Greetings. Welcome to Century Communities' Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I will now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Langton, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for Century Communities. Thank you. You may begin.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for Century Communities earnings conference call for the second quarter 2023. Before the call begins, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described or implied in the forward-looking statements. Certain of these risks and uncertainties can be found in the heading Risk Factors in the company's latest 10-K, as supplemented by our latest 10-Q and other SEC filings. We undertake no duty to update our forward-looking statements. Additionally, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. The company's presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Hosting the call today are Dale Francescon, Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer; Rob Francescon, Co-Chief Executive Officer and President; and David Messenger, Chief Financial Officer. Following today's prepared remarks, we'll open-up line for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dale.

Thank you, Tyler and good afternoon everyone. In the second quarter, we experienced strong sequential gains across our business, including substantial increases in net orders, deliveries, starts, and gross margins. We generated $69 million in pretax income, $51 million in net income, diluted earnings per share of $1.60, and $80 million of EBITDA. Strong underlying demand for affordably priced homes, a scarcity of existing homes on the market, and consumers adjusting to higher interest rates are all contributing to and increasing new home sales. Our net new contracts in the second quarter totaled 2,317 homes, a 15% improvement over first quarter 2023, and a 4% increase over a year ago levels. Net new contracts were especially strong in our Century Complete business, increasing 40% sequentially and 16% on a year-over-year basis in the second quarter. Century Complete had an average sales price of $257,000 in the quarter, and we are seeing strong demand for affordable, entry-level homes across both our brands. This lower-priced segment of the market is benefiting from favorable demographics and has the widest range of potential buyers. As a reminder, the Century Complete portion of our business only purchases finished lots on a just-in-time basis, which helps to drive above-average returns for this segment. Consistent with the past several quarters, we are continuing to concentrate our sales efforts on homes with near-term completions as it allows our buyers certainty in their interest rates. Our quarter end backlog consisted of 2,002 sold homes valued at $750 million and we are not focused at this point on building up a significant sold backlog of later-term deliveries. Our cancellation rate was 14% in the second quarter, an improvement versus our 18% rate in the first quarter of 2023, and a significant reduction from the 37% rate we saw in the…

Thank you, Dale and good afternoon everyone. We have a strong presence and concentrated focus within the affordable new home category with approximately 93% of second quarter deliveries coming from homes priced below FHA limits, allowing us to target the widest range of potential buyers in any given market. Additionally, roughly 99% of our home deliveries this quarter were from spec builds, which allows our buyers to purchase quick move-in homes and lock in their mortgage rates for certainty of financing. We are continuing to see improvements in our cycle-times due to easing of supply chain issues and trade shortages and expect the cycle-times of homes that started in the second quarter of 2023 to begin to approximate a more normalized four to six-month timeframe. In the second quarter of 2023, the direct construction costs on our starts remained static with the prior quarter, which had declined by roughly 11%, an average of approximately $20,000 per home versus the high water mark in the second quarter of 2022. These savings will flow through to our earnings and benefit margins in the second half, as we begin to deliver more of these lower-cost homes. Recently, we have experienced increases in lumber costs and could potentially see increases in certain other categories, as the new home market continues to rebound. In the second quarter, we generated adjusted gross margins of 21%, a 140 basis point improvement over first quarter 2023 margins of 19.6%. Our gross margins in the second quarter were ahead of our expectations for them to be roughly flat on a sequential basis. The primary drivers behind the better than expected results were lower incentives, as well as solid performance on costs and cycle-times. The homes that we have been starting over the past several months are carrying a higher…

