Operator
Operator
Welcome to Lennar’s third quarter earning conference call. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to Scott Shipley, Direct of Investor Relations for the reading of the forward-looking statement.
Lennar Corporation (LEN)
Q3 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Sep 23, 2008
$92.28
-1.04%
Same-Day
+16.21%
1 Week
+19.51%
1 Month
-44.22%
vs S&P
-21.56%
Operator
Operator
Welcome to Lennar’s third quarter earning conference call. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to Scott Shipley, Direct of Investor Relations for the reading of the forward-looking statement.
Scott Shipley
Management
Good morning. Today’s conference call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to Lennar’s future business and financial performance. These forward-looking statements may include statements regarding Lennar’s business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, strategies and prospects. Forward-looking statements represent only Lennar’s estimates on the date of this conference call and are not intended to give any assurance as to the actual future results. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause Lennar’s actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in forward-looking statements. These factors include those described under the caption Risk Factors contained in Lennar’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for its most recently completed fiscal year which is on file with the SEC. Please note that Lennar assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
Operator
Operator
I would like to introduce your speaker for today’s conference, Mr. Stuart Miller, President and CEO. Mr. Miller; you may begin.
Stuart Miller
Management
Thank you and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2008 update. I am joined this morning by Bruce Gross, our Chief Financial Officer; Diane Bessette, our Vice President and Treasurer and David Collins, our Controller. Bruce will provide additional detail on our numbers; David will give you an update on our asset review and impairments, a report have given for over two years now and Diane will be available to participate in our question-and-answer period. Just as a housekeeping item before I start I would like to request as always, in our question-and-answer period that will follow our opening remarks that you please limit to just one question and one follow-up so that we can be as fair as possible to all of our participants. Of course we welcome you to rejoin the queue if you have additional questions and we will attempt to answer as many questions as possible. Now in the context of what has been perhaps once of the most difficult quarters in homebuilding history, Lennar’s management team and associates have put forth an extremely productive quarter. We have continued to focus on the basics of rebuilding our operating business while we’ve also continued to carefully manage our asset base and work diligently to rework and reposition our joint ventures. We feel that we’re making credible progress towards profitability in the most difficult of times. In the third quarter the housing market continued to deteriorate though at an accelerated rate. June and July were truly dismal sales months and in August we saw what I would call a phantom uptick, which derived primarily from the pending elimination of the down payment assistance program on October 1st of this year which was part of the so-called stimulus package passed in July. I’m…
Bruce Gross
Management
Thank you Stuart and good morning. As Stuart discussed, this is a quarter of significant progress and I’ll be providing some of the financial details supporting that progress. Turning to the operating results for the quarter, we have narrowed our pre-impairment loss to $0.03 per share for the quarter. David will walk us through this quarter’s impairments which as you will see, these impairments are largely behind us at this point. Revenues from home sales decreased 54% to $996 million driven by a 49% decrease in home deliveries and a 9% decrease in average sales price to $270,000. The average sales prices net of sales incentives, which averaged $45,900 per home during the quarter and that was flat with the prior year’s number. The average sales price declined regionally as follows: the East was down 7% to $263,000, Central was down 3% to $200,000, the West was down 15% to $376,000, and the Other category was flat at about $300,000. We continued to improve on the positive trend in operating margins. Our gross margin was 18% before impairments and our selling, general and administrative expenses were 15.7% resulting in the 2.3% operating margin Stuart mentioned. The pre-impairment gross margin improved 400 basis points over the prior year and this improvement in gross margin was due to first, a lower land base from the exhaustive asset reviews each quarter, impairing assets to be reflective of today’s market conditions, as well as, more recent land purchases which are reflective of current market conditions. And then second from lower construction costs. We have aggressively reduced the number of floor plans in our markets, rebid our construction plans and we have centralized purchasing to achieve savings on both the local, regional and national scale. Our construction costs per square foot have been reduced by…
David Collins
Management
