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Beazer Homes USA, Inc. (BZH)

Q1 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 2, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Beazer Homes Earnings Conference Call for the First Quarter of Fiscal Year 2012. Today's call is being recorded and will be hosted by Allan Merrill, the company's Chief Executive Officer. Joining him on the call today will be Bob Salomon, the company's Chief Financial Officer. Before he begins, Carey Phelps, Director of Investor Relations, will give instructions on accessing the company's slide presentation over the Internet and will make comments regarding forward-looking information. Ms. Phelps?

Carey Phelps

Management

Thanks, Jody. Good morning, and welcome to the Beazer Homes conference call discussing our results for the quarter ended December 31, 2011. During this call, we will webcast a synchronized presentation which can be found on the Investor page of beazer.com. Before we begin, you should be aware that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors are described in our SEC filings including our annual report on Form 10-K. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made and except, as required by law, we do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for management to predict all such factors. Joining me today are Allan Merrill, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bob Salomon, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following their prepared remarks, we will take questions in the time remaining. I will now turn the call over to Allan.

Allan Merrill

Management

Thanks, Carey. And thank you for joining us this morning. On our call this morning, we will recap our results for the first quarter, discuss the current homebuilding environment and update you on our current operational objectives and goals for the year. I'm pleased with the results our team delivered to start off fiscal 2012. For the first quarter, we recorded 724 new home orders, which is up 36% over the first quarter of fiscal 2011. The sales increase reflected a growth in communities of under 10%, but more importantly, a better than 25% increase in sales per community or absorptions. This is a direct result of our efforts to be more competitive in every community through the No Community Left Behind initiative we adopted in the fourth quarter. We closed 867 new homes, up 67% over the first quarter of fiscal 2011 and we ended the quarter with a backlog that reflects a similar improvement over last year. We generated homebuilding gross margins of 20.2% compared with 17% a year ago. Excluding a significant warranty recovery, this quarter's margins were 14.3% as we made feature, pricing and incentive adjustments to ensure that our sales pace was both faster and more broad-based. We reported positive EBITDA and positive net income. The positive net income was a result of a noncash $36 million tax benefit and a warranty recovery. While this doesn't reflect the commencement of sustainable profitability, we aren’t going to apologize for making a bit of money in the quarter. And finally, we maintained substantial liquidity ending the quarter with $273 million in unrestricted cash. These results were achieved despite persistently difficult market conditions characterized by a lack of urgency in the part of buyers and extremely inefficient mortgage origination conditions. We are clearly seeing an increase in traffic…

Robert Salomon

Management

Thanks, Allan. We reported net income from continuing operations for the quarter of $700,000 or $0.01 per share, which included an $11 million benefit from a warranty recovery, noncash pretax charges of $3.5 million related to inventory impairment and a benefit from income taxes of $35.7 million. This compared to a loss in continuing operations of $48.3 million or $0.65 per share during the first quarter of fiscal 2011. The $35.7 million noncash tax benefit recorded this quarter, which is higher than I have previously estimated due to the addition of accrued interest, is a result of tax planning that created clarity and the recognition of some of our prior year unrecognized tax benefits. Please note that this was expected to be a onetime event. As Allan indicated earlier, our first quarter sales and closings were quite strong despite an increase in our reported cancellation rate. This higher cancellation rate is attributable in large part to the challenges created by today's mortgage environment. Facing changing qualification standards as well as burdensome and time-consuming processes, many potential homebuyers are encountering loan qualification issues or having problems selling their existing homes. Yet despite these obstacles, our orders were up 36% and closings were up 67% for the quarter. During the quarter, our backlog conversion was 60% which was less than our conversion rate from the prior year of 67% but roughly equivalent to our expectations for this quarter. As we've shown in this slide, there are a number of moving parts that impact this conversion ratio. First, in every quarter, we have homes in backlog since closings are scheduled for future quarters due to build times and product types. Second, cancellations occur in the normal course of business and of range between 10% and 15% of beginning backlog over the past 5…

