the properties of our predecessor companies, or third-party sites to which we or our predecessor companies have sent hazardous waste for disposal or treatment. Liability under these laws may be imposed without regard to fault and may be joint and several. For example, in April 2012, we received a request for information from the EPA regarding the contamination of soil and groundwater at the San Fernando Valley Area 2 Superfund Site (the “San Fernando Site”). This site is regional in scale, encompasses large portions of the Los Angeles area, and potentially involves many persons (known as “potentially responsible parties” or “PRPs”). The EPA has overseen investigative and remedial activities at the San Fernando Site for many years. Historically, the agency has focused on volatile organic compound (“VOC”) contamination. More recently, the EPA identified chromium as a contaminant of concern at the San Fernando Site, and we believe that it was in that connection that the EPA sent us a request for information regarding whether a prior owner or operator of a facility located within the boundary of the San Fernando Site is a predecessor company to us (although we do not currently operate a facility in such area). The precise nature and extent of VOC and chromium contamination at the San Fernando Site, the nature and cost of any remedial actions that the EPA may require in connection with such contamination, the number and identity of PRPs that might share in responsibility for the VOC and chromium contamination, and whether the Company will become involved as a PRP are not known at this time. If we were to become involved as a PRP at the San Fernando Site, we could be compelled to contribute to the cost of investigations and remediation at the site. We are unable to estimate the potential impact of this liability at this time, and our ability to collect on our insurance policies for remediation costs or damages in connection with any claims relating to the San Fernando Site is unknown at this time. This liability would be allocated among us and other PRPs that are solvent. See “Item 1A. Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Business—Our operations and the industries in which we operate are subject to environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, and we may face significant costs or liabilities associated with environmental, health and safety matters.”

Competition

The markets in which we participate are highly competitive. We compete with both divisions of large, diversified companies as well as private and public companies which are pure play participants in one of our product markets. Several of our competitors may have more financial resources than us but we have also been increasing the scope and scale of the products we produce and the markets we serve. We believe that through this growth we are developing a relatively scaled business across all three of our segments, which creates a competitive advantage against a large portion of our competition and makes us more relevant compared to our larger competitors. We believe that we have been able to effectively compete on the basis of product quality and reliability, total cost of ownership, breadth of product offerings, manufacturing capability and flexibility, client-specific customization, price, technical capability, product innovation, customer service and delivery times. We also believe that we have enhanced our competitive position by expanding our parts and service business model through the development of aftermarket service centers, which we refer to as Regional Technical Centers, and the establishment of dedicated parts warehouses. The combination of our products, aftermarket support and large installed base of vehicles provides us with a competitive advantage across our end markets.

In the Fire & Emergency segment, our competition includes Pierce Manufacturing (Oshkosh Corp.), Rosenbauer International, Spartan Motors, Inc., Demers Ambulance, Crestline, Medix Specialty Vehicles, FWD Seagrave and Life Line Emergency Vehicles, among others. In the Commercial segment, our competition includes Starcraft Bus (Forest River), Thomas Bus (Daimler), Blue Bird Corporation, Gillig, Nova Bus (Volvo), Navistar International, Inc., TICO, Kalmar (Cargotec) and New Flyer Industries, Inc., among others. In the Recreation segment, our competition includes Thor Industries, Inc., Winnebago Industries, Inc., Forest River, and Tiffin Motorhomes, Inc., among others.

Employees

As of October 31, 2019, we had approximately 8,040 employees. Our employees are not currently represented by a labor union or collective bargaining agreement. We believe that our relationship with our employees is good.

Corporate Information

REV Group, Inc. is a corporation organized under the laws of the state of Delaware. Our principal executive offices are located at 111 East Kilbourn Avenue, Suite 2600, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202. Our telephone number at that address is (414) 290-0190. We make our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports available through our website, as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. Our website address is www.revgroup.com. The information on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and you should not rely on any such information in making the decision whether to purchase shares of our common stock.

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Item 1A. Risk Factors.

Investing in shares of our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below together with all of the other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our consolidated financial statements and the related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, before deciding to invest in shares of our common stock. If any of the following risks actually occurs, our business, prospects, operating results and financial condition could suffer materially, the trading price of shares of our common stock could decline and you could lose all or part of your investment. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe to be immaterial may also adversely affect our business.

Risks Relating to Our Business

Our business is affected by economic factors and adverse developments in economic conditions which could have an adverse effect on the demand for our products and the results of our operations.

Our business is impacted by the U.S. economic environment, employment levels, consumer confidence, changes in interest rates and instability in securities markets around the world, among other factors. In particular, changes in the U.S. economic climate could result in reduced demand in key end markets. Motorized recreational vehicle (“RV”) purchases are discretionary in nature and therefore sensitive to wholesale and retail financing, consumer confidence, unemployment levels, disposable income and changing levels of consumer home equity. These factors result in RVs being discretionary purchases. For example, the 2008 recession caused consumers to reduce their discretionary spending, which negatively affected our sales volumes for RVs. Terminal truck sales volumes are also impacted by economic conditions, global trade, changes in supply chain management and industrial output, as these factors impact our end-market customers for these products, which include shipping ports, trucking/distribution hubs and rail terminal operators. RV and terminal truck sales are affected by U.S. and global general economic conditions, which create risks that future economic downturns will reduce consumer demand and negatively impact our sales.

While less economically sensitive than the Recreation segment and our Terminal Truck business, our Fire & Emergency segment and the remainder of our Commercial segment are also impacted by the overall economic environment. Local tax revenues are an important source of funding for fire and emergency response departments. For example, reduced municipal tax revenues resulting from the 2008 recession led to a decline in these markets. As fire and emergency apparatus and school and transit buses are typically a larger cost item for municipalities and their service life is very long, their purchase is more deferrable. This can result in cyclicality in certain of our end markets, which in turn may result in fluctuations in our sales and results of operations.

A decrease in employment levels, consumer confidence or the availability of financing, other adverse economic events, or the failure of actual demand for our products to meet our estimates, could negatively affect the demand for our products. Any decline in overall customer demand in markets in which we operate could have a material adverse effect on our operating performance.

Some of the markets in which we compete are seasonal, which results in fluctuations in sales and results of operations.

We have experienced, and expect to continue to experience, significant variability in sales, production and net income as a result of seasonality in our Recreation segment. Since RVs are used primarily by vacationers and campers, demand in the RV industry generally declines during the fall and winter months, while sales and profits are generally highest during the spring and summer months. Dealer demand and buying patterns may impact the timing of shipments from one quarter to another. In addition, severe weather conditions in some geographic areas may delay the timing of shipments from one quarter to another. Consequently, the results for any annual or quarterly prior period may not be indicative of results for any future annual or quarterly period.

Certain of our other products, such as school buses, have also historically been, and are expected to continue to be, seasonal. This seasonality has an impact on the comparability of our quarterly results. Moreover, weak macroeconomic conditions can adversely affect demand for certain of our products and lead to an overall aging of product fleets beyond a typical replacement cycle. During economic downturns that would result in lower demand of our vehicles, we may find it necessary to reduce production line rates and employee headcount. An economic downturn may reduce, and in the past has reduced, demand in all of our segments, resulting in lower sales volumes, lower prices and decreased operating profits or losses. Additionally, our business is subject to seasonal and other fluctuations. In particular, we have historically experienced higher sales during the third quarter and fourth quarter versus the first quarter and second quarter during each fiscal year. This seasonality is caused primarily by school districts ordering more school buses prior to the beginning of a school year, the consumer buying habits for RVs, municipal spending and budget cycles, the impact of travel and construction in the summer months, as well as how certain seasonal months aggregate into our fiscal quarters which are different than calendar quarters. Our ability to meet customer delivery schedules is dependent on a number of factors including, but not limited to, access to components and raw materials, an adequate and capable workforce, assembling/engineering expertise for certain projects and sufficient manufacturing capacity. The availability of these factors may in some cases be subject to conditions outside of our control. A failure to deliver in accordance with our performance obligations may result in financial penalties under certain of our contracts and damage to existing customer relationships, damage to our reputation and a loss of future bidding opportunities, which could cause the loss of future business and could negatively impact our financial performance.

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A disruption, termination or alteration of the supply of vehicle chassis or other critical components from third-party suppliers could materially adversely affect the sales of our products.

Our sales and our manufacturing processes depend on the supply of manufactured vehicle chassis and other critical components such as engines, transmissions and axles from major auto manufacturers and other original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”), including Allison Transmission, Chrysler, Cummins, Ford, Freightliner, General Motors, Navistar and Volvo, among others. For the standardized, mass-produced chassis models, we convert the chassis for our customers under approved “authorized converter” agreements with the OEMs. We have tailored our products and processes to the specifications of these OEM agreements and have built customer expectations and planning around these designs. We are therefore reliant on a consistent supply of chassis and the maintenance of our status as “approved converters” in order to maintain our sales. If these manufacturers experience production delays, we may receive a lower allocation of chassis than anticipated, or if the quality or design of their chassis changes, or if these manufacturers implement recalls, we could incur significant costs or disruptions to our business, which could have a material adverse effect on our net sales, financial condition, profitability and/or cash flows. At various times, we may carry increased inventory to protect against these concerns, which may negatively impact our results of operations. We purchase a significant amount of components from domestic suppliers. To the extent tariffs increase the price of imported products, the industry may move more component orders to domestic suppliers, which could strain the capacity of our suppliers, putting the normal, uninterrupted supply of components at risk. Additionally, certain important components that we use in our vehicles, such as engines and transmissions, are produced by a limited number of qualified suppliers or we may have a single supplier sourcing a specific component, and any disruption in their supply of such components to us would have a negative impact on our business.

Volatility in the financial markets generally, and in the truck and automotive sectors in particular, could impact the financial viability of certain of our key third-party suppliers, or could cause them to exit certain business lines, or change the terms on which they are willing to provide products. For example, during the 2008-2010 automotive industry crisis, many vehicle manufacturers, including Ford and General Motors, idled factories and reduced their output of vehicle chassis. During 2018 and 2019, many of our vehicle manufacturers encountered production issues and delivery delays due to factors which included a vendor factory fire, new plant location inefficiencies, unplanned work stoppages and indirect impacts from the implementation of tariffs. A recurrence of either of these events or another similar development could lead to difficulties in meeting our customers’ demands and reduce our overall sales volume. Further, any changes in quality or design, capacity limitations, shortages of raw materials or other problems could result in shortages or delays in the supply of vehicle chassis or components to us. Our business, operating results and financial condition could suffer if our suppliers reduce output or introduce new chassis models that are unpopular with our customers or are incompatible with our current product designs or production process.

We face intense competition in our markets, which may harm our financial performance and growth prospects.

We operate in a highly competitive environment in each of the markets we serve and we face competition in each of our product segments from numerous competitors. We compete principally on the basis of client-specific customization, product quality and reliability, breadth of product offering, manufacturing capability and flexibility, technical capability, product innovation, customer service, after-sales support, delivery times and price. Certain of our competitors are smaller companies which may have lower operating costs and greater operational flexibility, and may have focus on regional markets where they have competitive advantages of proximity and relationships with local municipalities or other regional customers. Other of our competitors are large, well-established companies with capacity, financial and other resources that may be in excess of ours. Additionally, companies that are not currently competitors but that are involved in the specialty vehicle market (such as a supplier) or that operate in an adjacent market (such as a producer of mainstream cars and trucks) could choose to enter the specialty vehicle market.

Our profitability is sensitive to changes in the balance between supply and demand in the specialty vehicle market. Competitors having lower operating costs than we do will have a competitive advantage over us with respect to products that are particularly price-sensitive. New manufacturing facilities may be built or idle production lines may be activated. Additionally, imbalances in the regional supply and demand for our products could result in increased competition in the markets in which we compete.

We may also face competition from companies developing zero-emissions specialty vehicles or other technologies to minimize emissions. Competition from these companies could make our specialty vehicles less desirable in the market place.

As a result of the foregoing factors, we may lose customers or be forced to reduce prices, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

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If we are unable to successfully identify and integrate acquisitions, our results of operations could be adversely affected.