Thank you Bruce and good morning everyone. As is tradition during our conference calls, we are once again providing an update of our impairment process to provide further clarity. In this morning’s release we outlined our third quarter valuation adjustments of $132 million. We continue to remain actively engaged in our rigorous process of division by division asset reviews to ensure that our assets are properly stated. We started this impairment process almost three years ago and were diligent early on in reviewing our asset base and recording impairments. As we have previously disclosed we believe that most of the heavy lifting regarding impairments is behind us and that we are at the tail-end of the impairment cycle. Let me quickly summarize our third quarter impairments. First the Homebuilding side of our business, we applied the standards of FAS B 144 to land that we intend to build homes on and recorded a valuation adjustment of $32 million. This amount was 56% lower then the homebuilding impairment charge we recorded in the second quarter of 2008. The segment detail is as follows: East segment was $9 million; Central segment was $3 million; West segment was $19 million; and Other was $2 million. The second bucket is land that we sold or intend to sell to third parties. Consistent with our strategy of converting inventory into cash, we identified land that we sold during the third quarter or intend to sell subsequent to the third quarter. We applied the standards the FAS B 144 to that land and recorded a valuation adjustment of $13 million. The segment detail is as follows: East was $11 million; Central was $1 million; and the West was $1 million. Third, we have the next category which relates to land and adoption deposits and pre-acquisition costs.…
Operator
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Dennis McGill – Zelman & Associates Dennis McGill – Zelman & Associates: You touched on this in a few different ways, can you offer your opinion on what’s positive and maybe negative about the current talked about bail-out plan and then as it relates to a stimulus what would you think would be most helpful to the market that the government could do that they’re not doing?
Stuart Miller
Management
The bail-out plan I think is still taking shape and I think that any commentary on that is premature. I mean, I think that everybody is looking at it and still trying to figure out exactly what it is. It certainly seems that we’re going to have something akin to an RTC type program, almost a throw-back to the early 90’s and if you look at the mass of assets that are embedded in the financial structures, there’s going to have to be some kind of a movement from private to public and then a repackaging of those assets and distribution back into the private sector like we saw in the early 90’s. But exactly how they’re going to do this, the financial stress is far more complex this time around then it was in the early 90’s and I think we’re going to have to sit back and watch. As it relates to the housing market, I feel pretty strongly that if they don’t get housing prices to stop falling given the way that the fallen housing prices amplifies through financial structures to the securitizations that are out there and they way that those securitizations impact others, we’re just going to be chasing the market downward and each financial fix will be frustrated. And I said that in my comments. In terms of what constructive measures can be taken, the homebuilders had really tried to express as the July stimulus Bill went through Congress that the $7,500 interest-free loan was not likely to produce a lot of activity in the market. When that was the result we were hopeful and we tried to support it, but the reality in the marketplace is that the Bill has really been a net negative. Our focus had been to kick-start the housing market and to get people buying again with a real tax credit more in the $15,000 to $20,000 per home range and we felt and continue to feel that its that kind of stimulus for a period of time—maybe its six months, that will be needed to kick-start the market, get people buying and therein support the fall in housing prices with purchase activity. The positive of that kind of program is that it doesn’t come with the stigma of moral hazard and does a lot to support the housing market. Sure there are other thoughts out there that are equally good; that’s just mine. Dennis McGill – Zelman & Associates: On the idea of moral hazard, do you think the tax credit is beneficial to the idea of maybe buying foreclosures that are out there which are I assume pressuring, creating a lot of that home price pressure that you’re talking about?
Stuart Miller
Management
I don’t know how to break it down perfectly, even in my own mind; I get a little confused on this. It just seems to me that we’re going to have to get the volume of purchasers up no matter how you cut it, to absorb foreclosures and to get the market buying again, and how its distributed, whether its foreclosures or new homes or whatnot, I just don’t know what that right formula is but it seems to me that anything that we can do to get people buying homes again and recognizing that there’s some fabulous values out there. If ever there’s a time to buy a home, now is it. Its just a matter of getting people over the hurdle of saying, I want to buy a home, and then getting them positioned with a down payment that they can come up with and a mortgage that is properly positioned and affordable to them. It seems to me if we get people buying, the mortgages on today’s home prices will be secure, profitable to the lenders and the homes are more likely to go up over time because of the low pricing point that they’re at right now. Dennis McGill – Zelman & Associates: Do you have the payables number from this quarter?