Allan Merrill

Management

Thanks, Bob. So I'd like to end our comments this morning by reiterating my confidence in our operational improvement plans. The positive order and closing trends in the first quarter confirm a clear pattern of recovery. After 3 solid quarters of new home order growth and 2 quarters of increases in closings, our trailing 12-month results are moving in the right direction. It's obvious that we have a lot of work in front of us but every one of my colleagues here at Beazer are committed to creating our own recovery, not simply waiting for a recovering economy to bail us out. We are going to try and provide line item guidance for this year but I can't confirm that our goals are unchanged. For fiscal 2012, we expect to sell and close more homes than we did last year, generate positive EBITDA for the first time in years and preserve and protect our liquidity. While our visibility into the economic conditions for the remainder of the year is limited, I believe that we will benefit from a gradually improving housing market. We are taking the steps necessary to drive improvement in our revenues while maintaining an efficient cost structure, looking for new opportunities to generate profits and investing in future growth, all with the objective of accelerating our return to profitability. I look forward to updating you during future calls on our progress as we work to implement these path-to-profitability strategies. With that, I will turn the call back to the operator to lead us into the Q&A.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Jay McCanless.

James McCanless

Analyst

Question I wanted to ask, with the discussions right now about bulk foreclosure sales starting up, have you guys given any thought to what that might do to appraisals and/or impairments in some of the areas like Arizona and Florida that you own?

Allan Merrill

Management

It's a good question, Jay. I think the -- there's a lot we don't know about the -- with how these bulk foreclosures would take place. I mean, when you're in the portfolio sales, trying to assign value to individual homes becomes very challenging. But I can tell you that those homes that have already worked through the foreclosure process have clearly had an effect on appraised values. But I think that the investor demand for those properties is high enough that we're announcing increases in the prices for distressed homes. Even though they're priced below where the regular resale market is and clearly below where the new home market is, there is a lot of investor demand for those properties. So I think the bigger issue that we want to work with the industry on is making sure that when appraisals come in on new homes, that they take into account energy-efficiency features, that they either eliminate the distressed transactions because they're not comparable or at least the appraiser has done a physical inspection of that distressed property so that they can make an appropriate adjustment based on the condition. But I would tell you that the bulk sales, in and of itself, I don't think is going to prove to be a big issue on new home prices.

James McCanless

Analyst

Okay. And then my second question, just with so many of your markets now focused on the East Coast and East of the Mississippi, do you believe that you had some benefit in Q1 from warmer weather? And do you think you may have stolen some demand that would normally show up in Q2 and Q3?

Allan Merrill

Management

Well, as I look at the mix of businesses that we've got, our west businesses and our southeast businesses did pretty well in the quarter. Our -- what we call our E segment, which for us is New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Indianapolis, actually were down in orders year-over-year. So I don't think we got any benefit. I sure hope that didn't reflect stealing or pulling forward any demand. We really struggled in the period and I think a lot of it was self-imposed. But we have real issues with spec sales canning during the quarter in those markets which was one of the primary things that led us to make the changes in our mortgage program that we did.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from David Goldberg.

David Goldberg

Analyst

My first question was about the new lender choice program that you're adding more lenders. And I'm just wondering with how that -- if it complicates the ability to be on top of the mortgage process, if you sell homes, and we've heard from other builders that have told us that, for their clients as an example, if they've used outside lenders, they might have to push closings because when they got to the closing table, everything wasn't together. Now clearly, you'll be more on top of it than that because it's not like pure outside lender. But I would just imagine as you add more lenders to your program and you give them more choice, it's going to be more complicated for you to be on top of the situation. So I was wondering if you could talk about your views on that and maybe how you -- what kind of controls you put in place to make sure that's not an issue?