Thank you, Rob. During the second quarter of 2023, pretax income was $68.7 million, and net income was $51.4 million, or $1.60 per diluted share. EBITDA for the quarter was $80.1 million. We also posted strong sequential gains in net orders, starts, deliveries, and gross margins. Home sales revenues for the second quarter were $818.4 million, compared to $1.1 billion in the prior year quarter and $735.6 million in the first quarter 2023. Home deliveries of 2,235 homes increased 17% sequentially and declined by 18% on a year-over-year basis, a direct impact from our decision to start fewer homes in the second half of 2022. Our average sales price of $366,000 declined by 12% versus the prior year quarter, reflecting higher incentives in homes closed this year, building more affordably priced homes that buyers are seeking and mix. Regarding mix, in the second quarter this year, the West and especially the high-priced bay area accounted for a lower percentage of deliveries, while our lowest-priced Southeast and Texas regions, along with Century Complete, accounted for a higher percentage. We expect our average selling price to increase in the second half of this year over second quarter levels, as we continue to reduce incentives and selectively increase base prices. Net new contracts in the second quarter across our footprint were 2,317, a sequential increase of 15%. As Dale mentioned, we believe our sales activity is benefiting from strong underlying demand for affordably priced homes, the scarcity of existing homes on the market, consumers adjusting to higher interest rates, and our ability to buy down rates. On a sequential basis, our new orders also benefited from having a higher level of inventory with near-term deliveries available for sale. At quarter end, our backlog of sold homes was 2,002, valued at $750 million, with…

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Alex Rygiel with B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning gentlemen. A very nice quarter.

Thanks Alex.

A couple quick questions here. Can you talk a bit about the mortgages your buyers are getting, average interest rates, FICO scores, that sort of thing?

Yes. From a FICO score perspective, it's been relatively constant. We've been staying on the CMP side, on our Century Complete side. We're at about the high teens, 7.15, 7.19. On the Century Community side, we're hanging out right around 7.30. That buyer profile for both buyers really hasn't changed over the past couple of years. It's been pretty flat. And then in terms of mortgages, right now, we've been offering 5.75 on mortgages and for the buyers that we've seen. That'd be a pretty attractive rate to move people through.

Excellent. And then can you talk a little bit about thoughts about geographic expansion into new markets over the next six to 12 months, and your thoughts on M&A opportunities?

In terms of expansion into additional markets, we're very happy with the markets that we currently have. And not that we would rule out expansion into other markets, we found the right opportunity. Same thing with M&A more generally. We continue to look at things as they become available. There still seems to be quite a difference between bid and ask. And so as we would find an opportunity that we thought the pricing worked and the market worked, we would move forward on that without a doubt. But right now, I don't see any of that in -- on the horizon.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Our next question comes from Carl Reichardt with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Afternoon everybody. Do you have, Dave, offhand, the number of unsold units you had under construction at the end of the quarter? And then corollary to that is of the 3,000 or so starts you did in the quarter, what percentage of those would did you sell during Q2? Sorry, that's not what I would ask it. Sorry, what percent are -- yes, did you have an order on in Q2?

Understood. So, I don't have anything related to homes under construction other than the fact that we have started more than 5,000 homes this year. Since we're selling homes later in the cycle, you would imagine that the majority of the second quarter home starts have yet to be sold. So, we would see those being sales later in the year as they get closer to completion.

If I look at your guide and I say, you've got 2,000 in backlog, you've delivered 4,100 plus, you need 2,500 or so to get to the midpoint of the backlog. Effectively, all that 2,500 is in the ground already, yes? At least it's trenched.

Correct.

Okay. Thank you. And then you guys talked a little bit about the Century Complete business and talked about the breadth of demand in terms of buyer segments, which is interesting. Can you talk a little bit about the mix of first-time buyers coming out of apartments versus moved down, older customers versus maybe, say, investors who are buying that product, what that mix looks like and how it might have changed?

Yes, in terms of investors, we're seeing pretty minimal investor activity right now where historically that was on the Century Complete business may have been 10% to 15% of our deliveries. It's hardly worth mentioning at this point. With regard to the demographics of our buyers, it's really the entire spectrum. We're getting first-time homebuyers. We're getting moved down buyers. We're getting some buyers that are selling their existing house and buying a Century Complete house. So, it's really across the board.

Okay. Thanks. If I can squeeze 1 more in, just on buybacks. Can you talk maybe -- I don't know exactly where your current authorization sits, and you've obviously got the dividend going now. Can you talk about given the run in the stock, you're thinking on potential buybacks? Or are you thinking about the cash you're generating, since you have no debt to pay down, going really plugging back into the land market to grow the business more or less for the next year or two? Thanks.