Acquisitions have been and are likely to continue to be a significant component of our growth strategy. From time to time we seek to identify and complete acquisitions. Our historical acquisitions include KME in April 2016, Renegade in December 2016, Ferrara and Midwest in April 2017 and Lance Camper in January 2018. We may continue making strategic acquisitions in the future. Our previous or future acquisitions may not be successful or may not generate the financial benefits that we expected we would achieve at the time of acquisition. In addition, there can be no assurance that we will be able to locate suitable acquisition candidates in the future or acquire them on acceptable terms or, because of competition in the marketplace and limitations imposed by the agreements governing our indebtedness or the availability of capital, that we will be able to finance future acquisitions. Acquisitions involve special risks, including, without limitation, the potential assumption of unanticipated liabilities and contingencies, difficulty in assimilating the operations and personnel of the acquired businesses, disruption of our existing business, dissipation of our limited management resources and impairment of relationships with employees and customers of the acquired business as a result of changes in ownership. While we believe that strategic acquisitions can improve our competitiveness and profitability, these activities could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

We may incur significant costs such as transaction fees, professional service fees and other costs related to future acquisitions. We may also incur integration costs following the completion of any such acquisitions as we integrate the acquired business with the rest of our Company. Although we expect that the realization of efficiencies related to the integration of any acquired businesses will offset the incremental transaction and acquisition-related costs over time, this net financial benefit may not be achieved in the near term, or at all.

If we are required to write down goodwill or other intangible assets, our financial condition and operating results would be negatively affected.

We have a substantial amount of goodwill and other finite and indefinite-lived intangible assets on our balance sheet as a result of acquisitions we have completed. If we determine goodwill and other intangible assets are impaired, we will be required to write down all or a portion of these assets. Any write-downs would have a negative effect on our results of operations.

The method to compute the amount of impairment incorporates quantitative data and qualitative criteria including new information and highly subjective judgments that can dramatically change the determination of the valuation of goodwill and an intangible asset in a very short period of time. These determinations are sensitive to minor changes in underlying assumptions as management’s assumptions change with more information becoming available. The timing and amount of realized losses reported in earnings could vary if management’s conclusions were different. Any resulting impairment loss could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations for any particular quarterly or annual period.

Divestitures could negatively impact our business and retained liabilities from businesses that we sell could adversely affect our financial results.

As part of our portfolio management process, we review our operations for businesses which may no longer be aligned with our strategic initiatives and long-term objectives. We continue to review our portfolio and may pursue additional divestitures. Divestitures pose risks and challenges that could negatively impact our business, including disputes with buyers or potential impairment charges. For example, when we decide to sell a business, we may be unable to do so on satisfactory terms and within our anticipated time-frame, and even after reaching a definitive agreement to sell a business, the sale may be subject to satisfaction of pre-closing conditions, which may not be satisfied, as well as regulatory and governmental approvals, which may prevent us from completing a transaction on acceptable terms. During the current year, we recognized charges related to divestitures of $8.9 million (see Note 6, "Divestiture Activities" for further discussion on divestiture activities and related charges).

If we do not realize the expected benefits of any divestiture transaction, our consolidated balance sheets, results of operations and cash flows could be negatively impacted.

Our business has meaningful working capital requirements and a decline in operating results or access to financing may have an adverse impact on our liquidity position.

Our business has meaningful working capital requirements. We had $376.6 million of long-term debt outstanding as of October 31, 2019. Our ability to make required payments of principal and interest on our debt will depend on our future performance, which, to a certain extent, is subject to general economic, financial, competitive, political and other factors, some of which are beyond our control. Accordingly, conditions could arise that could limit our ability to generate sufficient cash flows or to access borrowings to enable us to fund our liquidity needs, which could further limit our financial flexibility or impair our ability to obtain alternative financing sufficient to repay our debt at maturity.

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Our access to debt financing at competitive risk-based interest rates is partly a function of our credit ratings. A downgrade to our credit ratings could increase our interest rates, could limit our access to public debt markets, could limit the institutions willing to provide us credit facilities, and could make any future credit facilities or credit facility amendments more costly and/or difficult to obtain.

We believe that our cash on hand, together with funds generated by our operations and borrowings under our existing credit facilities, will provide us with sufficient liquidity and capital resources to meet our working capital, capital expenditures and other operating needs for the foreseeable future. Significant assumptions underlie this belief however, including, among other things, assumptions relating to future sales volumes, the successful implementation of our business strategies, the continuing availability of trade credit from certain key suppliers and that there will be no material adverse developments in our competitive market position, business, liquidity or capital requirements. Any failure to achieve earnings expectations may have an adverse impact on our available liquidity. As a result, we cannot assure you that we will continue to have sufficient liquidity to meet our operating needs. In the event that we do not have sufficient liquidity, we may be required to seek additional capital, reduce or cut back our operating activities, capital expenditures or otherwise alter our business strategy. If we obtain additional capital by issuing equity, the interests of our existing stockholders will be diluted. If we incur additional debt, the agreements governing that debt may contain significant financial and other covenants that may materially restrict our operations. We cannot assure you that we could obtain refinancing or additional financing on favorable terms or at all.

We have meaningful contingent obligations, which could negatively impact our results of operations.

We have meaningful contingent liabilities with respect to certain items that, if realized, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results. In particular, we obtain certain vehicle chassis from automobile manufacturers under converter pool agreements. Upon being put into production, we become obligated to pay the manufacturer for the chassis. Chassis are typically converted and delivered to customers within 90 to 120 days of receipt. If the chassis are not converted within this timeframe of delivery, we generally purchase the chassis and record it as inventory or we are obligated to begin paying an interest charge on this inventory until purchased. Additionally, we have entered into repurchase agreements with certain lending institutions and are party to multiple agreements whereby we guarantee indebtedness of others, including losses under loss pool agreements. While we do not expect to experience material losses under these agreements, we cannot provide any assurance that these contingent liabilities will not be realized. See Note 16 to our 2019 audited consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional discussion of these contingent liabilities.

Our April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan Agreement contain, and agreements governing future indebtedness may contain, restrictive covenants that may impair our ability to access sufficient capital and operate our business.

Our April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan Agreement contain various provisions that limit our ability (subject to a number of exceptions) to, among other things:

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In addition, the restrictive covenants in our April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan Agreement require us to maintain specified financial ratios and other business or financial conditions. See “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Liquidity and Capital Resources—April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan” and “Description of Certain Indebtedness.” Our ability to comply with those financial ratios or other covenants may be affected by events beyond our control, and our failure to comply with these ratios or other covenants could result in an event of default. These covenants may affect our ability to operate and finance our business as we deem appropriate. Our inability to meet obligations as they become due or to comply with various financial covenants contained in the instruments governing our current or future indebtedness could constitute an event of default under the instruments governing our indebtedness. If there were an event of default under our April 2017 ABL Facility, Term Loan Agreement or any future instruments governing our indebtedness, the holders of the affected indebtedness could declare all of the affected indebtedness immediately due and payable, which, in turn, could cause the acceleration of the maturity of all of our other indebtedness. We may not have sufficient funds available, or we may not have access to sufficient capital from other sources, to repay any accelerated debt. Even if we could obtain additional financing, the terms of the financing may not be favorable to us. In addition, substantially all of our assets are subject to liens securing our April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan. If amounts outstanding under our April 2017 ABL Facility or Term Loan were accelerated, our lenders could foreclose on these liens and we could lose substantially all of our assets. Any event of default under the instruments governing our indebtedness could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Increases in the price of commodities could impact the cost or price of our products, which could impact our ability to sustain and grow earnings.

Our manufacturing processes consume significant amounts of raw materials, the costs of which are subject to worldwide supply and demand factors, as well as other factors beyond our control. Raw material price fluctuations may adversely affect our results. We purchase, directly and indirectly through component purchases, significant amounts of aluminum, steel, plastics and other resins, brass and fiberglass products as well as other commodity-sensitive raw materials annually. In particular, in past years, steel and aluminum prices have experienced volatility which has been unforeseen and unexpected. Further, tariffs enacted or proposed by the U.S. government, or retaliatory tariffs, could further increase the price of components imported from international suppliers, and lift prices of certain commodities generally regardless of origin. Although we at times purchase steel, aluminum and other raw materials up to 24 months in advance in order to provide certainty regarding portions of our pricing and supply, for the majority of our raw material purchases we do not typically enter into any fixed-price contracts and may not be able to accurately anticipate future raw material prices for those inputs. Commodity pricing has fluctuated significantly over the past few years and may continue to do so in the future. Such fluctuations could have a material effect on our results of operations, balance sheets and cash flows and impact the comparability of our results between financial periods.

Our international operations are subject to exchange rate fluctuations and other risks relating to doing business internationally.

Although the amount of our sales and costs denominated in foreign currencies is not currently significant, we may increase our international operations in the future, which would increase our exposure to risks of doing business internationally, including fluctuations in foreign currencies, changes in the economic strength of the countries in which we do business, difficulties in enforcing contractual obligations and intellectual property rights, burdens of complying with a wide variety of international and U.S. export and import laws and social, political and economic instability, including in China and other countries as a result of our joint venture with China’s Chery Holding Group, under which we intend to sell specialty vehicles in China and internationally through Chery’s existing distribution network. In particular, changes in currency values could also impact the level of foreign competition in our domestic market as international products become more or less costly due to the relationship of the U.S. Dollar to other currencies. Currency exchange rates have fluctuated significantly over the past few years and may continue to do so in the future. Such fluctuations could have a material effect on our results of operations, balance sheets and cash flows and impact the comparability of our results between financial periods.

A failure of a key information technology system or a breach of our information security could adversely impact our ability to conduct business.

We rely extensively on information technology systems in order to conduct business, including some that are managed by third-party service providers. These systems include, but are not limited to, programs and processes relating to internal and external communications, ordering and managing materials from suppliers, converting materials to finished products, shipping products to customers, processing transactions, summarizing and reporting results of operations, and complying with regulatory, legal or tax requirements. These information technology systems could be damaged or cease to function properly due to the poor performance or failure of third-party service providers, catastrophic events, power outages, network outages, failed upgrades or other similar events. If our business continuity plans do not effectively resolve such issues on a timely basis, we may suffer interruptions in conducting our business which may adversely impact our operating results.

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Periodically, we also need to upgrade our information technology systems or adopt new technologies. If such a new system or technology does not function properly or otherwise exposes us to increased cybersecurity breaches and failures, or if such a system is not implemented effectively, it could affect our ability to report accurate, timely and consistent financial results; our ability to purchase raw material from and pay our suppliers; and/or our ability to deliver products to customers on a timely basis and to collect our receivables from them.

Further, if the information technology systems, networks or service providers we rely upon fail to function properly or cause operational outages or aberrations, or if we or one of our third-party providers suffer significant unavailability of key operations, or inadvertent disclosure of, lack of integrity of, or loss of our sensitive business or stakeholder information, due to any number of causes, ranging from catastrophic events or power outages to improper data handling, security incidents or employee error or malfeasance, and our business continuity plans do not effectively address these failures on a timely basis, we may be exposed to reputational, competitive, operational, financial and business harm as well as litigation and regulatory action. The costs and operational consequences of responding to the above items and implementing remediation measures could be significant and could adversely impact our results.

Further, our systems and networks, as well as those of our dealers, customers, suppliers, service providers, and banks, may become the target of advanced cyber-attacks or information security breaches which will pose a risk to the security of our services, systems, networks and supply chain, as well as to the confidentiality, availability and integrity of data of our Company, employees, customers or consumers, as well as disrupt our operations or damage our facilities or those of third parties. We assess potential threats and vulnerabilities and make investments seeking to address them, including ongoing monitoring and updating of networks and systems, increasing specialized information security skills, deploying employee security training, and updating security policies for our company and our third-party providers. However, because the techniques, tools and tactics used in cyber-attacks frequently change and may be difficult to detect for periods of time, we may face difficulties in anticipating and implementing adequate preventative measures or fully mitigating harms after such an attack. As a result, a cyber-attack could negatively impact our net sales and increase our operating and capital costs. In addition, our employees frequently access our suppliers' and customers' systems and we may be liable if our employees are the source of any breaches in these third-party systems. It could also damage our reputation with retailer customers and consumers and diminish the strength and reputation of our brands or require us to pay monetary penalties.