Bruce Gross
Management
The payables number from this quarter we can follow-up with you.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Carl Reichardt – Wachovia Securities Carl Reichardt – Wachovia Securities: You talked about some phantom demand in August from down payment assistance and kind of pulling that forward, I was wondering if you could quantify that a little bit or talk about how responsive you think consumers were to those promotions and if that does the slight [inaudible] to potentially reverse it, if that does materialize, what that would do for you?
Stuart Miller
Management
We’ve given that a lot of thought and if you look at August there was clearly a spike in the use of the down payment assistance programs and the promotions brought in a lot of buyers. As we dissected the flow of people coming in, we came to realize that a number of the people that ultimately used the down payment assistance program didn’t need the program but they used it because it was a good deal. We kind of view that the impact of its loss, the loss of the down payment assistance program, is going to be somewhere between 10% and 15% of the buying market right now. Carl Reichardt – Wachovia Securities: And do you have any thoughts on the potential for it—the elimination of it to get reversed?
Stuart Miller
Management
I think in today’s market just about anything we can think of is on the table and there’s no way to handicap it and I don’t mean for that to sound funny, I think it’s just too tough to call. There’s clearly legislative consideration as to whether it should be—the program should be reinstated. I think that overall from a policy standpoint we and the industry understand that as a policy matter its probably better not to have down payment then to have it in the long run, but I think that emphatically we believe that right now and today is not the time to cut off the blood supply to the patient that’s on the operating table.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of [Susan Berliner] – JP Morgan [Susan Berliner] – JP Morgan: I think you had noted that you think impairments were going to go down pretty materially going forward, I was wondering how that drives with your thoughts on a price decrease going forward?
Stuart Miller
Management
We do believe that our impairments will continue to fall. First of all our asset base is materially smaller then it was a year ago, but additionally we think that as David has said, clearly we’ve done a lot of very heavy lifting in terms of impairing our assets. Some of the impairments that you are seeing are reflective of those continued price decreases that you see in the marketplace and will continue to have what we call this clean-up until prices stop declining. But because of the smaller asset base and because we’ve done so much of the hard work already and brought out asset values down to clear profitability, or the ability to make a profit, our projection is even with prices declining we have a solidly stated asset base.
David Collins
Management
I would just add to that, that as prices have come down we’ve put a lot of attention to redesigning our product and focusing on bringing down construction costs as well as we’re delivering a smaller product and we’re focused on how do we maintain a high margin as the market is in the condition it is, and a lot of that is coming from the progress on construction cost reduction. [Susan Berliner] – JP Morgan: If you could provide any details on your bank availability or tangible net worth cushion, that would be great.
Bruce Gross
Management
We can say that we’re in compliance with all of our covenants and we believe we have enough cushion with tangible net worth and as you’ve asked the question in the past about borrowing basis, somewhat of a circular formula we have availability under our borrowing base, we have to use cash over $500 million first. Any cash that is used to buy inventory gets added back into the borrowing base so it’s a little bit circular but we are in compliance of all of our covenants as we’ve mentioned to you in the past.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of David Goldberg - UBS David Goldberg – UBS: I was wondering, incentives were flat this quarter in the release but you commented pretty in depth and gave us big color on how conditions were getting worse through the quarter and how SG&A as a percent of revenue was higher because or wasn’t the operating leverage maybe that you thought there was going to be, and I guess I’m trying to understand how you’re thinking about profitability versus sales volumes now and maybe with that how it bakes into the impairment analysis in terms of the assumptions as you look forward?
Stuart Miller
Management
As we went into June and July as I noted, the market just really fell off precipitously. We’ve tried to carefully manage a balance between volume and sales price and incentives, but we have decidedly favored not chasing volume and operating leverage in favor of reducing profitability. So we clearly have moved to a direction of saying that, you know what? Let’s decrease our volume. Let’s continue to cut overhead. Let’s continue to renegotiate construction costs, but we’re simply not going to chase volume. There’s no reason to build homes if we can’t do it profitably. David Goldberg – UBS: With regard to your sale of some of your equity interest and bringing in Hillwood into your JVs, replacing [Eleanor] and in some cases and then buying some of your equity interest, I was wondering if we could get some detail about what kind of cash that generated as selling your equity interest and also a little about how many JVs you’re still involved with with [Eleanor] and maybe just exposure on it and your comment about those deals a little bit?