Yes. No problem, Carl. We've got roughly 1.5 million shares available under our current authorization. As we look at it right now, obviously the stock has been on a run for a little bit here, but we have always viewed the opportunity to plow some of these earnings and that cash flow back into the business and continue to grow it. We think that we have an opportunity across our footprint in our markets to really keep expanding this business and get deeper, larger, more scale in our existing markets. We'll do that through reinvestment.

Thank you, David. Thanks all.

Our next question comes from Jay McCanless with Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. So, I guess, the first question I had with the guidance at 8,300 to 9,000 closings. It seems like a pretty wide range for this late in the year. Maybe talk to me about what the difference is between the top and the bottom of that range?

Yes, I think 8,300 to 9,000 closings, we still have -- we just put those homes on the ground. We still have to sell and close them, and there's still a lot of things that can happen between now and the end of the year. We think that there's still going to be strong underlying demand. We've got a macro economy to think about. We have cycle-times. We have municipalities. We have labor and a variety of issues. And so at this point in time, we feel pretty good with having that range, which is less than 10% from the bottom to the top of it. And we'll hopefully tighten it up as we get into the third quarter.

And then with SG&A dollars, could you maybe talk about, especially for what you said about co-broker in your prepared remarks, where you think that quarterly or annual run rate in dollars should be now and fixed versus variable, if you could?

Yes, I think on the commission side of the world, I think that we'll end up being kind of in that 3.5% to 4% range, which is where we've been historically. And it's roughly 30%-ish of our overall SG&A dollars. We've been running pretty historically fixed SG&A at 65% to 70% of the bucket.

And then one other question I wanted to ask on complete. We've heard people in the media talk about this lock-in effect where existing homeowners don't want to list, because they don't want to give up a 3% mortgage for a 7% mortgage. Historically, you guys have talked about complete competition being more the local housing market than other new homebuilders. I guess, is that still the case? And is that something that contributed to some pretty nice order growth for complete this quarter?

Yes, I think, first of all, it's still the same. When we look at it, well, in some subdivisions, we're competing against new homebuilders. It's largely against resale homes. And we are definitely seeing the number of resale homes available in virtually all of our markets as being very constrained. So, as a result, that gives us a competitive advantage and one that we're continuing to push. And I do think that's a big reason why our complete business did so well in terms of new orders on the second quarter.

And then one last one. I know you said in the guidance that you expect the gross margin to go up sequentially. Is there going to be, in terms of the actual closings for the next two quarters, are you thinking it's going to go up from 2Q to 3Q? Or should we expect a dip just because of what you talked about with starting less homes at the last half of 2022? How should we expect the quarterly cadence on closings to go?

I would expect the latter, based on your comments, so that you'd see a bit of a dip in Q3 and pick it up again in Q4.

Okay, great. That's all I had. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thanks Jay.

Our next question comes from Alan Ratner with Zelman & Associates. Please go ahead.

Hey guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions.

Hey Alan.

So, apologies for the somewhat technical modeling question, but I'm trying to figure out some math here and hoping you can clarify it for me. So, I think you mentioned that you guys expect to see a typical seasonal pullback in order activity in the back half of the year, which we're hearing from a lot of builders. But I'm struggling to reconcile that with your model right now, where you're effectively selling homes at or close to completion. And your closing guide for the back half of the year implies pretty steady closing activity, at least back half versus first half, kind of averaging 2,100, 2,200 closings per quarter? Why wouldn't your orders kind of be in a similar range? And if it were, to be in a similar range, that would imply kind of flattish with the first half of the year?

Yes, I think I'm making sure I'm trying to follow your math, and happy to discuss it after the call as well. But as I look at it with when we have homes completing and when we expect to be selling them, with a little bit of seasonality occurring here in the July and August months, and we'll see sales pick up again into the fall, we think that where our backlog is today, 2,002 homes, and that sales cadence, we think that we still hit the closing guidance whether -- to be in that range of 8,300 to 9,000 homes.

Got it, okay. Yes, we can talk through the math later.

Okay.

But I appreciate that. Second, on the margin, obviously you're expecting sequential improvement over the next couple of quarters. If I think about your incentives right now, which are running about 600 bps on orders versus 900 bps on closings, is that the easiest way to think about how much improvement you expect kind of 300 bps or so over the next couple of quarters, or are there other moving pieces in there that I need to consider?