Our business depends on the performance of dealers and disruptions within our dealer network could have a negative effect on our business.

We rely to a significant extent on our independent dealer networks to sell our products to end customers. We estimate that we distribute approximately 71% of our products through a system of independent, authorized dealers, many of whom sell products from competing manufacturers. Our business is therefore affected by our ability to establish new relationships and maintain relationships with existing dealers. The geographic coverage of our dealers and their individual business conditions can affect the ability of our dealers to sell our products to customers. In a number of markets, there is a lack of exclusivity with dealers, which may decrease our bargaining leverage. In addition, recent consolidation of dealers, as well as the growth of larger, multi-location dealers, may result in increased bargaining power on the part of dealers, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.

Our dealer agreements are typically for a multi-year term; however, the dealer can typically cancel the agreement for convenience without penalty upon 90 days’ notice. We can provide no assurance that we will be able to renew our dealer agreements on favorable terms, or at all, at their scheduled expiration dates. Some of our dealer agreements include guarantees, which could have a negative impact on the financial performance of our Company if we are required to fulfill them. In addition, laws in many of the states in which we operate make it difficult for us to terminate dealer agreements, which may make it difficult for us to optimize our dealer network. No dealer or customer represented more than 5% of our annual revenue for fiscal year 2019, but there may continue to be consolidation and changes in the dealership landscape over time. If we are unable to renew a contract with one or more of our significant dealers or re-negotiate an agreement under more advantageous terms, our sales and results of operations could be adversely affected.

Our business is affected by the availability and terms of financing to dealers and retail purchasers.

Our business is affected by the availability and terms of financing to dealers and retail purchasers. Many of our dealers finance their purchases of inventory with financing provided by lending institutions. A decrease in the availability of financing, more restrictive lending practices or an increase in the cost of such wholesale financing can prevent dealers from carrying adequate levels of inventory, which limits product offerings available to the end customer and could lead to reduced sales of our products. A small number of financial institutions provide the majority of our dealers’ total financed vehicles outstanding in a floor plan financing program at any point in time. Substantial increases in interest rates and decreases in the general availability of credit have in the past had an adverse impact upon our business and results of operations and may do so again in the future. Further, a decrease in availability of consumer credit resulting from unfavorable economic conditions, or an increase in the cost of consumer credit, may cause consumers to reduce discretionary spending which could, in turn, reduce demand for our products and negatively affect our sales and profitability.

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In addition, early in fiscal year 2016 we began assisting dealers and retail customers with arranging their financing with third parties for purchases of our products. Although we currently assume mostly off-balance sheet financing risk and receive only a minimal arrangement fee, we could be materially adversely affected in the future if third-party financiers were unable to provide this financing to our customers and our dealers were unable to obtain alternate financing, at least until our customers were able to find a replacement financing source. Third-party financiers face a number of business, economic and financial risks that could impair their access to capital and negatively affect their ability to provide financing solutions for our dealers and customers. Because third-party financiers serve as an additional source of financing options for dealers and customers, an impairment of their ability to provide such financial services could negatively affect our future sales and therefore our profitability and financial condition.

Our ability to execute our strategy is dependent upon our ability to attract, train and retain qualified personnel including our ability to retain and attract senior management and key employees, and our ability to address workforce issues.

Our continued success depends, in part, on our ability to identify, attract, motivate, train and retain qualified personnel in key functions and geographic areas, including the members of our senior management team. In particular, we are dependent on our ability to identify, attract, motivate, train and retain qualified engineers and skilled labor with the requisite education, background and industry experience to assist in the development, enhancement, introduction and manufacture of our products and technology solutions.

Failure to attract, train and retain qualified personnel, whether as a result of an insufficient number of qualified local residents or the allocation of inadequate resources to training, integration and retention, could impair our ability to execute our business strategy and could have an adverse effect on our business prospects. Our success also depends to a large extent upon our ability to attract and retain key executives. These employees have extensive experience in our markets and are familiar with our business, systems and processes. The loss of the services of one or more of these key employees could have an adverse effect, at least in the short to medium term, on significant aspects of our business, including the ability to manage our business effectively and the successful execution of our strategies. If certain of these employees decide to leave us, we could incur disruptions to the completion of certain initiatives and we could incur significant costs in hiring, training, developing and retaining their replacements.

We cannot be assured that our relations with our workforce will remain positive. From time to time, union organizers actively work to organize employees at some of our facilities. If union representation is implemented at such sites and we are unable to agree with the union on reasonable employment terms, including wages, benefits, and work rules, we could experience a significant disruption of our operations and incur higher ongoing labor costs. Further, if a location does experience organizing activity, our management and other personnel need to divert attention from operational and other business matters to devote substantial time to managing such activity.

We may discover defects in our vehicles potentially resulting in delaying new model launches, recall campaigns or increased warranty costs.

Meeting or exceeding many government-mandated safety standards is costly and often technologically challenging, especially where one or more government-mandated standards may conflict. Government safety standards require manufacturers to remedy defects related to motor vehicle safety through safety recall campaigns, and a manufacturer is obligated to recall vehicles if it determines that they do not comply with relevant safety standards. Should we or government safety regulators determine that a safety or other defect or noncompliance exists with respect to certain of our vehicles, there could be a delay in the launch of a new model, recalls of existing models or a significant increase in warranty claims, the costs of which could be substantial. Additionally, the vehicles we manufacture for sale are subject to strict contractually established specifications using complex manufacturing processes. If we fail to meet the contractual requirements for a vehicle or a part, we may be subject to warranty costs to repair or replace the part itself and additional costs related to the investigation and inspection of non-complying parts. These potential warranty and repair and replacement costs are generally not covered by our insurance. We establish warranty reserves that represent our estimate of the costs we expect to incur to fulfill our warranty obligations. We base our estimate for warranty reserves on our historical experience and other related assumptions. If actual results materially differ from these estimates, our results of operations could be materially affected.

In addition, we may not be able to enforce warranties and extended warranties received or purchased from our suppliers if such suppliers refuse to honor such warranties or go out of business. Also, a customer may choose to pursue remedies directly under its contract with us over enforcing such supplier warranties. In such a case, we may not be able to recover our losses from the supplier.

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Cancellations, reductions or delays in customer orders, customer breaches of purchase agreements, or reduction in expected backlog may adversely affect our results of operations.

We provide products to our customers for which we are customarily not paid in advance. We rely on the creditworthiness of our customers to collect on our receivables from them in a timely manner after we have billed for products previously provided. While we generally provide products pursuant to a written contract which determines the terms and conditions of payment to us by our customers, occasionally customers may dispute an invoice and delay, contest or not pay our receivable. Further, in connection with dealers’ wholesale floor-plan vehicle financing programs, we enter into repurchase agreements with certain lending institutions, customary in the industries in which we operate, which may require us to repurchase previously sold vehicles. Although our exposure under these agreements is limited by the expected resale value of the inventory we may repurchase, we may receive less than anticipated on such resale and would collect payment on such resale later than originally expected. Our failure to collect our receivables or to resell and collect on repurchased vehicles on a timely basis could adversely affect our cash flows and results of operations and, in certain cases, could cause us to fail to comply with the financial covenants under our April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan Agreement or other outstanding debt.

We typically have backlog due to the nature of our production and sales process, and our financial results are affected if any backlog is deferred or canceled. Backlog represents the amount of sales that we expect to derive from signed contracts, including purchase orders and oral contracts that have been subsequently memorialized in writing. When a binding sale contract has been signed with a customer, the purchase price of the vehicle is included in backlog until it is completed, shipped and the revenue is recognized. When we sign a contract giving a potential purchaser an option to purchase a vehicle which only becomes binding on a non-refundable payment or a subsequent firm purchase order, we do not include the purchase price of the vehicle in backlog until the non-refundable payment has been made or the subsequent purchase order is formalized and the contract is a binding purchase contract. A customer may default on a purchase contract that has become binding, and we may not be able to convert sales contract backlog into sales. As a result, our estimates of backlog for some of our contracts could be affected by variables beyond our control and may not be entirely realized, if at all. In addition, given the nature of our customers and our markets, there is a risk that some amount of our backlog may not be fully realized in the future. Failure to realize sales from our existing or future backlog would negatively impact our financial results.

From time to time, we enter into large, multi-year contracts with federal and local government bodies. Due to the size of the contracts, there are often stringent approval processes that must be completed before the contract is finalized. As a result, until these contracts are finalized, there can be no assurance regarding the timing of our commencing work on any such contract, or the ultimate revenue that we may recognize under any such contract.

In addition, as a result of firm purchase orders from our customers, we enter into agreements to produce and sell vehicles at a specified price with certain adjustments for changes and options based upon our estimation of the cost to produce and the timing of delivery. Due to the nature of these product cost estimates and the fluctuations in input costs and availability, we may underestimate the costs of production and therefore overestimate the profitability in our backlog. As a result, the actual profitability on those sales in the future may differ materially from our initial estimates when we recorded the firm purchase order in backlog.

Our business is subject to numerous laws and regulations.

We are subject to numerous federal, state and local regulations governing the manufacture and sale of our products, including the provisions of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (“NTMVSA”) and the safety standards for vehicles and components which have been promulgated under the NTMVSA by the Department of Transportation. The NTMVSA authorizes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require a manufacturer to recall and repair vehicles which contain certain hazards or defects. Sales into foreign countries may be subject to similar regulations. School buses are also subject to heightened safety standards in many jurisdictions. Any recalls of our vehicles, voluntary or involuntary, could have a material adverse effect on our reputation and our business and operating results.

In addition, we face an inherent risk of exposure to product liability claims if the use of our products results, or is alleged to result, in personal injury and/or property damage. If we manufacture, or are alleged to have manufactured, a defective product or if component failures result in damages, we may experience material product liability losses in the future. In addition, we may incur significant costs to defend product liability claims. We are also subject to potential recalls of our products to cure manufacturing defects or in the event of a failure to comply with customers’ order specifications or applicable regulatory standards, and may have to conduct recalls of our products due to defects in components or parts manufactured by suppliers which we purchase and incorporate into our products. We may also be required to remedy or retrofit vehicles in the event that an order is not built to a customer’s specifications or where a design error has been made. The cost and impact to our reputation of significant retrofit and remediation events or product recalls could have a material adverse effect on our business and operating results.

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Lastly, we are subject to federal and numerous state consumer protection and unfair trade practice laws and regulations relating to the sale, transportation and marketing of motor vehicles, including so-called “lemon laws.” In addition, certain laws and regulations affect other areas of our operations, including, labor, advertising, consumer protection, real estate, promotions, quality of services, intellectual property, tax, import and export duties, tariffs, anti-corruption and anti-competitive conduct. Compliance with these laws and others may be onerous and costly, at times, and may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction which further complicates compliance efforts. Violations of these laws and regulations could lead to significant penalties, including restraints on our export or import privileges, monetary fines, criminal proceedings and regulatory or other actions that could materially adversely affect our results of operations. We have instituted various and comprehensive policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance. However, we cannot assure you that employees, contractors, vendors or our agents will not violate such laws and regulations or our policies and procedures.

Unforeseen or recurring operational problems at any of our facilities, or a catastrophic loss of one of our key manufacturing facilities, may cause significant lost production and adversely affect our results of operations.

Our manufacturing process could be affected by operational problems that could impair our production capability. Many of our manufacturing facilities contain high cost and sophisticated machines that are used in our manufacturing process. Disruptions or shut downs at any of our facilities could be caused by:

If some of our facilities are shut down, they may experience prolonged startup periods, regardless of the reason for the shutdown. Those startup periods could range from several days to several weeks or longer, depending on the reason for the shutdown and other factors. Any prolonged disruption in operations at any of our facilities could cause a significant loss of production and adversely affect our results of operations and negatively impact our customers and dealers. Further, a catastrophic event could result in the loss of the use of all or a portion of one of our manufacturing facilities. Although we carry property and business interruption insurance, our coverage may not be adequate to compensate us for all losses that may occur. Any of these events individually or in the aggregate could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

Federal and local government spending and priorities may change in a manner that materially and adversely affects our future sales and limits our growth prospects.