Stuart Miller
Management
Let me just comment conceptually, first of all the addition of Hillwood is a very positive addition. It was more in the nature of replacing a partner then a cash generator. I think the—it was important in [Hunter’s Point] to be able to bring on a partner that is enthusiastic about the future of that opportunity as Hillwood is and brings to the table some individual expertise as Hillwood does, replacing a partner in [Eleanor] that has similar expertise but has less appetite. So this was a very good strategic move for the company. In terms of the number of joint ventures that we have with [Eleanor], I think we have about seven and [Eleanor] continues to be a solid partner and financially very strong. So that’s a positive. Might there be other transactions with them, that’s something that’s opened to question. In markets like this you just have to figure that everything is on the table.
Bruce Gross
Management
The cash from the transaction brought in approximately $120 million of cash of which the majority of that about $80 million was used to buyout existing partners.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Tim Jones – Wasserman and Associates Tim Jones – Wasserman and Associates: I think probably the most important thing you said was the 15% reduction in costs per square foot, what period did that relate to where the peak was? And secondly, break it down by either land or reversals of prior write-downs and labor and obviously the effect of changing your construction methods and overall cost of materials if you can or just a guess on it.
Bruce Gross
Management
The peak that we’re comparing to is 2006. Tim Jones – Wasserman and Associates: What quarter?
Bruce Gross
Management
I don’t have an exact quarter for you, but it was the earlier part of 2006. Tim Jones – Wasserman and Associates: And how about the breakdowns of that 15%, how they come into various components, what percentage of how much is land, how much is reversals, or how much is materials, how much is redesign?
Stuart Miller
Management
That 15% is all construction costs. I think that would be comparable sticks and bricks. Concurrent with that, we’re saying as an addition to that there was the redesign of homes which brought down square footages or redesign to a more efficient design and then on top of that as an addition and separate item, you would have impairments that are flowing through that are a component of that. But I think that what we’re trying to highlight though, maybe not affectively highlighting it, is that clearly impairments are contributing to margin improvement but its been to a lesser proportion, and we can’t exactly delineate this, then say two or three quarters ago that the redesign contributed, that the reduction in construction costs contributed and the reduction in SG&A contributed. Those latter three components are contributing a greater proportion to our margins. Tim Jones – Wasserman and Associates: So you’re saying that these other factors, you could have another five for each percent and you could actually be down 25% roughly? Say 5% from lower land, 5% from redesigns? Something like that?
Stuart Miller
Management
I guess if I had to give you my impression, I think that there’s less upside to realize from construction costs going forward. It’s a diminishing amount. I think there’s a greater upside to be realized from SG&A which will continue to contribute positively and product design, we’re getting very close to having our product designed across the country so that implementation is already being reflected as well. But all three of those together are really powering a better net margin.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Kim – Alpine Woods Stephen Kim – Alpine Woods: On your financial services I noticed that if you add back the goodwill impairments there you would have recorded a profit of about $14 million. I wanted to know whether or not that was a good number to sort of think about going forward or if that was a figure that had maybe some one-time things in it?
Bruce Gross
Management
As you take a look at that, let me break it into two pieces. One is [title] is on the track back to profitability so that component is going the right path. And the other component is the mortgage side which I think that’s a pretty good number on a go forward basis. We had one of the highest capture rates we’ve seen in some time at 87% but that’s been our focus and I think that’s probably a good number assuming that the number of government loans that we originate continue to be at these high levels because we make more on a government loan then we do on other loans. Stephen Kim – Alpine Woods: Relating to SG&A, I know this is a question that we chatted about last quarter, I think at that time you had talked about a 10% SG&A target and was curious as to what your anticipation is or what your thoughts are now about the [realisticness] of obtaining a 10% SG&A target which admittedly would be a very good result for you. Do you still think that’s in the offing here in the next quarter or two or do you think that maybe is not a realistic number?