Well, there's moving pieces on directs as well, as I pointed out, but I think that would be at the top level at that 300 bps.

Top, meaning that would be at the high end of what you would expect?

Yes, exactly.

Okay, got it. All right. That's helpful. And I guess just on those direct comments, I've been personally a little surprised. It seems like many builders that have seen nice cost reductions expect those reductions to remain in place, even as starts are accelerating across the industry. Your tone, to me, sounds a little bit more realistic and aligned with how I'm thinking about it, that with some of these pretty significant increases in starts, it's possible certain items might see a bit of a reversal there. I'm just curious if you've seen any indication of that up to this point, any particular markets or trades that you feel like are starting to get a little bit stretched or come back for some price increases, or is that just more kind of prospective thinking on your part at this point?

Nothing that's consistent right now, Alan, but it's really more from our perspective looking forward and just being in the business for a long time, knowing how things work. And we're seeing it obviously right now on lumber, but we think we're going to see it in some other categories as well. But nothing that I could say, it's on the ground happening today in numerous areas, that is not the case. But on the other hand, we're flat from basically net-net flat from where we were on a sequential quarter basis. So, certainly, it is not going down at this point.

Got it. And just a strategic question on this. So, on one hand, demand is strong today and surprisingly strong, and it feels like you guys definitely have some pricing power as evidenced by the incentives pulling back. Let's say costs were to claw back-up a bit here. How aggressive would you be on trying to pass that along to the consumer? Or are you perhaps a bit more cautious given where affordability is today than perhaps you would have been two years ago, let's say, when rates were half of where they are today?

Yes, I think rates today clearly impact this. But I'm not sure it's any different than where we were going back a year and a half or so ago. As our costs were rising, we were moving along the additional costs wherever we could. We would try to do the same thing going forward. Now, there's obviously with the higher interest rates that would be more difficult to do. But to the extent in a particular subdivision we can do it, we will. And if we can't in another sub-division, then we'll just have to absorb it.

Got it. Appreciate the thoughts. Thanks for all the time.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Michael Rehaut with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. This is Andrew Hassen for Mike. Nice quarter. I just wanted to ask -- yes, of course I just want to ask in terms of the absorptions you saw this quarter, it looks like you were doing a little bit better than you would historically. And kind of just given your confidence going forward, do you kind of expect that to continue in terms of just beating your historical seasonality a little bit or any puts and takes there?

Well, part of that is all driven by what we have available for sale. And it still comes down to as things are nearing completion, we have been selling them and we have very little in the way of completed inventory. So, with that in mind, some of the seasonality is impacted by what we have available for sale as well as the same thing with absorption rates. So, as we look at it, as Dave commented earlier, some of our sales pace is going to be impacted on when homes are nearing completion and where they are in the construction cycle. So, that kind of affects the actual absorptions as well.

That makes sense. I appreciate it. Thank you for that. I also wanted to ask maybe, I don't think I heard earlier in the call about kind of what you saw month-to-month in terms of demand trends and maybe what you are seeing in July so far?

Yes, I would say that month-to-month, we saw some of the seasonality moving through the quarter from April through June. Then as I look at July, on a sales basis, we are up 15% or so over last year at this point and continue to see some of that seasonality play into our numbers going from June to the end of July.

I appreciate that. And then as you continue to invest in land to support growth, where do you aim to be maybe long-term in terms of your optioned lot percentage?

Well, we still like the ratio of a 50/50 optioned versus owned. And we are getting back closer to that now. We went ticked up above that when we dropped so many lots at the end of the last two quarters of last year. But we are starting to rebuild that now. We are up sequentially quarter-over-quarter. We are at roughly the 58,000. As we said in our prepared remarks, we see our controlled lots continue to grow throughout the year. And so that will get us closer to that 50/50 ratio. So, no commitments will be there, but that is kind of the goal right now.

Thanks so much. That’s all I had. Good luck. Best of luck in the next quarter.

Thank you.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. We will now turn the line back over to Dale Francescon for some brief closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to take this opportunity to once again thank all of our team members for their incredible work and continued dedication to our valued homebuyers. I would also like to thank our investors for their time today. We appreciate your continued support and investment and look forward to speaking to you again next quarter.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.