Our business depends upon continued federal and local government expenditures on certain of our Commercial and Fire & Emergency products. These expenditures have not remained constant over time. Current government spending levels on programs that we support may not be sustainable as a result of changes in government leadership, policies or priorities. A significant portion of our sales are subject to risks specific to doing business with the U.S. government and municipalities, including, but not limited to:

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These or other factors could cause government agencies and departments to delay or reduce their purchases or deliveries under contracts, exercise their right to terminate contracts, or not exercise options to renew contracts, any of which could cause us to lose sales. A significant decline in overall government spending or a shift in expenditures away from agencies or programs that we support could cause a material decline in our sales and harm our financial results.

Fuel shortages, or high prices for fuel, could have a negative effect on sales of our products.

Gasoline or diesel fuel is required for the operation of most of our vehicles and we cannot assure you that the supply of these petroleum products will continue uninterrupted or that the price of or tax on these petroleum products will not significantly increase. High fuel costs generally drive greater demand for better fuel economy and substantial increases in the price of fuel have had a material adverse effect on the specialty vehicle industry as a whole in the past and could have a material adverse effect on our business in the future. Fluctuations in fuel prices have also historically negatively impacted consumer confidence and increased customer preferences for alternative fuel vehicles, only some of which we produce.

We are exposed to, and may be adversely affected by, interruptions to our computer and information technology systems and sophisticated cyber-attacks.

We rely on our information technology systems and networks in connection with many of our business activities. Some of these networks and systems are managed by third-party service providers and are not under our direct control. Our operations routinely involve receiving, storing, processing and transmitting sensitive information pertaining to our business, customers, dealers, suppliers, employees and other sensitive matters (including wire transfer instructions).

As with most companies, we have experienced cyber-attacks, attempts to breach our systems and other similar incidents, none of which have been material. Any future cyber incidents could, however, materially disrupt operational systems; result in loss of trade secrets or other proprietary or competitively sensitive information or money; compromise personally identifiable information regarding customers or employees; and jeopardize the security of our facilities. A cyber incident could be caused by malicious outsiders using sophisticated methods to circumvent firewalls, encryption and other security defenses. Because techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or to sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not recognized until they are launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures.

Information technology security threats, including security breaches, computer malware and other cyber-attacks are increasing in both frequency and sophistication and could create financial liability, subject us to legal or regulatory sanctions or damage our reputation with customers, dealers, suppliers and other stakeholders. The costs associated with maintaining robust information security mechanisms and controls are also increasing and are likely to increase further in the future. We continuously seek to maintain a robust program of information security and controls, but the impact of a material information technology event could have a material adverse effect on our competitive position, reputation, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

Our operations and the industries in which we operate are subject to environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, and we may face significant costs or liabilities associated with environmental, health and safety matters.

Our global operations are subject to a variety of federal, state, local and foreign environmental and workers’ health and safety laws and regulations concerning, among other things, water and air discharges, noise pollution, solid and hazardous waste generation, management and disposal, remediation of releases of hazardous materials, employee health and safety, and engine fuel economy and emissions from the vehicles we manufacture. Environmental, health and safety laws and regulations continue to evolve, and we may become subject to increasingly stringent environmental standards in the future, which could increase costs of compliance or require us to manufacture with alternative technologies and materials. We are required to obtain and maintain environmental, health and safety permits and approvals for our facilities and operations. Our failure to comply with such laws, regulations, permits and approvals could subject us to increased employee healthcare and workers’ compensation costs, liabilities, fines and other penalties or compliance costs, and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

Environmental remediation laws such as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) and state analogues impose liability, without regard to fault or to the legality of a party’s conduct, on certain categories of persons (known as “potentially responsible parties” or “PRPs”) who are considered to have contributed to the release of “hazardous substances” into the environment. Although we are not currently incurring material liabilities pursuant to CERCLA or state analogues, in the future we may incur such material liabilities with regard to our (or our predecessors’) current or former facilities, adjacent or nearby third-party facilities, or off-site disposal locations. In particular, in 2012 we received a request from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) for information regarding the San Fernando Valley Area 2 Superfund Site (the “San Fernando Site”).

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The EPA has questioned whether a prior owner and operator of a facility located within the boundary of the San Fernando Site (which is regional in scale and encompasses large portions of the Los Angeles area) is a predecessor to our Company, and whether the operations of the predecessor entity may have caused releases of certain hazardous substances to soil or groundwater. At this stage, the EPA has not asserted any claims against us and has not notified us that we are a PRP at the San Fernando Site. Our ability to collect on insurance policies or remediation costs or damages in connection with any claims relating to the San Fernando Site is unclear at this time. Although we intend to vigorously defend against any such claims, in the event we are found to be a PRP at the San Fernando Site or other sites, the remediation costs and any potential damages (including Natural Resource Damage claims) could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

Product compliance laws and regulations impose a variety of environmental requirements, including emissions and performance standards, on the vehicles we manufacture. These laws and regulations govern vehicle fuel efficiency, emissions (including greenhouse gas emissions), noise and safety, and are expected to continue to add to the cost of our products and increase the engineering and product development programs of our business. For example, the EPA began to enforce limits on diesel exhaust emissions from nonroad diesel engines in 1996 and stationary diesel-engine generator sets in 2006. Implemented in a series of steps called Tier levels, these regulations, over time, have introduced successively more stringent limitations on nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM) and non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC). The current “Tier 4” regulations promulgated under the Clean Air Act have imposed increasingly stringent motor vehicle emissions standards on our diesel exhaust emissions beginning with the 2011 model year. In addition, in August 2011, the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) issued initial rules on GHG emissions and fuel economy for medium and heavy-duty vehicles and engines. The emissions standards established required minimum fuel economy and GHG emissions levels for both engines and vehicles beginning in model year 2014 primarily through the increased use of existing technology. In August 2016, the EPA and the NHTSA finalized a second phase of GHG emissions reductions to be implemented over time beginning in model year 2021 through model year 2027 (with standards for certain trailers beginning in model year 2018). More stringent emissions standards have been issued by California and certain other states as well.

These standards, as well as other federal and state emissions standards applicable to the vehicles we manufacture, have increased and will continue to increase costs of development for engines and vehicles and administrative costs arising from implementation of the standards. In addition, regulatory proposals under consideration or those that are proposed in the future may set standards that are difficult to achieve or adversely affect our results of operations due to increased research, development, and warranty costs.

We are subject to litigation in the ordinary course of business, and uninsured judgments or a rise in insurance premiums may adversely impact our results of operations.

In the ordinary course of business, we are subject to various claims and litigation. Any such claims, whether with or without merit, could be time consuming and expensive to defend and could divert management’s attention and resources. Some of our businesses have in the past and may in the future face claims and litigation regarding accidents involving their products, including accidents involving passenger injuries and deaths, and the increasing amount of our vehicles on the road may increase our exposure to such matters. In accordance with customary practice, we maintain insurance against some, but not all, of these potential claims. We may elect not to obtain insurance if we believe that the cost of available insurance is excessive relative to the risks presented. The levels of insurance we maintain may not be adequate to fully cover any and all losses or liabilities. Further, we may not be able to maintain insurance at commercially acceptable premium levels or at all.

For product liability claims, we have a self-insured retention (“SIR”) for product liability matters of $1.0 million. Amounts above the SIR, up to a certain dollar amount, are covered by our excess insurance policy. Currently, we maintain excess liability insurance aggregating $100.0 million with outside insurance carriers to minimize our risks related to catastrophic claims in excess of our self-insured positions for product liability and personal injury matters. Any material change in the aforementioned factors could have an adverse impact on our operating results. Any increase in the frequency and size of these claims, as compared to our experience in prior years, may cause the premium that we are required to pay for insurance to increase significantly and may negatively impact future SIR levels. It may also increase the amounts we pay in punitive damages, not all of which are covered by our self-insurance.

If any significant accident, judgment, claim or other event is not fully insured or indemnified against, it could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations. We cannot assure that the outcome of all current or future litigation will not have a material adverse impact on our business and results of operations.

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Intellectual property risks may adversely affect our business and may dilute our competitive advantage.

Our brands are important assets of our business, and we rely on proprietary intellectual property, including numerous registered trademarks, as well as licensed intellectual property for the manufacture and competitiveness of our products. We monitor and protect against activities that might infringe, dilute or otherwise harm our patents, trademarks and other intellectual property and rely on the enforceability of the patent, trademark and other laws of the United States and other countries. However, we may be unable to prevent third parties from using our intellectual property without our authorization. To the extent we cannot protect our intellectual property, unauthorized use and misuse of our intellectual property could cause significant damage to our brand name and reputation, interfere with our ability to effectively represent our Company to our customers, contractors, suppliers and/or licensees and increase litigation costs, which could harm our competitive position and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

As noted above, we operate in very competitive markets in which we and our competitors are constantly developing and advancing product technology. Inventions by our competitors that are granted legal protection could result in us being unable to provide customers with certain designs or product features, which could harm our competitive position and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We may be exposed to liabilities under applicable anti-corruption laws and export controls and economic sanctions laws and any determination that we violated these laws could have a material adverse effect on our business.

We are subject to various anti-corruption laws that prohibit improper payments or offers of payments to foreign governments and their officials for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. We have business in countries and regions which are less developed and are generally recognized as having potentially more corrupt business environments. Our activities in these countries create the risk of unauthorized payments or offers of payments by one of our employees or agents that could be in violation of various anti-corruption laws including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) and the U.K. Bribery Act. We have implemented safeguards and policies to discourage these practices by our employees and agents.

However, our existing safeguards and any future improvements may prove to be less than effective and our employees or agents may engage in conduct for which we might be held responsible. If employees violate our policies or we fail to maintain adequate record-keeping and internal accounting practices to accurately record our transactions, we may be subject to regulatory sanctions. In addition, we are subject to export controls and economic sanctions laws and embargoes imposed by the U.S. government. Changes in export control or trade sanctions laws may restrict our business practices, and may result in modifications to compliance programs. Violations of the FCPA, U.K. Bribery Act, other anti-corruption laws, export controls or economic sanctions laws may result in severe criminal or civil sanctions and penalties, and we may be subject to other liabilities which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our expansion plans in markets outside of the United States could entail significant risks.

Our strategies potentially include establishing a greater presence in markets outside of the United States. In addition, we may grow our use of component and raw material suppliers in certain foreign markets. As we progress with this, these strategies may involve a significant investment of capital and other resources and entail various risks. These include risks attendant to obtaining necessary governmental approvals, identifying foreign agents, dealers and distributors, the construction of facilities in a timely manner and within cost estimates, the establishment of viable supply channels, the commencement of efficient manufacturing operations and, ultimately, the acceptance of the products by our current or prospective customers. We cannot be assured that our expansion plans will be implemented or, if implemented, be successful.

Our risk management policies and procedures may not be fully effective in achieving their purposes.

Our policies, procedures, controls and oversight to monitor and manage our enterprise risks may not be fully effective in achieving their purpose and may leave us exposed to identified or unidentified risks. Past or future misconduct by our employees or vendors could result in our violations of law, regulatory sanctions and/or serious reputational harm or financial harm. We monitor our policies, procedures and controls; however, we cannot assure you that our policies, procedures and controls will be sufficient to prevent all forms of misconduct. We review our compensation policies and practices as part of our risk management program, but it is possible that our compensation policies could incentivize management and other employees to subject us to inappropriate risk or to engage in misconduct. If such inappropriate risks or misconduct occurs, it is possible that it could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and/or our financial condition.

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AIP is party to the Shareholders Agreement (as defined below) and has significant influence over us, including control over decisions that require the approval of stockholders, which could limit your ability to influence the outcome of matters submitted to stockholders for a vote.