Stuart Miller
Management
If we think back to last quarter, I was rather emphatic about that number and I guess I have to say today that I feel less emphatic and optimistic about it primarily because of the way that revenues have come down really more then we had expected. But we are extraordinary focused on exactly that number and we do expect to be down below 10%. That’s going to be easier to have happen as the market starts to return and revenues go up. Are we going to hit it in the fourth quarter? I’m a lot less optimistic about that right now. We’re going to have to wait and see. I will tell you that in going to our operating reviews this is the primary focus within each division and a number of our divisions are actually going to be there. But I think that overall we might fall a little short of that number.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Rehaut – JP Morgan Michael Rehaut – JP Morgan: On the cash flow generation, it looks like you generated operating cash flow of about almost $800 million through the second quarter, the additional $100 million this quarter, right now what are your expectations for the fourth quarter and looking ahead based on your current expectations for the business and the market and with your backlog down over 40% here, directionally where do you see cash flow generation in 2009 versus 2008?
Bruce Gross
Management
As far as the fourth quarter goes, we don’t have an exact number for you but we can tell you is that we are incredibly focused in continuing the manage our inventory very carefully so we continue to focus on managing inventory both from delivering homes that are available to be delivered as well as reducing our land purchases. And that’s where the majority of cash flow generation is coming from. Of course it depends a little bit on the market as far as what holds for the fourth quarter as well as going into 2009, however again we’re very well positioned from an inventory perspective as we look forward and again in 2009 we expect to be cash flow positive. We haven’t put out an exact number at this point though. Michael Rehaut – JP Morgan: So what would you expect land spend to be in 2009 versus 2008 and if you could break that out between new raw land purchases versus development costs?
Stuart Miller
Management
We’re not making any projection. In today’s market we’re not looking forward. Michael Rehaut – JP Morgan: I think last quarter down payment assistance was about 33% in 2Q, I was just wondering what that number was for the third quarter?
Bruce Gross
Management
The third quarter number was about 45% and that’s 45% of the 87% of loans we originated.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Josh Levin - Citigroup Josh Levin – Citigroup: As you look at the economic and housing market landscape on both the challenges and opportunities, how do you think about the possibility of the [issue] of equity over the next year?
Stuart Miller
Management
Everything is on the table all the time in a market like this. We’ve seen tremendous volatility over the past couple of weeks. Looking ahead we’re just not making any projections right now as to anything that we might or might not do. Fortunately as we’re situated today, we’re in a good cash position. Our balance sheet is strong and we don’t have immediate need for cash but I’m not going to take anything off the table either. Josh Levin – Citigroup: As far as I know you haven’t been on the road talking to investors in quite some time, but as I understand it you’re thinking about going out on the road and talking to investors in the fourth quarter, what’s the logical rationale behind your decision to go out now on the road, after such a long absence?
Stuart Miller
Management
I don’t know that it would be considered an absence. What we have done over the past couple of years is we’ve said we are more then happy to talk to investors at any time over the phone or here in our offices and we’ve had a number of investors come through and sit and go through our program. It hasn’t been an absence; we just haven’t been out on the road. Our primary focus has been to manage our business and manage our operations and this has been an extremely full time job, seven days a week, working long hours. So the reason for the absence from presentations and the conferences has been so that we can focus our attention on running our business. Now the fact that we’ve always been a participant in conferences and should we decide to join back in, it’s only because we have the time to do that because so much of the work that we have been working on is now effectively completed.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Hussey – Goldman Sachs Chris Hussey – Goldman Sachs: You mentioned you thought there would be a 10% to 15% impact on the housing market from down payment assistance going away, do you mean that you think that new home sales, that’s statistic could go down another 10% to 15% just from down payment assistance going away?