Allan Merrill

Management

It's a great question and I can't tell you definitively it's not an issue. But let me give you some more color around it because I think it's actually not quite as concerning as folks might think. First of all, we've limited the number of lenders in each division to 3 lenders that we're working with. So it's not an unruly number. Now that number can change. But we've worked with that number and larger in recent years, notwithstanding having an agreement with a particular lender where we created a specific incentive to use that lender, there were still outside lenders involved. What we found is that there was very little efficiency even with a relatively high capture rate to one lender. We found that on a loan-by-loan basis, the effort, the pain, the trials and tribulations of the lender collecting documents, giving us a read on credit and moving that through their respective process whether we have one loan with that lender or 35 loans with that lender, it didn't cut down the number of conversations we had. It didn't make it any more efficient for us. So I personally talked to our closing coordinators in our divisions. But this is a local thing. That's not a national thing. And I think their view is that when you get a match of the right lender to the right borrower, actually the process gets a whole lot simpler. Where we spin our wheels and spend a lot of time is we when you're trying to put a square peg in a round hole and you're trying to get a loan through a lender, it's really not a good fit. And that's really where our biggest inefficiency is. So while I'm very open into and accept the premise that more lenders does create a little different risk profile, I will tell you that trying to get everything to be kind of one size fits all through one program or through one lender had its own inefficiencies. And I like very much the position that we've got with buyers that we're on their side.

David Goldberg

Analyst

I think that makes sense. My follow-up question, I just want to make sure I understood in the commentary. Bob, I think you mentioned, and Allan, as you mentioned before about some of these No Communities Left Behind and maybe some more price incentives in these communities to drive some volumes. Is the view that that's going to be kind of a consistent theme as you work through some of these underperforming communities? Or is it more, and I think this is what you guys were trying to say was that as you get the sales pace to start to ramp up through some of these targeted price incentives, that eventually will kind of wean off of them as just sales volumes go up and maybe that looks better to new buyers that are coming in. So if you could just comment on that, I think that it'd be helpful.

Allan Merrill

Management

Okay. Yes, it's a good point. And the latter of what you said is what we were trying to say. There's no question that when I look at with our teams a community that wasn't working, we needed a framework to have a discussion about that. What's not right about it? I can't move it, I can't make it someplace else. Well, is our price right? Is our product right? Do we have the right sales person there? And are we promoting it correctly? Which leads to both do you have enough traffic in the community and is it the right kind of traffic? Is it the right buyer profile? Well, other than price, which you can stamp your fingers and make a change on or including features which is typically what we do rather than changing the base price, will typically include a feature. Maybe it's a granite countertop. That's a margin hit but it's not really a price change. That's easy, that's quick, that helps create immediate competitiveness. The other 3: changing out new home counselors or changing product, different structural options or a more efficient building so that we could take direct costs out, or tweaking the marketing locally so we're getting more of the right people in the community, those aren't quick fixes. Those aren't 30-, 60-day flip-the-switch and it happens. So that the discipline is really around analyzing all 4 of those parameters and having detailed written plans, and I look at weekly, what are we doing in these communities? And it's lazy and it's simple but it's to some extent necessary to stimulate this with a little bit of price. But as I talked last quarter, we've created incentive plans at the division level that manages both velocity and margin. So I promise, there's a high degree of alignment of interest between what our investors want, what I want and what our divisions are striving for to use those other aspects of repositioning a community than just price to grow into the kind of volumes we want to do in each community.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ivy Zelman.

Ivy Lynne Zelman

Analyst

If I can start with 2 questions and then assuming I get any color or further questions, but first on cancellation rates, you talked about the challenges there. And your cancellation rates at over 30% are much higher than your peers. So is it possible that maybe there's some, when the person's in the door and applying that needs to be tighter or some more levels of scrutiny? Because certainly you're significantly higher than the industry. And then secondly, when you think about gross margin today at 14.3%, you're also significantly below the industry and let's call it 400-plus basis points on average. Assuming that's the case and you talk about, Allan, 20%, 25% of your average selling prices, your lot costs, is that what you're buying today as opposed to what's running through the P&L? Because with incentives that -- you didn't disclose what percent of your ASP is incentive today. There's some big factor that's causing your margins to be so substantially below everybody else. So how do you close that gap? And maybe if you walked through the COGs and explained it to us, I think we'd be more, at least, clear on what the drivers going forward are going to be.