As of October 31, 2019, AIP owned 33,774,310 shares of our common stock, which represents 54.3% of our total outstanding shares of common stock. AIP is also party to an amended and restated shareholders agreement (the “Shareholders Agreement”) that, among other things, imposes certain transfer restrictions on the shares held by such stockholders and requires such stockholders to vote in favor of certain nominees to our Board of Directors. For a discussion of the Shareholders Agreement, see “Item 13. Certain Relationships and Related Person Transactions, and Director Independence.” As long as these stockholders own or control at least a majority of our outstanding common stock, they will have the ability to exercise substantial control over all corporate actions requiring stockholder approval, irrespective of how our other stockholders may vote, including:

In addition, pursuant to the Shareholders Agreement, AIP has the following rights so long as it holds at least 15% of the then outstanding common stock:

See “Item 13. Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions, and Director Independence” for more detail.

Lastly, AIP’s interests as an equity holder may not be aligned in all cases with those of other equity investors, or of our lenders as creditors. In addition, AIP may have an interest in pursuing or not pursuing acquisitions, divestitures, financings or other transactions that, in their judgment, could enhance their equity investments, even though such transactions might be contrary to the wishes of other equity investors or involve risks to our lenders. Furthermore, AIP may in the future own businesses that directly or indirectly compete with us. AIP may also pursue acquisition opportunities that may be complementary to our business separately from us and, as a result, those acquisition opportunities may not be available to us.

Changes to tax laws or exposure to additional tax liabilities may have a negative impact on our operating results.

Continued developments in U.S. tax reform and changes to tax laws and rates in other jurisdictions where we do business could adversely affect our results of operations and cash flows. It is also possible that provisions of U.S. tax reform could be subsequently amended in a way that is adverse to the Company.

In addition, we regularly undergo tax audits in various jurisdictions in which we operate. Although we believe that our income tax provisions and accruals are reasonable and in accordance with GAAP, and that we prepare our tax filings in accordance with all applicable tax laws, the final determination with respect to any tax audits and any related litigation, could be materially different from our historical income tax provisions and accruals. The results of a tax audit or litigation could materially affect our operating results and cash flows in the periods for which that determination is made. In addition, future period net income may be adversely impacted by litigation costs, settlements, penalties and interest assessments.

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Changes in customer preferences for our products or our failure to gauge those preferences could lead to reduced sales and additional costs.

Our ability to remain competitive depends heavily on our ability to provide a continuing and timely introduction of innovative product offerings. We cannot be certain that historical customer preferences for our products will remain unchanged. We believe that the introduction of new product features, designs and models will be critical to the future success of our operations as technological advancements are made and alternative fuels are developed.

To successfully execute our long-term strategy, we must continue to develop new product lines and adapt our existing product lines to consumer preferences, including product lines that have historically been outside of our core businesses, such as electric vehicles and other specialty vehicles that minimize emissions. The process of designing and developing new technology, products and services is complex, costly, and uncertain and requires extensive capital investment and the ability to retain and recruit talent. For example, many vehicle manufacturers foresee electric vehicle sales becoming an increasingly important to their businesses, and we may not have the expertise to successfully address these competitive pressures on a costly basis or at all. Accordingly, if we do not accurately predict, prepare for and respond to new kinds of technological innovations, market developments and changing customer needs, including with respect to electric vehicles and other technologies that minimize emissions, competition from these companies could make our specialty vehicles less desirable in the marketplace.

Managing frequent product introductions and transitions poses inherent risks and additional costs. Delays in the introduction or market acceptance of new product features, designs or models could have a material adverse effect on our business. Products may not be accepted for a number of reasons, including changes in customer preferences or our failure to properly gauge customer preferences. Further, we cannot be certain that new product introductions will not reduce sales from existing models and adversely affect our results of operations. In addition, we cannot assure you that any of these new product features, designs or models will be introduced to the market in a timely manner or that they will be successful when introduced. Any of the foregoing factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

Failure to maintain the strength and value of our brands could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our success depends, in part, on the value and strength of our brands. Our brand names are integral to our business as well as to the implementation of our strategies for expanding our business. Maintaining, enhancing, promoting and positioning our brands, particularly in new markets where we have limited brand recognition, will depend largely on the success of our marketing and merchandising efforts and our ability to provide high-quality services, warranty plans, products and resources and a consistent, high-quality customer experience. Our brands could be adversely affected if we fail to achieve these objectives, if we fail to comply with laws and regulations, if we are subject to publicized litigation or if our public image or reputation were to be tarnished by negative publicity. Some of these risks may be beyond our ability to control, such as the effects of negative publicity regarding our suppliers or third party providers of services or negative publicity related to members of management. Any of these events could hurt our image, resulting in reduced demand for our products and a decrease in net sales.

Further, maintaining, enhancing, promoting and positioning our brands’ images may require us to make substantial investments in marketing and employee training, which could adversely affect our cash flow, and which may ultimately be unsuccessful. These factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Failure to maintain effective internal controls in accordance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act could have a material adverse effect on our business and stock price.

We are required to make an annual assessment of our internal controls over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires annual management assessments of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, and generally requires in the same report a report by our independent registered public accounting firm on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. To comply with the requirements of being a public company, we undertake various actions, such as implementing new internal controls and procedures and hiring accounting or internal audit staff. Testing and maintaining internal controls can divert our management’s attention from other matters that are important to the operation of our business.

Our independent registered public accounting firm is required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting. Our independent registered public accounting firm may issue a report that is adverse, in the event it is not satisfied with the level at which our controls are documented, designed or operating. If we are unable to conclude that we have effective internal control over financial reporting, our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to provide us with an unqualified report as required by Section 404, or we are required to restate our financial statements, we may fail to meet our public reporting obligations and investors could lose confidence in our reported financial information, which could have a negative effect on the trading price of our stock.

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We are party to two consolidated putative securities class actions, as well as other litigation in the ordinary course of business, and uninsured judgments or a rise in insurance premiums may adversely impact our results of operations.

A consolidated federal putative securities class action and a consolidated state putative securities class action are pending against us and certain of our officers and directors, each on behalf of a putative class of purchasers of our common stock in or traceable to the Company’s January 2017 IPO and of purchasers in our secondary offering of common stock in October 2017, as well as, for the federal action, purchasers from October 10, 2017 through June 7, 2018. The federal and state courts each consolidated multiple separate actions pending before them. The actions allege certain violations of the Securities Act of 1933 and, for the federal action, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. See “Item 1. Legal Proceedings.”

We are also subject to various claims and litigation in the ordinary course of business. Any such claims, whether with or without merit, could be time consuming and expensive to defend and could divert management’s attention and resources. Some of our businesses have in the past and may in the future face claims and litigation regarding accidents involving their products, including accidents involving passenger injuries and deaths, and the increasing amount of our vehicles on the road may increase our exposure to such matters. In accordance with customary practice, we maintain insurance against some, but not all, of these potential claims. We may elect not to obtain insurance if we believe that the cost of available insurance is excessive relative to the risks presented. The levels of insurance we maintain may not be adequate to fully cover any and all losses or liabilities. Further, we may not be able to maintain insurance at commercially acceptable premium levels or at all.

For product liability claims, we have a self-insured retention (“SIR”) for product liability matters of $1.0 million. Amounts above the SIR, up to a certain dollar amount, are covered by our excess insurance policy. Currently, we maintain excess liability insurance aggregating $100.0 million with outside insurance carriers to minimize our risks related to catastrophic claims in excess of our self-insured positions for product liability and personal injury matters. Any material change in the aforementioned factors could have an adverse impact on our operating results. Any increase in the frequency and size of these claims, as compared to our experience in prior years, may cause the premium that we are required to pay for insurance to increase significantly and may negatively impact future SIR levels. It may also increase the amounts we pay in punitive damages, not all of which are covered by our self-insurance.

If there is an unfavorable outcome from the securities class actions described above, or if any significant accident, judgment, claim or other event is not fully insured or indemnified against, then in either case that could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations. We cannot assure that the outcome of all current or future litigation will not have a material adverse impact on our business and results of operations.

Risks Relating to Our Common Stock

Provisions of our corporate governance documents could make an acquisition of our Company more difficult and may prevent attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management or directors, even if beneficial to our stockholders.

Provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws may discourage, delay or prevent a merger, acquisition or other change in control of our Company that stockholders may consider favorable, including transactions in which you might otherwise receive a premium for your shares. These provisions could also limit the price that investors might be willing to pay in the future for shares of our common stock, thereby depressing the market price of our common stock. In addition, these provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management or directors by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our Board of Directors. Because our Board of Directors is responsible for appointing the members of our management team, these provisions could in turn affect any attempt to replace current members of our management team.

We are a “controlled company” within the meaning of the New York Stock Exchange rules and, as a result, qualify for, and are relying on, exemptions from certain corporate governance requirements. You will not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to such requirements.

The parties to the Shareholders Agreement control a majority of the voting power of our outstanding common stock. As a result, we are a “controlled company” within the meaning of the corporate governance standards of the New York Stock Exchange. Under these rules, a company of which more than 50% of the voting power for the election of directors is held by an individual, group or another company is a “controlled company” and may elect not to comply with certain corporate governance requirements, including the requirements that, within one year of the date of the listing of our common stock:

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We are utilizing these exemptions. As a result, we do not have a majority of independent directors on our Board of Directors. In addition, our compensation committee and our nominating and corporate governance committee do not consist entirely of independent directors or be subject to annual performance evaluations. Accordingly, you will not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of the corporate governance requirements of the New York Stock Exchange.

An active, liquid trading market for our common stock may cease to exist, which may limit your ability to sell your shares.

Although our common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “REVG,” an active trading market for our shares may not be sustained. A public trading market having the desirable characteristics of depth, liquidity and orderliness depends upon the existence of willing buyers and sellers at any given time, such existence being dependent upon the individual decisions of buyers and sellers over which neither we nor any market maker has control. The failure of an active and liquid trading market to develop and continue would likely have a material adverse effect on the value of our common stock. An inactive market may also impair our ability to raise capital to continue to fund operations by selling shares and may impair our ability to acquire other companies or technologies by using our shares as consideration.

Market volatility may affect our stock price and the value of your investment.

The market price of our common stock may change in response to fluctuations in our operating results in future periods and may also change in response to other factors, many of which are beyond our control. As a result, our share price may experience significant volatility and may not necessarily reflect the value of our expected performance. Among other factors that could affect our stock price are:

As noted above, we are currently defending securities class action litigation. If the market price of our common stock is volatile in the future, we may be subject to additional securities class action litigation. In that case, we could incur substantial incremental costs defending against such litigation. Such litigation could also further divert the time and attention of our management from our business, which could significantly harm our profitability and reputation.

A significant portion of our total outstanding shares are restricted from immediate resale but may be sold into the market in the near future. This could cause the market price of our common stock to drop significantly, even if our business is doing well.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market could occur at any time. These sales, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares intend to sell shares, could reduce the market price of our common stock. As of December 16, 2019, we had approximately 62 million shares of common stock outstanding. The 25,875,000 shares of common stock that were sold publicly in the secondary offering completed in October and in our IPO may be resold in the public market at any time (other than shares of our common stock that may be held or acquired by our directors, executive officers or affiliates, as that term is defined in the Securities Act).

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We also registered all shares of common stock that we may issue under our equity compensation plans, which means these shares can be freely sold in the public market upon issuance. As restrictions on resale end, the market price of our stock could decline if the holders of currently restricted shares sell them or are perceived by the market as intending to sell them. Lastly, an entity controlled by AIP has entered into a loan agreement pursuant to which it pledged 19.5 million shares of our common stock to secure a margin loan, under which it may draw up to approximately $36 million. If the AIP-controlled entity were to default on its obligations under the loan and not timely post additional collateral, the lender would have the right to sell shares to satisfy the AIP-controlled entity’s obligation. Such an event could cause our stock price to decline.

We cannot assure you that we will continue to declare dividends or have sufficient funds to pay dividends on our common stock.

Although we intend to continue to pay a quarterly dividend on shares of our common stock, to the extent that we have sufficient funds available for such purpose, the declaration, amount and payment of any future dividends on shares of common stock will be at the sole discretion of our Board of Directors and we may reduce or discontinue entirely the payment of such dividends at any time. Our Board of Directors may take into account general and economic conditions, our financial condition and operating results, our available cash and current and anticipated cash needs, capital requirements, contractual, legal, tax and regulatory restrictions and implications on the payment of dividends by us to our stockholders or by our subsidiaries to us, and such other factors as our Board of Directors may deem relevant. In addition, our ability to pay dividends is, and may be, limited by covenants of existing and any future outstanding indebtedness we or our subsidiaries incur, including under the April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan Agreement.