Stuart Miller
Management
There are too many factors to really—I can’t project what the number of new home sales is going to be and this is an estimate, its just seemed to us by looking through the numbers that we’re able to see, that its somewhere in the 10% to 15% range of potential buyers that are taken out of the market. Now will there be other things that come along that stimulate purchase that offset that? We’re just not sure but it seems like it’s not an insignificant impact. Chris Hussey – Goldman Sachs: Around cash flow and I think you mentioned you had made about $200 million of land purchases, from your JVs during the quarter, just trying to get your strategy there in terms of—what is your strategy in terms of cash preservation? Your cash balances have stayed relatively flat but they’re not growing as fast as they have been earlier in this cycle. Do you feel like you have the right amount of cash and now its time to take advantage of some of these land purchases or how should we think about that?
Stuart Miller
Management
No we’re not taking advantage of land purchases in the market. There will be that opportunity in due time and I think that we’re really neatly positioned to be out there working through some of the distress as it presents itself and it will. I’ve noted before we’ve maintained our management team to be able to go out and take advantage of the market conditions as they ripen but we don’t think that now has been that time. Where we have used some cash is in preservation of value and opportunity that exists within our portfolio and what I’ve tried to highlight is that within our joint ventures some of those ventures have been [stressed] either through venture partners that simply don’t want to continue on. We saw that certainly with the [Hunter’s Point] joint venture or we’ve seen venture partners that simply don’t have the liquidity to move on. And rather then abandon value or opportunity; we’ve used capital to opportunistically improve our position. So that’s the difference between what we’re saying and maybe what you’re seeing reflecting in the numbers. Chris Hussey – Goldman Sachs: Do you have any tax refunds that you can get this year that might trigger another big land sale like you did last year or is that all the way by the books now?
Stuart Miller
Management
We don’t anticipate a land sale of that kind of magnitude.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Nishu Sood – Deutsche Bank Nishu Sood – Deutsche Bank : I wanted to follow-up and ask about the call it the next generation RTC type vehicle that‘s being debated even today, there is the possibility that it will include the purchases of development and acquisition loans and may end up therefore unloading land like what happened in the early 90’s, now this is on top of a situation where a lot of capital has already lined up to buy these assets so I imagine it would have a big impact, I wanted to get your thoughts on the potential behavioral impact. Does this freeze the market as people kind of assess and wait to see what this vehicle is going to do from a builder perspective for example, would you prefer to be buying it from a—prefer to replenish your land portfolio by buying from this next generation RTC versus the distressed funds that are being set up? I just wanted to get your thoughts on the behavior and how it changes the landscape.
Stuart Miller
Management
First of all its interesting I agree with you, there’s a lot of capital that is kind of lined up on the sidelines but it is neatly tucked away on the sidelines in large part because that capital doesn’t quite know how to—in large measure doesn’t know how to look at a diverse array of portfolios or properties that are out there. And so that capital is going to have to find a machine. The question is will the capital find machines, meaning management teams that are able to convert what is distressed land assets, undeveloped land assets, into developed home sites. I think at the end of the day if you look at where kind of we’re headed, our primary business will be looking to buy developed home sites from a land machine that is able to develop home sites and offer them at an appropriate price. We are clearly going to have to wash a lot of land through whatever distress program is out there before we have an appetite to purchase those developed home sites. I think across the country we’re seeing a mismatch between what it takes to buy a home site and make a gross margin versus what sellers are willing to or perhaps are able to sell for and so its really going to be washing through distress, through these capital reservoirs that purchasing, and marrying up with the machine to actually develop home sites at a price that a homebuilder can make a margin on. I’ll say additionally that other parts of our company will probably be participatory in that process and its one of the things that we’ve maintained is that land machine focus, to marry up with capital. Nishu Sood – Deutsche Bank : This sounds a little more conservative let’s say, if you take your Lennar’s historical actions on a strategic scale. You’ve tended to do things directly and on a larger scale so, am I hearing you correctly? Is this a more kind of conservative stance going forward compared to the historical profile?