Allan Merrill

Management

All right. Well, how about this, we'll have a division of labor. Let me talk about the can rates. I'll let Bob talk a little bit about the gross margins and the components to that. And then we'll see if there's a follow-up. On the can rates, I do think, Ivy, you're -- is that the premise of your question is right. I think in terms of people coming in the door and getting prequalified, that needs to be tighter. But part of that was in a mono lender kind of environment, we were getting, I think, some false positives. We were getting, hey, we're entitled to this business and yes, we can make this work and then when push came to shove and we're working through a deeper credit analysis, it was challenging. These weren't decisions made by our folks, these were reliances that we had. And I think, again, competition, we're going to have a better read on that buyer. The other thing, though, and I made this point in relation to one of the other questions, our can rate was either flat or down in the west and southeast, year-over-year. It was way up in the east. And within the east, it was particularly up on specs. It was basically flat on dirt. So what we've really isolated in the 3 divisions, the product type, where the can rate really got away from us. And I can put my finger on some very specific loan lending origination process improvements that I think will allow us to pull that back down. So I don't know that, and I've always believed, that comparing can rates across builders is a little bit tricky because the real risk in a high can rate is just you've got a ton of houses that you start. If you've got some discipline about when you release a home for construction, plus or minus a few 100 basis points in the can rate doesn't make that big a difference. We definitely want to capture that buyer. And if we're prudent about how we outlay capital against that, I'm okay with it. So I'm not going to try and chase some mythical can rate down to a low number. But in this quarter, we can tell you very clearly where the can rate blip came from and what we've done about it. And I think next quarter, we'll have a different story on both dirt and spec sales and where our can rates were by division. So that's a little bit more on that. I think, Bob, I'll flip the gross margin question to you.

Robert Salomon

Management

Sure. Ivy, when you think about gross margins, you think about 20% to 25% component of the land. That's a blended consolidated number. That every market's not created equal, so some markets have a little bit higher and some markets have a little bit lower. And I think when you look at the mix of closings and where they're generated and that impact on that margin has a big impact. So it's not so much of the land cost but it's -- I think if you go back to the 50% of our communities previously creating 20% of the sales or so and trying to improve those, improving some incentives to get some of those communities moving has really been, probably the bigger driver than the land cost. Our land cost in our new pro-formas are in that same range, of 20% to 25%. Again, we operate and underwrite those deals, not so much on a land cost as a percentage but what's the return characteristics going to be for that new land deal.

Allan Merrill

Management

I think the other piece of this -- and this isn't really the right form to try and deconstruct the entire income statement. But when we think about cost of goods sold, the land market is one that we don't control the pricing. Obviously, it's very competitive out there but I don't feel badly about our purchases in that 20% to 25% range. On the building products side and on the labor side, I think we're very competitive. I think having pushed purchasing back into the field last quarter allows us to be a little bit more competitive. And I think we can find some nickels and dimes in that. But I'll tell you, the area where we've killed ourselves is we don't get good leverage on our -- the fixed portions of cost at the community level that you really can leverage with better sales per community. And having a bunch of laggard communities that are selling less than one per month in that community, that's a margin killer. That's an absolute margin killer. So the area for us for greatest improvement in gross margin actually is job #1 on our path to profitability, increased sales per community. Because I mean, you could extend your point about our gross margins relative to the peer group. You need to say also, our sales per community have been lower than the peer group. And I think that's really the relationship that I'm focused on.

Ivy Lynne Zelman

Analyst

That's all very helpful. Just one quick follow-up on the price incentives. Can you say what they were as a percent of sales and what they were the last few quarters and what the trend is going forward in your view?

Allan Merrill

Management

I tell you what. How about if we get back to you? I don't have it right in front of me. I mean, Bob, I don't know if you got it off the top of your head.

Robert Salomon

Management

I don't have it off the top of my head, but [indiscernible].

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mr. Mike Rehaut.

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

First question on absorption pace, I believe you said earlier in the call it was up about 25% year-over-year.

Allan Merrill

Management

Yes.

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

I was curious if you could give us, just for reference, the last couple of quarters, 4Q year-over-year and 3Q year-over-year. And if you've seen any change in that pace as we've entered into January.

Allan Merrill

Management

Well, I would tell you for sure, it was not up 25% as much as that in our fourth quarter. I mean, we really got on this bandwagon hard in the July, August time period. So it had a limited ability to affect us in the fourth quarter. It was clearly up, I think -- my recollection, around a low double-digit kind of percentage in terms of sales per community. I know on a trailing 12-month basis on that metric, we're just under 1.9, which is better. A year ago, on a trailing 12-month basis, we were at 1.55. So there is improvement that we've made during the year and more improvement this last quarter. Bob?