Moreover, because we are a holding company, our ability to pay dividends is dependent upon the financial results and cash flow of our operating subsidiaries and the distribution or other payment of cash to us in the form of dividends or otherwise, which may further restrict our ability to pay dividends as a result of the laws of their jurisdiction of organization, agreements of our subsidiaries or covenants under any existing and future outstanding indebtedness we or our subsidiaries incur. Furthermore, Delaware law requires that our Board of Directors determine that we have adequate surplus prior to the declaration of dividends. While we do not currently believe that these restrictions will impair our ability to pay regular quarterly cash dividends, there can be no assurance that we will not need to reduce or eliminate the payment of dividends on our common stock in the future. Therefore, any return on investment in our common stock may be solely dependent upon the appreciation of the price of our common stock on the open market, which may not occur. See “Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities—Dividend Policy” for more detail.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, if they adversely change their recommendations regarding our shares or if our results of operations do not meet their expectations, our share price and trading volume could decline. In addition, if securities or industry analysts publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our shares has been and will continue to be influenced by the research and reports that industry or securities analysts publish about us or our business. We do not have any control over these analysts. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our Company or fail to publish reports on us regularly, we could lose visibility in the financial markets and demand for our stock could decrease, which could cause our stock price and trading volume to decline. Moreover, if one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our stock or make sell recommendations, or if our results of operations do not meet their expectations, our share price could decline.

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments.

None.

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Item 2. Properties.

We maintain corporate office space in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The locations of the RTCs, aftermarket parts warehouses and manufacturing properties that we currently own or lease are listed below. We believe that our facilities are suitable and adequate for the purposes for which they are used and are adequately maintained.

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Item 3. Legal Proceedings.

We are, from time to time, party to various legal proceedings arising out of our ordinary course of business. The amount of alleged liability, if any, from these proceedings cannot be determined with certainty; however, we believe that our ultimate liability, if any, arising from pending legal proceedings, as well as from asserted legal claims and known potential legal claims, which are probable of assertion, taking into account established accruals for estimated liabilities, should not be material to our business, financial condition or results of operations.

A consolidated federal putative securities class action and a consolidated state putative securities class action are pending against us and certain of our officers and directors, each on behalf of a putative class of purchasers of our common stock in or traceable to the Company’s January 2017 IPO and of purchasers in our secondary offering of common stock in October 2017, as well as, for the federal action, purchasers from October 10, 2017 through June 7, 2018. The actions also name certain of the underwriters for the Company’s IPO or secondary offering as defendants. The federal and state courts each consolidated multiple separate actions pending before them, the first of which was filed on June 8, 2018. The actions allege certain violations of the Securities Act of 1933 and, for the federal action, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Collectively, the actions seek certification of the putative classes asserted and compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees and costs. The underwriter defendants have notified us of their intent to seek indemnification from us pursuant to the IPO underwriting agreement in regard to the claims asserted with respect to the IPO, and we expect the underwriters to do the same in regard to the claims asserted with respect to the October 2017 offering. Two purported derivative actions, which have since been consolidated, were also filed in federal court in Delaware in 2019 against our directors (with us as a nominal defendant), premised on allegations similar to those asserted in the consolidated federal securities litigation. We and the other defendants intend to continue defending these lawsuits vigorously. Additional lawsuits may be filed and, at this time, we are unable to predict the outcome of the lawsuits, the possible loss or range of loss, if any, associated with the resolution of the lawsuits, or any potential effect that it may have on us or our operations.

We are subject to certain other legal proceedings that arise in the ordinary course of business. Although the final results of all such other matters and claims cannot be predicted with certainty, management believes that the ultimate resolution of all such matters and claims will not have a material adverse effect on our financial condition, results of operations or cash flows. Actual results could vary, among other things, due to the uncertainties involved in litigation.

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.

Not applicable.

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PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities.

Our shares of common stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on January 27, 2017, under the trading symbol “REVG.” Prior to this listing, no public market existed for our common stock.

As of December 16, 2019, there were approximately 90 holders of record of our shares of common stock. The actual number of shareholders is greater than this number of record holders and includes shareholders who are beneficial owners but whose shares are held in street name by brokers and other nominees. This number of holders of record also does not include shareholders whose shares may be held in trust by other entities.

Common Stock Repurchases

On March 20, 2018, the Company’s Board of Directors authorized up to $50.0 million of repurchases of the Company’s issued and outstanding common stock with an expiration date of March 19, 2020. On September 5, 2018 the Company’s Board of Directors authorized an additional $50.0 million of repurchases of the Company’s issued and outstanding common stock with an expiration date of September 4, 2020. During fiscal year 2018, the Company repurchased 3,233,352 shares under this repurchase program at a total cost of $53.3 million at an average price per share of $16.47. During fiscal year 2019, the Company repurchased 717,597 shares under this repurchase program at a total cost of $8.3 million at an average price per share of $11.62. As of October 31, 2019, the Company had $38.3 million of authorization remaining under this program.

Dividend Policy

Subject to legally available funds and the discretion of our board of directors, we expect to continue to pay a quarterly cash dividend at the rate of $0.05 per share on our common stock. We expect to pay this quarterly dividend on or about the last day of the first month following each fiscal quarter to shareholders of record on the last day of such fiscal quarter. Based on our current dividend rate of $0.05 per share, and assuming we have approximately 62 million shares of our common stock outstanding, this would result in an aggregate annual cash dividend amount of approximately $12.5 million. Our dividend policy has certain risks and limitations, particularly with respect to liquidity, and we may not pay dividends according to our policy, or at all. We cannot assure you that we will declare dividends or have sufficient funds to pay dividends on our common stock in the future. See “Item 1A. Risk Factors—Risks Relating to Our Common Stock—We cannot assure you that we will continue to declare dividends or have sufficient funds to pay dividends on our common stock.”

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Stock Performance Graph

The following graph compares the cumulative total stockholder return on our common stock between January 27, 2017 and October 31, 2019, based on the market price of our common stock and assumes reinvestment of dividends, with the cumulative total return of companies in the S&P 500, Russell 2000 and S&P Small Cap 600.

“Other Peers” represents an equally-weighted index comprised of OSK, BLBD, SPAR, & FSS.

“RV Peers” represents an equally-weighted index comprised of THO and WGO.

Item 6. Selected Financial Data.

The following table sets forth summary historical consolidated financial data for the periods presented and at the dates indicated below. Historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for future periods. The summary historical consolidated data presented below should be read in conjunction with the sections entitled “Item 1A. Risk Factors” and “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and the financial statements and the related notes and other financial data appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

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Additionally, a non-cash impairment charge of $35.6 million was recorded as of October 31, 2018, that relates to both the assets held for sale and other assets that management intends to monetize or are otherwise impaired which include the Company’s rental fleet, inventory from discontinued product lines and certain information system assets. Refer to Note 6, "Divestiture Activities," to the Company’s 2018 audited consolidated financial statements.

Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Some of the information contained in this discussion and analysis or set forth elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including information with respect to our plans and strategy for our business and related financing, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. You should read the “Cautionary Statement About Forward-Looking Statements” and “Risk Factors” sections of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results described in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis.

This discussion and analysis should be read in conjunction with the accompanying audited and unaudited consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Overview

REV is a leading designer, manufacturer and distributor of specialty vehicles and related aftermarket parts and services. We provide customized vehicle solutions for applications including: essential needs (ambulances, fire apparatus, school buses and municipal transit buses), industrial and commercial (terminal trucks, cut-away buses and sweepers) and consumer leisure (RVs and luxury buses). Our brand portfolio consists of 29 well-established principal vehicle brands including many of the most recognizable names within our served markets. Several of our brands pioneered their specialty vehicle product categories and date back more than 50 years. We believe that in most of our markets we hold the first or second market share position and approximately 62% of our net sales during fiscal year 2019 came from products where we believe we hold such share positions.

Segments

We serve a diversified customer base primarily in the United States through the following segments:

Fire & Emergency – The Fire & Emergency segment sells fire apparatus equipment under the Emergency One (E-ONE), Kovatch Mobile Equipment (KME) and Ferrara brands and ambulances under the American Emergency Vehicles (AEV), Horton Emergency Vehicles (HEV), Leader Emergency Vehicles (LEV), Marque, McCoy Miller, Road Rescue, Wheeled Coach and Frontline brands. We believe we are the largest manufacturer by unit volume of fire and emergency vehicles in the United States and have one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of products including Type I ambulances (aluminum body mounted on a heavy truck-style chassis), Type II ambulances (van conversion ambulance typically favored for non-emergency patient transportation), Type III ambulances (aluminum body mounted on a van-style chassis), pumpers (fire apparatus on a custom or commercial chassis with a water pump and small tank to extinguish fires), ladder trucks (fire apparatus with stainless steel or aluminum ladders), tanker trucks and rescue and other vehicles. Each of our individual brands is distinctly positioned and targets certain price and feature points in the market such that dealers often carry, and customers often buy more than one REV Fire & Emergency product line.

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Commercial – Our Commercial segment serves the bus market through the following principal brands: Collins Bus, Goshen Coach, ENC, ElDorado National, Federal Coach, Champion and World Trans. We serve the terminal truck market through the Capacity brand and the sweeper market through the Lay-Mor brand. Our products in the Commercial segment include cut-away buses (customized body built on various types and sizes of commercial chassis), transit buses (large municipal buses where we build our own chassis and body), luxury buses (bus-style limo or high-end luxury conversions), Type A school buses (small school bus built on commercial chassis), sweepers (three- and four-wheel versions used in road construction activities), and terminal trucks (specialized vehicles which move freight in warehouses or intermodal yards and ports). Within each market segment, we produce many customized configurations to address the diverse needs of our customers.

Recreation – Our Recreation segment serves the RV market through seven principal brands: American Coach, Fleetwood RV, Monaco Coach, Holiday Rambler, Renegade, Midwest and Lance. We believe our brand portfolio contains some of the longest standing, most recognized brands in the RV industry. Under these brands, REV provides a variety of highly recognized motorized and towable RV models such as: American Eagle, Bounder, Pace Arrow, Verona, Weekender and Lance, among others. Our products in the Recreation segment include Class A motorized RVs (motorhomes built on a heavy duty chassis with either diesel or gas engine configurations), Class C and “Super C” motorized RVs (motorhomes built on a commercial truck or van chassis), Class B RVs (motorhomes built out within a van chassis), and towable travel trailers and truck campers. The Recreation segment also includes Goldshield Fiberglass, which produces a wide range of custom molded fiberglass products for the heavy-duty truck, RV and broader industrial markets.

Factors Affecting Our Performance

The primary factors affecting our results of operations include:

General Economic Conditions

Our business is impacted by the U.S. economic environment, employment levels, consumer confidence, municipal spending, municipal tax receipts, changes in interest rates and instability in securities markets around the world, among other factors. In particular, changes in the U.S. economic climate can impact demand in key end markets. In addition, the impact of tariffs can have a dramatic effect on the availability, lead-times and costs associated with raw materials and parts.

RV purchases are discretionary in nature and therefore sensitive to the availability of financing, consumer confidence, unemployment levels, levels of disposable income and changing levels of consumer home equity, among other factors. RV markets are affected by general U.S. and global economic conditions, which create risks that future economic downturns will further reduce consumer demand and negatively impact our sales.

While less economically sensitive than the Recreation segment, the Fire & Emergency segment and the Commercial segment are also impacted by the overall economic environment. Local tax revenues are an important source of funding for fire and emergency response departments. Fire and emergency products and buses are typically a larger cost item for municipalities and their service life is relatively long, making the purchase more deferrable, which can result in reduced demand for our products.

A decrease in employment levels, consumer confidence or the availability of financing, or other adverse economic events, or the failure of actual demand for our products to meet our estimates, could negatively affect the demand for our products. Any decline in overall customer demand in markets in which we operate could have a material adverse effect on our operating performance.