Stuart Miller
Management
No I think that if you go back to the early 90’s and you look at the way that we emerged from the distress market in the early 90’s, we did exactly what I’ve just described. We came out of that distress period and we combined our operating machine with capital reservoirs that were available and ready to get involved in the distress. You might or might not even know but we actually grew an entire company that became well, it became [L&R] out of that early distress. And we’re looking at it very much the same way. Nishu Sood – Deutsche Bank: In terms of promotional activities, we’ve been hearing from some of the other builders that promotional activities are wearing out in their effectiveness. National sales drives for example since so many people are doing them have been losing their effectiveness. You had even mentioned last one or two quarters ago when we spoke about shifting more to incentives along the lines of financial services, the government’s $7,500 tax credit obviously stacks up very poorly against what the builder is already doing so I just wanted to get your thoughts on what marketing tactics are working right now if any, and how are you shifting your behavior in response to that?
Stuart Miller
Management
As I noted, June and July were just beyond our expectations in how far they had fallen off. August showed an uptick and it was primarily because of promotion and I’d be surprised if that isn’t the case with other builders as well. It was a promotion that was geared towards the down payment assistance and getting under the wire of its elimination. And this was across the country and multiple builders and not in concert; I’m just saying that we noted that in a lot of places our competitors were doing the same. So what promotions are working? The answer to that question is it’s a day by day evaluation. Each new data point in the marketplace gives rise to the next promotion. Hopefully at some point what will resonate with buyers is a combination of the fact that home prices are really at a very, very low point right now, especially new home prices. And put that together with a mortgage program that works for them and the availability of down payment money and they’ll step up and buy homes. But that’s not for right now. :
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Megan McGrath – [Barclay’s Capital] Megan McGrath – [Barclay’s Capital]: On the follow-up on your JV recourse that you talked about, how you’re three-quarters ahead and have gotten it down to around 492, I’m wondering if you can give us a sense of the mechanism by which you’ve reduce that? How much of it was cash that you used to pull down inventory and the debt came away, how much of it was accounting perhaps moving it from recourse to non-recourse?
Bruce Gross
Management
The number we’re comparing to was last quarter was $807 million of maximum recourse indebtedness with unconsolidated JV’s. This quarter it was $630 million. The number you mentioned was net of reimbursement agreements which is not in the covenant calculation. So we’re looking at a reduction of about $177 million and we paid about $58 million of cash relating to that reduction. So it’s a cash component relating to that and then additionally it had different land sales, land splits, etc. that would be the remainder. Megan McGrath – [Barclay’s Capital]: What are those numbers? Do you have those numbers available versus let’s say the fourth quarter of 2007?
Bruce Gross
Management
I don’t have them on the call here, but I’d be happy to follow-up with you. Megan McGrath – [Barclay’s Capital]: You mentioned in your last 10-Q that you may have to take a FAS 109 charge at the end of the year, now that we’re one more quarter in, do you have any feeling on the likelihood that you might have to write that asset down?
Bruce Gross
Management
No we do not. That’s something that we’ll review with our auditors as we get to the end of the year.
Operator
Operator
Your final question comes from the line of Jay McCanless – FTN Midwest Research Jay McCanless – FTN Midwest Research: On the distress land assets you were discussing before, I wanted to know if you’ve heard more from bank workout teams if the activity from the bank side is ticking up?
Stuart Miller
Management
No. I think that the banks—are you talking about in terms of selling assets? Jay McCanless – FTN Midwest Research: Correct.
Stuart Miller
Management
No, I think that the banks are pretty much immobilized right now and maybe this is out of school for me to say, but I think that banks are concerned with maintaining Tier 1 capital right now and the impairment to the assets on their books could probably—it’s a matter of survival right now. Jay McCanless – FTN Midwest Research: In your prepared remarks you discussed that your competitive forces in certain areas whether its builder competitors or resales or new home communities are declining, are there areas of the country that are more clear for Lennar or I guess a more clear playing field for Lennar then others?
Stuart Miller
Management
What do you mean by a more clear playing field? Jay McCanless – FTN Midwest Research: In terms of less communities, say private builder bankruptcies opening it up for Lennar to go out and build more homes etc?
Stuart Miller
Management
I think that that would apply to almost every market that we’re in. It is very clear that the smaller builders are pulling back, if not going out of business. We’re seeing this in all communities, over all geographies right now and in terms of the number of communities, as communities are burned off there are just no replacements out there. Thank you everybody. We appreciate your attention relative to our third quarter and look forward to another productive quarter in the fourth. Thank you and goodbye.