Robert Salomon

Management

No, I think those numbers are accurate. I think you definitely have seasonality in the numbers and the trailing 12-months is the way to look at it.

Allan Merrill

Management

And look, I think clear...

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

And any further improvement into January or...

Allan Merrill

Management

January is going to be an interesting comparator, I think, for a lot of folks. I mean, we finished December very strong. We're very pleased with how we did in our first quarter. In our second quarter, we have traditionally run a fairly significant promotion. That promotion is really less about price than it is about interest and trying to create a velocity of interest and prospects, leads, traffic in our communities. It is pulled forward this year. We launched it actually yesterday. It's the first 2 weeks of February rather than where it's been the last 2 years which is the last 2 weeks of February. And I will tell you, I think it had a little bit of an effect. I don't have our January sales numbers yet, but I'll bet that our January was a little softer than some others will be because I have no doubt that, that is a lead into our promo. So I try and be a little careful about reading a January comp against last year just because of what we did with the timing of our promo.

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

Great. Just a second question, just to try and better understand the challenges you've had with the mortgage origination. Was there a particular profile of buyer that -- you were kind of mentioning, Allan, that you're trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Was there a typical profile of buyer that really wasn't cutting it with the provider that you had in terms of either FICO scores or LTV? And you'd also said it was maybe limited to some geographies.

Allan Merrill

Management

Well, unfortunately, it is very hard to generalize. But I will use the opportunity to give you an example because it's something I've actually talked in D.C. about -- tried to paint this picture for regulators and others that are interested in what's happening in housing finance. We had a 750-plus FICO borrower that was working with our preferred lender that was $50,000 plus in cash liquidity, better than 10% down. We were 2 days away from a closing and there was a requirement in a re-audit of an audit of the loan file to document a deposit that had occurred 6 months previously in the amount of $400 or $500. And initially, it wasn't -- it was sort of ambiguous what the $400 was. And yet you've had to say, in a common sense way, the reason people want to document sources of income and deposits is you want to be careful about where the deposit or where the downpayment for the home is coming from. And I think we all get that. That's important. But I'm talking about $400 against a $15,000 or a $20,000 downpayment. But many of that -- the borrower confessed that he won the NCAA basketball pool in his office. Well, that flagged the file, check marked known gambler, loan denied, missed closing, unhappy customer. That's not really a credit issue. It's not really a FICO score issue. It's an issue of everybody is so fearful about putback risk on their originations that there can't be any blemish or any question or any doubt because who knows, if you're a lender, whether 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years down the road, somebody's going to come back and say, so you had active knowledge, you shouldn't have originated that loan. Now I am happy to say, some number of weeks later, we were able to get that buyer approved with a different lender and closed, but those kinds of things is not as simple as the FICO wasn't there or the income history wasn't there. It's little nits and nats. And I can't fault any lender for their specific processes, but it's why I think consumers are well served to have a couple of lenders working their file and working with them because these are very personal and entity-specific overlays.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Dan Oppenheim.

Daniel Oppenheim

Analyst

I was wondering about the sales promotion that you're talking about, just it's being started now. With -- it seems that you're talking about less of an emphasis on incentives with this. Are you basically going into sort of, call it, the spring season with less of those out there so we are thinking that you'll be able to get the sales with what's going on but not using the incentives to get that as we go through fiscal 2Q?

Allan Merrill

Management

Yes, Dan, I don't think that in year-over-year, the incentives are going to be particularly different. I really don't. They may be a little lower. They're certainly not. There's no consorted strategy that they need to be higher. Traffic is up materially, November, December and January. And our communities' interest is pretty high. I think we had a self-created bottleneck on the originations side that we weren't as good as we needed to be with that. I think we've addressed that. I'm sure it's not perfect. But I think we just need to use the things that we talked about, low rates, good affordability, tremendous energy efficiency which continues to be a big push for us to get people to commit. And candidly, I hope we jump the market a little bit by being a bit earlier in our promo to pull those buyers, even pre-Super Bowl, out of the market.

Daniel Oppenheim

Analyst

Got it. And then in terms of -- you talked about the mortgage issues on the specs and such. How much of it was an issue with the buyers versus an issue in terms of homes at all? Or was there too much finish in the appraisal issues then? Is there anything that, aside from having more lenders know that you're doing different in terms of how you're proceeding with specs?