Impact of Acquisitions

Historically, a significant component of our growth has been through acquisitions of businesses. We typically incur upfront costs as we integrate acquired businesses and implement our operating philosophy at newly acquired companies, including consolidation of supplies and materials, purchases, improvements to production processes, and other restructuring initiatives. The benefits of these integration efforts may not positively impact our financial results until subsequent periods.

We recognize acquired assets and liabilities at fair value. This includes the recognition of identified intangible assets and goodwill which, in the case of definite-life intangible assets, are then amortized over their expected useful lives, which typically results in an increase in amortization expense. In addition, assets acquired and liabilities assumed generally include tangible assets, as well as contingent assets and liabilities.

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Results of Operations

The following table compares results for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017

Net Sales. Consolidated net sales were $2,403.7 million, $2,381.3 million and $2,267.8 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, an increase of $22.4 million, or 0.9% from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and an increase of $113.5 million, or 5.0%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018.

The increase in consolidated net sales for fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 was primarily due to an increase in net sales in the Fire & Emergency and Commercial segments, partially offset by a decrease in net sales in the Recreation segment. The increase in Commercial net sales compared to the prior year period was primarily due to a broad-based increase in most of the segment’s product categories. Sales of school and transit buses as well as terminal trucks were all higher in fiscal year 2019 as compared to fiscal year 2018. Growth drivers include new models and end market strength in the Class A school bus product line and the delivery against a larger municipal transit bus order. The increase in Fire & Emergency net sales compared to the prior year period was primarily due to the impact of unit mix and slightly higher shipments of fire trucks, partially offset by a decrease in shipments of ambulances. The decrease in Recreation segment net sales in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 was primarily due to a decrease in shipment volumes of Class A motorhomes, partially offset by delivering on existing backlogs in our other RV categories.

Gross Profit. Consolidated gross profit was $251.8 million, $278.0 million and $294.6 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, a decrease of $26.2 million, or 9.4% from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and a decrease of $16.6 million, or 5.6% from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. Consolidated gross profit, as a percentage of net sales, was 10.5%, 11.7% and 13.0% for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively.

The reduction in gross profit in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 was primarily due to a reduction in gross profit in the Fire & Emergency and Recreation segments, partially offset by an improvement in gross profit in the Commercial segment. Gross profit in the Fire & Emergency segment was negatively impacted by initial production inefficiencies associated with the increase in capacity and ramp up of production at our largest fire truck facility and inefficiencies associated with timing of incoming orders at our largest Ambulance facility. The decrease in gross profit in the Recreation segment was primarily due to lower shipments and pricing of Class A motorhomes. The improvement in gross profit in the Commercial segment was primarily due to increased shipments of higher margin transit and school buses, and operational improvements within the Commercial segment resulting from implementation of the REV Production System (RPS).

The decrease in consolidated gross profit for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was due to overall increases in material costs resulting directly and indirectly from tariffs, an increase in labor and overhead costs resulting from labor inefficiencies at certain of our plants in the fire division, an increase in labor and overhead costs resulting from chassis supply disruption and a product mix shift in ambulance toward lower content Type II units, product mix shift from higher content transit buses to lower margin shuttle buses and mobility vans.

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Operating Income. Consolidated operating income was $15.9 million, $27.8 million and $82.7 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, a decrease of $11.9 million, or 42.8%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and a decrease of $54.9 million, or 66.4%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. The decrease in consolidated operating income in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 was primarily due to the decrease in gross profit described above, along with higher legal costs driven by settlement activity, higher stock compensation and insurance costs, and the impact of the acquisition of Lance in January 2018, partially offset by a decrease in non-cash impairment charges.

The decrease in consolidated operating income for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was primarily due to the decrease in gross profit and non-cash impairment charges associated with divestitures of certain underperforming assets and the decreases in gross profit described above.

Net Income. Consolidated net (loss) income was ($12.3) million, $13.0 million and $31.4 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, a decrease of $25.3 million, or 194.6%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and a decrease of $18.4 million, or 58.6%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. Consolidated net (loss) income for fiscal year 2019 decreased compared to fiscal year 2018 primarily due to the decrease in operating income described above, an increase in interest expense, and a lower tax benefit as compared to the prior year. The decrease in the Company’s tax benefit, relative to the prior fiscal year, relates primarily to the prior year revaluation of net deferred tax liabilities as a result of U.S. tax reform.

Consolidated net income for fiscal year 2018 decreased compared to fiscal year 2017 primarily due to the decrease in operating income, partially offset by tax benefits recorded due to a decrease in the U.S. tax rate and revaluation of net deferred tax liabilities, both as a result of tax legislation in the United States.

Adjusted EBITDA. Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA was $102.1 million, $148.0 million and $162.5 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, a decrease of $45.9 million, or 31.0%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and a decrease of $14.5 million, or 8.9%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. The decrease in consolidated Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 was due to lower Adjusted EBITDA in the Fire & Emergency and Recreation segments, offset by higher Adjusted EBITDA in the Commercial segment.

The decrease in consolidated Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was due to lower Adjusted EBITDA in the Fire & Emergency and Commercial segments, offset by higher Adjusted EBITDA in the Recreation segment. Excluding acquisitions, consolidated Adjusted EBITDA decreased 23.7% for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017.

Refer to the “Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income” section of “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a reconciliation of Net Income (Loss) to Adjusted EBITDA tables and related footnotes.

Adjusted Net Income. Consolidated Adjusted Net Income was $30.0 million, $72.7 million and $75.8 million in fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively.

Refer to the “Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income” section of “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a reconciliation of Net Income (Loss) to Adjusted Net Income tables and related footnotes.

Fire & Emergency Segment

Net Sales. Fire & Emergency segment net sales were $967.9 million, $956.6 million and $984.0 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, an increase of $11.3 million, or 1.2%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and a decrease of $27.4 million, or 2.8%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. The increase in Fire & Emergency segment net sales in fiscal year 2019 as compared to fiscal year 2018 was primarily due to an increase in the volume of fire truck shipments and improved pricing on fire trucks and ambulances, partially offset by a decrease in the volume of ambulance shipments and a mix of fire trucks.

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The decrease in Fire & Emergency segment net sales for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was due to decreases in sales of certain fire apparatus caused by labor inefficiencies and decreases in sales of ambulance units caused by chassis supply disruption which impacted the timing of shipments. Excluding the impact of the Ferrara acquisition, Fire & Emergency segment net sales decreased 7.6% in fiscal year 2018 compared to the prior year.

Adjusted EBITDA. Fire & Emergency segment Adjusted EBITDA was $43.2 million, $86.0 million and $109.5 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, a decrease of $42.8 million, or 49.8%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and a decrease of $23.5 million, or 21.5%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. Profitability in the Fire & Emergency segment in fiscal year 2019 was negatively impacted primarily by the results of the Fire business units and one of the Ambulance business units. Profitability at the largest Fire business unit was negatively impacted by additional labor costs associated with staffing and training for its production ramp. Profitability at the largest Ambulance business unit was negatively impacted by the timing of incoming orders that affected its production flow and that resulted in production and supply chain inefficiencies, slightly offset by improved pricing. Profitability within the segment was also impacted by unusually high healthcare cost experienced during the fiscal year.

The decrease in Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was primarily due to an increase in labor and overhead costs resulting from labor inefficiencies in the Fire division, an increase in labor and overhead resulting from chassis supply disruption and a product mix shift in ambulance toward lower content Type II units. Excluding the impact of the Ferrara acquisition, Fire & Emergency segment Adjusted EBITDA decreased 24.4% compared to the prior year.

Commercial Segment

Net Sales. Commercial segment net sales were $720.0 million, $638.5 million and $620.1 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, an increase of $81.5 million, or 12.8%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and $18.4 million, or 3.0%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. The increase in net sales for fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 was primarily due to an increase in volume of school and transit bus shipments, and the mix benefit of one larger municipal transit bus order, partially offset by lower volume and higher discounting on shuttle buses and the impact of the sale of our mobility van business in the first quarter of fiscal year 2019.

The increase in net sales for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was primarily due to increases in sales of shuttle bus units, parts sales and mobility vans, partially offset by lower school and transit bus unit volume compared to the prior year.

Adjusted EBITDA. Commercial segment Adjusted EBITDA was $56.0 million, $38.1 million and $50.5 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, an increase of $17.9 million, or 47.0%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and a decrease of $12.4 million, or 24.6%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. Profitability in the Commercial segment in fiscal year 2019 improved compared to the prior year period, primarily due to an increase in the volume of higher margin transit and school bus shipments, production efficiencies associated with our larger municipal transit bus order, and operational improvements supported by the implementation of RPS throughout the segment, offset by unusually high healthcare cost experienced during the fiscal year.

The decrease in Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was primarily due to product mix shift from higher content and higher margin transit and school buses to lower margin shuttle buses and mobility vans, and higher material costs, partially offset by pricing actions.

Recreation Segment

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Net Sales. Recreation segment net sales were $716.3 million, $811.9 million and $659.8 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, a decrease of $95.6 million, or 11.8%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and an increase of $152.1 million, or 23.1%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. The decrease in net sales in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 was primarily due to a decrease in shipment volumes of Class A motorhomes, partially offset by an increase in towable and camper sales resulting from the acquisition of Lance in January 2018 and an increase in Class B RV shipments.

The increase in net sales for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was due to the acquisition of Lance as well as higher volumes in all classes of RVs except Class A. Excluding the impact of net sales from acquired companies, Recreation segment net sales increased 0.3% compared to the prior year.

Adjusted EBITDA. Recreation segment Adjusted EBITDA was $46.8 million, $60.4 million and $36.2 million for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively, a decrease of $13.6 million, or 22.5%, from fiscal year 2018 to 2019, and an increase of $24.2 million, or 66.9%, from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. The reduction in profitability in the Recreation segment compared to prior year was primarily driven by a decrease in shipment volume of Class A motorhomes. Profitability in the other RV categories within the Recreation segment continued to be strong and was in line with the prior year. Profitability within the segment was also impacted by unusually high healthcare cost experienced during the fiscal year.

The increase in Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal year 2018 compared to fiscal year 2017 was primarily due to impact of the acquisition of Lance and higher profitability in all classes of RVs except Class A. This increase was partially offset by higher purchased material costs and lower sales volumes of Class A RVs. Excluding the impact of net sales from acquired companies, Recreation segment Adjusted EBITDA increased 9.1% compared to the prior year.

Backlog

Backlog represents firm orders received from dealers or directly from end customers. Backlog does not include purchase options or verbal orders. The following table presents a summary of our backlog by segment:

Each of our three segments has a backlog of new vehicle orders that generally extends out from two to twelve months in duration.

Orders from our dealers and end customers are evidenced by a contract, firm purchase order or reserved production slot for delivery of one or many vehicles. These orders are reported in our backlog at the aggregate selling prices, net of discounts or allowances.

At the end of fiscal year 2019, our backlog was $1,317.0 million, compared to $1,379.6 million at the end of fiscal year 2018. The reduction in total backlog was due to decreases in Recreation and Commercial segment backlogs, partially offset by an increase in the Fire & Emergency segment. The decrease in Recreation backlog was across all product categories. The decrease in Commercial backlog was due to delivery of one large municipal transit bus order during the year, timing of the receipt of new larger bus orders, decreases in school bus and terminal truck orders, partially offset by an increase in shuttle bus orders. The increase in Fire & Emergency backlog was primarily due to an increase in orders across all the fire truck brand categories, the timing of fire truck shipments, and an increase in orders at our largest ambulance business unit.

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Quarterly Results of Operations (Unaudited)

The following table sets forth selected unaudited quarterly statement of operations data for each of the quarters in fiscal years 2019 and 2018. The information for each of these quarters has been prepared on the same basis as our audited financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and, in the opinion of management, includes all adjustments, which include only normal recurring adjustments, necessary for the fair presentation of the results of operations for these periods in accordance with GAAP. This data should be read in conjunction with our audited financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. These quarterly operating results are not necessarily indicative of our operating results for a full year or any future period.