Allan Merrill

Management

Yes. I think on the specification levels, there are a couple of markets. Florida is really challenging on appraisals. We've got to be unbelievably careful putting anything in a home in Florida because of the appraisal problems. That's still true in Phoenix. It's a little less true than it was a year ago. But I would say that broadly, the appraisal issues are diminishing in both frequency and in severity. So the issue really is more at the loan file level than it is at the house level.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Susan Berliner.

Susan Berliner

Analyst

I was wondering if we could focus a little bit, I guess, on the unrestricted cash. And I know you guys have a lot of coupon payments this quarter. But I guess I was trying to figure out where all the cash went. I didn't know if some went to the rental program or if there is anything notable that you guys could address.

Robert Salomon

Management

Sure, Susan. I think we can talk about it in big buckets. I mean, we had about $50 million of interest payments this quarter. We paid our portion of our South Edge payment. It was about $16 million. We had about $8 million in CapEx, of which I think $6 million was related to the preowned. So when you look at that, that's -- those are pretty much the lion's share of the cash decrease.

Susan Berliner

Analyst

Okay, got it. And I guess going forward, I know -- I think a year ago, you guys had kind of articulated where you expected on restricted cash to end the year, which would obviously also kind of tie in to land spend. Are you guys going to provide those numbers?

Robert Salomon

Management

We haven't talked about providing specific numbers but if you remember, we've talked about our interest borrowing is about $120 million a year. We're going to have positive EBITDA, and we're going to run our land on a basic replacement level for what we use. So I think when you think about those, it kind of gives you some indications to where cash will end up.

Susan Berliner

Analyst

And if I could sneak one more, I guess, just with regards to the balance sheet, the new issue market is quite strong. Any comments on what you guys see in terms of raising additional debt going forward?

Robert Salomon

Management

I think we were pretty encouraged with what's been happening with the recent issuances in the market and we keep pretty close tabs on what's going on. And as you know, in the past, we've been pretty creative with our willingness to issue debt as well as equity in the past. And I think going forward, we're going to be continued to be flexible. We're going to watch the market, and I think we will just continue to monitor.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Kristen McDuffy.

Kristen McDuffy

Analyst

Just following on Susan's question, could you talk a little bit about how you think about what part of the structure you would issue debt out? Would you consider secured debt or would you even consider a convertible? And then also, could you talk a little bit about revolvers? It sounded like from some prior builder calls that things were becoming more amenable to revolvers.

Robert Salomon

Management

Okay. That was a mouthful. In the -- when we talk about -- let's talk about the revolver first. I think if we see the markets really improve and we start leaning into our land acquisition and with buildup, we would look towards putting a revolver in place. We feel pretty comfortable right now. But when we think about debt, there are circumstances that might make some sense as we move forward. We have no specific plans in place today. But there could come a time where the opportunities would make sense for us.

Allan Merrill

Management

Okay. Let me just jump in. I also think, Bob's exactly right, we've got to be quite opportunistic. But we worked hard a couple of years ago to be in a position where we had a nicely laddered maturity profile. We had a lot of dry powder in the secured basket. And I think we liked the flexibility that those things present. We've got plenty of cash to run the business right now, so we don't feel a particular urgency by any pressing matter. On the convertibles market, it's clear we've got a couple of converts out there already. I think we've got as complex a capital structure probably as a company our size needs to have, so I think we'd be a bit cautious about that right now.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Alex Barrón. Alex Barrón: I guess I was listening to all of your comments and strategies on the profitability or getting back to it. And I mean, I think you guys are making progress in the right direction. But the one thing that I continue to struggle with is the level of debt and therefore, the level of interest incurred. And I'm just kind of wondering how do you overcome that? Do you have any plans to maybe raise some equity or try to start paying down some debt or what you -- how are you thinking about that?

Allan Merrill

Management

Well, I've talked about the path to profitability, Alex. And if we do the first, if we just execute our list, if we increased sales per community against a gradually increasing community count number and we keep our fixed costs under control, and I've defined fixed costs to include the interest burden and the overhead expenses, we can get back to profitability. If there is a way to accelerate that on any one of those levers, we would certainly look at it, have looked at it, we'll continue to look at it. But I don't think there's a silver bullet that's going to get us there. We're going to have to do all 4 of those things. Alex Barrón: Okay. And then my second question is something I've asked other builders. I mean, it's been about 6 years since the market turned down. It looks like it's finally bottomed. And obviously, there's been several million people who've lost their home to foreclosure and short sales and have been out of the market for a while renting houses. Are you starting to see any of those people qualified to be able to buy homes again? Are they coming back to your communities yet?

Allan Merrill

Management

We have. In fact, some of the markets that went in early, Phoenix and Las Vegas are among those, we are seeing people who had short sales or foreclosures in '07 or '08 who are back to a point with their FICO scores where they're prospective and eligible homebuyers. We're on the very earliest wave of that, and I think we still have a year or 2 to go before we see a significant number of those folks. But we're starting to see the early signs of it, yes.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Andrew Casella.

Andrew Casella

Analyst

Just firstly on your revolver, that matures I believe later this year. Have you entered in negotiations with your lenders yet on that? And as far as when we talk about your liquidity and whatnot, would it be under management's consideration to, I guess, expand the current revolver to, I believe it's $150 million basket, and possibly tap incremental cash from that aspect?

Robert Salomon

Management

We do have a basket of $150 million for first lane revolver. The revolver that's in place right now, it's primarily for letters of credit, which right now we have cash secured those letters of credit. We have not entered into any discussions at this point to extend that particular term. I'm sure that we will at the appropriate time. But we do have plenty of liquidity today and no maturity. So at the moment, we're not very stressed about entering into a brand new revolver.

Andrew Casella

Analyst

So if you were to tap that $150 million basket, would that be under the same lenders or would you have to go to different banks on that?

Robert Salomon

Management

I have no idea. I can't predict who would be interested in playing into a new revolver.

Andrew Casella

Analyst

All right, great. And just one follow-up, regarding the warranty reversal, is that a cash inflow or is that just the reversal of an accrual?

Robert Salomon

Management

It was a cash inflow. The accrual was put in place, I think, in 2004 and moneys were spent over the years. But this was a cash recovery.

Andrew Casella

Analyst

Okay. And as far as including that or excluding it from EBITDA, just to get a clean number, would you consider that to be a deduction? Or do you think it's good to include that as far as just getting a cash EBITDA number?

Robert Salomon

Management

I think it's good to include it in EBITDA. Again, in the past, the cost related to those reserves were deducted from EBITDA. So I think just because the timing of the recovery is several years in the future, I still think it belonged to EBITDA.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from Joel Locker.

Joel Locker

Analyst

Just on your community count, you mentioned it was up 13 year-over-year. What would it have been if you included the discontinued operation communities?

Robert Salomon

Management

Well, I don't have that because from a discontinued -- actually, I don't even have that calculation.

Allan Merrill

Management

I think the delta is like 10.

Robert Salomon

Management

Maybe.

Allan Merrill

Management

But it would have been in both camps. I mean disco ops a year ago and disco ops this year would be in both cases a number under 10. The differential is pretty insignificant.

Joel Locker

Analyst

But wasn't there -- I mean, do you have any communities open now that are discontinued or are all those closed? I didn't see any orders.

Robert Salomon

Management

To be honest, we have less than 5 homes remaining in disco ops that are for sale. So I don't think you can call that a community.

Joel Locker

Analyst

Right, right. And then your interest expense of $19 million running through that line, I mean, is that just going to be there for a while just based on inventories being relatively flat?

Robert Salomon

Management

I think it was based on a couple of things: inventories being flat, level of closings for where you relieve that interest expense. But I think given the incurreds level in relation to the inventory level for a period of time, that is going to stay. It's going to be geography, on the balance -- in the income statement as to whether it's in COGS or below. But I think you could expect that to happen.

Joel Locker

Analyst

Right. Just the last question on your -- what -- did you have a finished spec count and just a total amount of dollars in customer deposits?

Robert Salomon

Management

I don't have -- well, the customer deposit number, I don't have off the top of my head but the finished spec number is about $380 million, which is on Slide 16.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect at this time.