Restructuring expenses for fiscal year 2018 represent costs incurred to restructure certain management positions in the Fire & Emergency, Commercial and Recreation segments, our corporate office, as well as to relocate our Class B RV production. Costs incurred in the current year consisted of personnel costs, including severance, vacation and other employee benefit payments as well as facility closure and lease termination costs.

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Liquidity and Capital Resources

General

Our primary requirements for liquidity and capital are working capital, the acquisition of machinery and equipment, the acquisition and construction of manufacturing facilities, the improvement and expansion of existing manufacturing facilities, debt service payments, regular quarterly dividend payments, general corporate needs, and common stock repurchases under the Company’s authorized stock buyback program. Historically, these cash requirements have been met through cash provided by operating activities, cash and cash equivalents and borrowings under our term loan and revolving credit facility.

We believe that our sources of liquidity and capital will be sufficient to finance our continued operations, growth strategy, cash dividends and additional expenses we expect to continue to incur as a public company. However, we cannot assure you that cash provided by operating activities and borrowings under the current revolving credit facility will be sufficient to meet our future needs. If we are unable to generate sufficient cash flows from operations in the future, and if availability under the current revolving credit facility is not sufficient due to the size of our borrowing base or other external factors, we may have to obtain additional financing. If additional capital is obtained by issuing equity, the interests of our existing stockholders will be diluted. If we incur additional indebtedness, that indebtedness may contain financial and other covenants that may significantly restrict our operations or may involve higher overall interest rates. We cannot assure you that we will be able to obtain refinancing or additional financing on favorable terms or at all.

Cash Flow

The following table shows summary cash flows for fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017:

Net Cash Provided by (Used in) Operating Activities

Net cash provided by operating activities for fiscal year 2019 was $52.5 million, compared to net cash used of $19.2 million for fiscal year 2018. The increase in cash provided by operating activities for fiscal year 2019 compared to the prior year was due to improved net working capital efficiency, offset by a decrease in net income.

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Net cash used in operating activities for fiscal year 2018 was $19.2 million, compared to net cash provided of $33.2 million for fiscal year 2017. The increase in cash used in operating activities for fiscal year 2018 compared to the prior year was primarily due to an increase in working capital levels and a decrease in net income.

Net Cash Provided by (Used in) Investing Activities

Net cash provided by investing activities for fiscal year 2019 of $0.2 million was primarily due to the sale of targeted assets, partially offset by cash used for capital expenditures.

Net cash used in investing activities for fiscal year 2018 of $119.6 million was primarily due to business acquisition activity and capital expenditures. In fiscal year 2018, the Company completed the acquisition of Lance.

Net cash used in investing activities for fiscal year 2017 of $229.1 million was primarily due to business acquisition activity and capital expenditures. In fiscal year 2017, the Company completed the acquisitions of Renegade, Midwest and Ferrara.

Net Cash (Used in) Provided by Financing Activities

Net cash used in financing activities for fiscal year 2019 was $61.3 million, which primarily consisted of net paydown of debt from our April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan. During fiscal year 2019, the Company paid cash dividends of $12.5 million.

Net cash provided by financing activities for fiscal year 2018 was $132.9 million, which primarily consisted of net borrowings from our April 2017 ABL Facility and incremental Term Loan of $50.0 million to fund the acquisition of Lance, working capital requirements, and our share repurchase program. During fiscal year 2018, the Company paid cash dividends of $12.8 million.

Net cash provided by financing activities for fiscal year 2017 was $202.9 million, which primarily consisted of net proceeds from our IPO offset by the use of those proceeds to redeem our Notes, and further net borrowings from the April 2017 ABL Facility and Term Loan to support acquisitions and working capital requirements. During fiscal year 2017, the Company paid cash dividends of $6.4 million.

Capital Expenditures

Capital expenditures for fiscal year 2020, excluding any acquisitions, are estimated to be in the range of  $20 to $25 million.

Offering of Common Stock

On January 26, 2017, the Company announced an initial public offering (“IPO”) of our common stock which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “REVG”. On February 1, 2017, the Company completed the offering of 12,500,000 shares of common stock at a price of $22.00 per share and the Company received $275.0 million in gross proceeds from the IPO, or $253.6 million in net proceeds after deducting the underwriting discount and expenses related to the offering. The net proceeds of the IPO were used to partially pay down the Company’s existing debt. The Company redeemed the entire outstanding balance of its Notes, including a prepayment premium and accrued interest, plus it partially paid down the then outstanding balance of its revolving credit facility.

Dividends

On December 18, 2019, our Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.05 per share on our common stock, payable in respect of the first quarter of fiscal year 2020. The dividend is payable on February 28, 2020 to holders of record as of January 31, 2020. Subject to legally available funds and the discretion of our Board of Directors, we expect to pay a quarterly cash dividend at the rate of $0.05 per share on our common stock. We expect to pay this quarterly dividend on or about the last day of the first month following each fiscal quarter to shareholders of record on the last day of such fiscal quarter. Our dividend policy has certain risks and limitations, particularly with respect to liquidity, and we may not pay dividends according to our policy, or at all. We cannot assure you that we will declare dividends or have sufficient funds to pay dividends on our common stock in the future.

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Stock Repurchase Program

On March 20, 2018 the Company’s Board of Directors authorized up to $50.0 million of repurchases of the Company’s issued and outstanding common stock with an expiration date of March 19, 2020. On September 5, 2018 the Company’s Board of Directors authorized an additional $50.0 million of repurchases of the Company’s issued and outstanding common stock with an expiration date of September 4, 2020. The Company’s share repurchase program is executed from time to time through open market or through private transactions. Shares purchased under the share repurchase program are retired and returned to authorized and unissued status. During fiscal year 2018, the Company repurchased 3,233,352 shares under this repurchase program at a total cost of $53.3 million at an average price per share of $16.47. During fiscal year 2019, the Company repurchased 717,597 shares under this repurchase program at a total cost of $8.3 million at an average price per share of $11.62. As of October 31, 2019, the Company had $38.3 million of authorization remaining under this program.

Term Loan

On April 25, 2017, we entered into a $75.0 million term loan (“Term Loan” or “Term Loan Agreement”) and incurred $2.0 million in debt issuance costs. The Term Loan Agreement expires on April 25, 2022. Certain subsidiaries of the Company are guarantors under the Term Loan.

On July 18, 2018 the Company exercised a $50.0 million incremental commitment option under the Term Loan Agreement, which increased total borrowing under the facility from $75.0 million to $125.0 million. The Company incurred an additional $0.6 million of debt issuance costs related to the incremental commitment option under the Term Loan. Proceeds from the increase in the Term Loan were used to repay a portion of the borrowings under the April 2017 ABL Facility.

On March 29, 2019, the Company exercised an additional $50.0 million incremental commitment option under the Term Loan Agreement, which increased total borrowing under the facility from $125.0 million to $175.0 million. The Company incurred an additional $0.8 million of debt issuance costs related to the incremental commitment option under the Term Loan. Proceeds from the incremental commitment were used to repay a portion of the outstanding borrowings under the April 2017 ABL Facility.

On October 18, 2019, the Company amended the Term Loan Agreement to raise the maximum leverage ratio to 4.00 to 1.00 from 3.50 to 1.00. The ratio will decline by 25 basis points in the third quarter of each fiscal year after the amendment date, reaching a final maximum leverage ratio of 3.50 to 1.00 on July 31, 2021. Additionally, the Company received a waiver from a majority of the lenders related to the excess cash flow payment for fiscal year 2019. The Company incurred $0.2 million of debt issuance costs related to the amendment raising the maximum leverage ratio and the waiver for the excess cash flow payment under the Term Loan Agreement.

The Company may voluntarily prepay principal, in whole or in part, at any time, without penalty. The Company is obligated to prepay certain minimum amounts based on the Company’s excess cash flow, as defined in the Term Loan Agreement. We were not required to make any such excess cash flow payments in fiscal year 2019. The Term Loan is also subject to mandatory prepayment if the Company or any of its restricted subsidiaries receives proceeds from certain events, including certain asset sales and casualty events, and the issuance of certain debt and equity interests. We were in compliance with all financial covenants under the Term Loan as of October 31, 2019.

April 2017 ABL Facility

On April 25, 2017, we entered into a new $350.0 million ABL revolving credit agreement with a syndicate of lenders (the “April 2017 ABL Facility” or “ABL Agreement”). The April 2017 ABL Facility provides for revolving loans and letters of credit in an aggregate amount of up to $350.0 million. The total April 2017 ABL Facility is subject to a $30.0 million sublimit for swing line loans and a $35.0 million sublimit for letters of credit, along with certain borrowing base and other customary restrictions as defined in the ABL Agreement. The April 2017 ABL Facility expires on April 25, 2022.

On December 22, 2017 the Company exercised its $100.0 million incremental commitment option under the April 2017 ABL Facility, which increased the facility to $450.0 million.

Principal may be repaid at any time during the term of the ABL Agreement without penalty. The April 2017 ABL Facility contains certain financial covenants. We were in compliance with all financial covenants under the April 2017 ABL Facility as of October 31, 2019. As of October 31, 2019, our availability under the April 2017 ABL Facility was $225.7 million.

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Subsequent Events

The Company evaluated subsequent events through December 18, 2019, the date on which the financial statements were available to be issued, and determined there were no items to disclose.

Contractual Obligations

The below table of material debt and lease commitments at October 31, 2019 summarizes the effect these obligations are expected to have on our cash flows in future periods as set forth in the table below.

Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income

In considering the financial performance of the business, management analyzes the primary financial performance measures of Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net income for the relevant period before depreciation and amortization, interest expense and provision for income taxes, as adjusted for certain items described below that we believe are not indicative of our ongoing operating performance. Adjusted Net Income is defined as net income, as adjusted for certain items described below that we believe are not indicative of our ongoing operating performance. Neither Adjusted EBITDA nor Adjusted Net Income is a measure defined by GAAP. The most directly comparable GAAP measure to Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income is Net Income for the relevant period.

We believe Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income are useful to investors because these performance measures are used by our management for measuring profitability. These measures exclude the impact of certain items which we believe have less bearing on our core operating performance because they are items that are not needed or available to the Company’s managers in the daily activities of their businesses. We believe that the core operations of our business are those which can be affected by our management in a particular period through their resource allocation decisions that affect the underlying performance of our operations conducted during that period. We also believe that decisions utilizing Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income allow for a more meaningful comparison of operating fundamentals between companies within our markets by eliminating the impact of capital structure and taxation differences between the companies.

To determine Adjusted EBITDA, we adjust Net Income for the following items: non-cash depreciation and amortization, interest expense, income taxes and other items as described below. Stock-based compensation expense is excluded from both Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EBITDA because it is an expense that is measured based upon external inputs such as our current share price and the movement of share price of peer companies, which cannot be impacted by our business managers. Stock-based compensation expense also reflects a cost which may obscure trends in our underlying vehicle businesses for a given period, due to the timing and nature of the equity awards.

We also adjust for exceptional items, such as impairment charges, losses attributable to assets held for sale, and deferred purchase price payments, which are determined to be those that in management’s judgment need to be disclosed by virtue of their size, nature or incidence, and include non-cash items and items settled in cash. In determining whether an event or transaction is exceptional, management considers quantitative as well as qualitative factors such as the frequency or predictability of occurrence. Adjusted EBITDA is used by management to measure and report the Company’s financial performance to the Company’s Board of

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Directors, to assist in providing a meaningful analysis of the Company’s operating performance, and is used as a measurement in incentive compensation for management. Based on the foregoing factors, management considers the adjustment for non-cash purchase accounting, certain legal matters, transaction expenses, stock-based compensation expense, restructuring costs, sponsor expense reimbursement, impairment charges, losses attributable to assets held for sale and deferred purchase price payment to be exceptional items.

Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income have limitations as analytical tools. These are not presentations made in accordance with GAAP, are not measures of financial condition and should not be considered as an alternative to net income or net loss for the period determined in accordance with GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income are not necessarily comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies. As a result, you should not consider this performance measure in isolation from, or as a substitute analysis for, our results of operations as determined in accordance with GAAP. Moreover, such measures do not reflect:

The following table reconciles net income (loss) to Adjusted EBITDA for the periods presented:

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The following table reconciles net income (loss) to Adjusted Net Income for the periods presented: