Earnings Labs

Lennar Corporation (LEN)

Q2 2020 Earnings Call· Tue, Jun 16, 2020

$92.28

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Lennar’s Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Today’s conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Alex Lumpkin for the reading of the forward-looking statement.

Alex Lumpkin

Management

Thank you, and good morning. Today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, including 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 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 affect future results and may 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 in this morning's press release and our SEC filings, including those under the caption Risk Factors contained in Lennar's Annual Report on Form 10-K most recently filed with the SEC. Please note that Lennar assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Operator

Operator

I would now like to introduce your host, Mr. Stuart Miller, Executive Chairman. Sir, you may begin.

Stuart Miller

Management

Very good. Good morning, everyone, and thank you. This morning, I’m here in Miami once again with a scaled-down crew: Diane Bessette, our Chief Financial Officer; Dave Collins, our Controller, Bruce Gross, CEO of Lennar Financial Services and of course Alex, who you just heard from. Rick Beckwitt, our Chief Executive Officer is in Colorado, and Jon Jaffe in California, our President. And they're on the line with us this morning and we are all appropriately socially spaced. And as much as we have a lot of information that we're going to try to cover in our opening remarks, we're going to return to our traditional format. I'll give an overview; Jon and Rick will give operational insight and Diane will give financial information highlights and some limited guidance, and then we will attempt to answer as many of your questions as possible. But as you consider framing your questions, first of all, please limit to one question one follow-up. And remember that the national landscape continues to evolve, and the economy is still trying to reopen and normalize. In the current environment, there are still more guesses than there are clear answers. We will give you the guidance that we can but remember that we are all still trying to learn together as things unfold. So, let me begin. On March 27, a customer in Pennsylvania named Susan Pernice wrote us a most important and impactful letter. She said, since Pennsylvania's Governor Wolf's decision to shut down new construction, we are set to be homeless on April 20th. We have a Lennar home that was expected to be delivered on that day, in Hidden Meadows in Pennsylvania. There is a pending agreement for the sale of my current home on that day as well. She went on to say…

Rick Beckwitt

Management

Thanks, Stuart. We entered our second quarter with a strong housing market and solid economic fundamentals. This combined with low mortgage rates and a limited supply of homes gave us continued sales momentum and pricing power. However, all of this changed in the second half of March through April as the nation dealt with the impacts of COVID-19. While residential construction was designated an essential service in most of our markets, the severe and immediate shutdown of economic activity across the country began to negatively impact our business. As a result of the pandemic, our sales orders declined significantly in late March, and continued at a reduced rate through April. Despite a strong start in March, new orders for the month were down 10% from the prior year. April marked the low point during the second quarter with orders decreasing 29% from the prior year and our cancellation rate peaking at 23%. Notwithstanding this slowdown, our team did an excellent job selling homes, be it by appointment, self-guided tours or virtual tours. We also focused on controlling sales prices and managing backlog expectations, which benefited our gross margins in the second quarter and will benefit our gross margins in the back half of the year. In May, we saw an influx of new homebuyers wanting to take advantage of extremely low mortgage rates and move out of apartments in densely-populated areas and homes they were sharing with friends and family during the pandemic. We also heard increased conviction from people wanting to buy a new, safe and clean home versus an existing home. In May, our new orders increased each week sequentially and were up 7% over the prior year. Our cancellation rate in May also dropped from 18% -- dropped to 18% from the 23% high in April. More…

Jon Jaffe

Management

Thank you, Rick. Today, I’ll start with a discussion of our land and balance sheet strategies, beginning with a look at the actions we took during the second quarter in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As Stuart mentioned, we paused our land purchases, land development activity and home starts. We used our daily management call to quickly implement this strategy across all of our divisions. We were able to pause all of the land acquisitions that we wanted to. And due to the strength of relationships with our land sellers, we did not walk away from any deposits or lose any deals. What we did was to pause takedowns for 60 to 90 days in order to give us time to understand the impact of the pandemic and the associated government shutdown. At the same time, we also slowed our land development spend. This was done on a community-by-community basis by determining in real-time the market demand for each community and the economic logic associated with stopping and restarting. We also looked at our planned starts, again, evaluating each community’s market demand if the particular home was in backlog and the mortgage status, if it was sold or if the home was unsold. We paused about 4,100 starts in the quarter or 27% of what was planned. Given this pause in land spend and fewer starts in our second quarter, results for our land and cash positions were temporarily altered by the actions we took. We ended the quarter with 3.9 years of land owned compared to 4.5 years in Q2 of 2019 and with an increased percentage of homesites option of 32%, up from 25% last year. The combination of slowing our land spend in the quarter, strong closings and executing on our strategy of building strategic relationships to…

Diane Bessette

Management

Thank you, Jon, and good morning to everyone. I'd like to spend just a few minutes reviewing the highlights from our second quarter. For many decades, we have operated with a balance sheet first philosophy and a strong focus on liquidity. And so for today, that's where I'd like to start. As noted, with our laser focus on generating cash and preserving cash, we ended the quarter with $1.4 billion of cash and no borrowings outstanding on our $2.45 billion revolving credit facility, thereby providing total liquidity of $3.85 billion. At quarter end, our homebuilding debt to total capital ratio was 31.2% versus 38.3% in the prior year. This is the lowest debt to total capital ratio since Q1 of 2007. As we look at the balance of the year, we have a very manageable level of debt maturities with only $300 million due in November after having repaid $300 million in May. In the last two years, we have repaid $2.5 billion of senior notes from cash flow generated from operations. Our stockholders' equity increased to $17 billion and our book value per share was $52.98. And so, with those balance sheet highlights, let me briefly review our operating performance. Stuart, Rick and Jon provided most of the details. So, here's a quick summary of the highlights. The new orders, we ended the quarter down 10%. Our sales pace was 3.5% for the quarter compared to 3.7% in the prior year. Our cancellation rate was 19% compared to 15% in the prior year. For the quarter, deliveries were relatively flat year-over-year as we remained intensely focused on cash generation. Our gross margin was 21.6%, as Jon mentioned, primarily as a result of our focus on construction costs, and our SG&A was 8.3% as a result of creating an efficient…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Stephen Kim from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Stephen Kim

Analyst

Yes. Thanks very much, guys. Strong results, and thanks for the additional disclosure and getting everything to us so quickly, in particular. My first question relates to the margin. Well, actually you gave really good strong margin guidance. But, I guess one surprising issue was your orders looking in 3Q and 4Q to be down year-over-year. I know you sort of addressed it a little bit and said that -- you made some comments about the second wave concerns. You also talked about lower community count. And I guess, I'm just trying to get a sense for how much of the second wave concerns are baked into your outlook? If these second wave concerns, let's say, were not to materialize, could you actually see order growth remain up double digits like it's running in June, or would do you actually think that the supply constrain issues that you've got and community count shortfall would continue to keep pressure on your order growth and that you would just simply raise price more aggressively in the face of that?

Stuart Miller

Management

So, thanks Steve. And first of all, let me say, I know that we packed a lot of information into our opening remarks. And so, we're going to take Q&A for a little bit longer. But thanks for the question. Rick daylighted that our sales, as we came into June, are up over 20%. And we're not giving exact numbers because we really don't want to get carried away with it, but the market is strong. And just the discussions with our divisions really across the country is that they're seeing really strong activity. It's hard to tell what portion of that is a push forward or push into the third quarter -- the second quarter traditional selling season, and what represents a rethinking of where people live and how they want to live and what -- how sticky that's going to be. So what you're seeing in our guidance is a clear understanding that the market is strong. And yes, it can remain strong as we go forward. There is a supply constraint. Interest rates are low and are likely to stay low for a period of time. The economy is certainly looking for ways to recover, and with recovery and reduced unemployment rates, there is cause for optimism. I would think that the housing market and its strength will contribute to job creation, absorbing some of the people who might have lost their jobs more permanently. So there are reasons for optimism, and we do think that sales can be stronger. We are going to balance between pricing and pace as we move through the third quarter and into the fourth. On the other side, we inject some conservatism in our projections or in our guidance because we're still learning. We're still looking at how the economy will actually resolve the disruption that it's gone through, how jobs will come back. There is certainly the cloud of social unrest right now. So, there are questions out there and moderating factors. There is upside in our numbers, particularly on sales. There is also caution. And we're trying to do with that balance and be straight as we look at giving guidance for going forward.

Jon Jaffe

Management

And Steve, it's Jon. Let's remember, as I said, we intentionally pulled back on about 4,100 starts, and we're going to manage carefully not to be selling too far forward into the future. And so, we’re going to control the sales pace, even though the market might allow us to sell at a faster pace, we're going to make sure that we match to our production pace.

Stephen Kim

Analyst

Yes, particularly, when you have a rising price environment, selling too far upfront doesn't make a lot of sense. So yeah, that conservatism is welcome and understood. Second question relates to what some of the things you touched on. There are a lot of societal factors that have been changing more rapidly than I think we've ever seen, and a lot of those are really positive it seems like for your business and for homebuilding in general, the suburban versus urban living preference, so many things, home offices, recreation space, outdoor living, etc., etc. I'm interested in your perspective about the drivers to these changes and their permanence, or at least their likelihood -- the likelihood that some of these drivers will last long enough for you to make investments that will pay off over a period of years, not months. I'm thinking like things like the social distancing thing that we've all gotten used to, how long you think that's going to drive some changes in the kind of housing that people want? Maybe increased urban safety concerns that you've touched on. These are -- increased work from home. Which of these things do you think are going to be temporary? Which do you think are going to be lasting and give you the opportunity to actually invest to capitalize on them? And are you doing that yet, making those investments?

Stuart Miller

Management

So let me just give a quick response and ask Rick to chime in, in a second. But look, there is no way in the middle of crisis to figure out what's going to be short term and what's going to be long term, and we're going to feel our way through this. There are certain elements that are clearly going to be with us for a very long period of time, and that is the migration to technologies that we are all learning to use, that are enhancing the customer experience that I detailed in my portion. But relative to the trends of migrating from cities to suburban, mobility and that having been put on pause and some of the other questions out there, how long term they're going to be, we're going to have to wait and see. Some of the elements like work-from-home and having an office at home, we think that these are going to have some stickiness. So, Rick, why don't you weigh in on that?

Rick Beckwitt

Management

Yes. I agree with Stuart. We're going to have to see how things evolve. But we do have some trends that are really positive. Going into this, we had the millennial population that was going through wanting to move to the suburbs, having babies and things like that. On top of this, we've seen a mass flight from highly populated areas where people just really don't want to be confined in small spaces. So we are really positioned well and have been investing in opportunities and contracting for land to take advantage of this. One of the most interesting dynamics that we're looking at is, with the dramatic fall in oil prices, people have the ability, if they need to commute, to commute at much more affordable levels. But many times now, since you can work at home, you don't need to drive anywhere. So, that really opens up a vast amount of opportunities for us as we look down the road.

Stephen Kim

Analyst

Yes. Great, thanks very much guys.

Stuart Miller

Management

Okay. Next?

Operator

Operator

Next we have Ivy Zelman from Zelman & Associates. Your line is open.

Ivy Zelman

Analyst

Good morning. And I apologize, but I did unfortunately get kicked off the call, so I missed much of the opening comments. But first, I just want to recognize and congratulate all of you for navigating such incredibly challenging times and having such a spectacular financial performance. It really was remarkable. So I'm not just saying it to say it, but it really is something we should all acknowledge, so first and foremost. It's difficult to ask the questions that I have with not repeating a lot of what you've already commented on, but you guys have a very unique perspective, having a multi-family business. And we hear a lot from the publicly traded REITs that they are not seeing flight from the urban core to the suburbs. Their turnover numbers are actually only up marginally but still at extremely depressed levels. So it's very difficult to triangulate a lot of what we're hearing about with people wanting and your quote in the press release about people leaving the urban dense areas for space, safety, all the things that we've talked about and taking advantage of record low mortgage rates and wanting to be in a home where they have the ability to have all of those factors today that are socially important for living in safety for the families, technology. So maybe you can give us some data around some of the things that you've noted. I promise I'll stop talking a minute, but when you look at -- you hear builders -- we ask them, where is all this demand coming from? It's crazy strong. It's everything against what we would have expected in a massive unemployment environment we're in. And their answer is, well, really nothing has changed. It's the same reasons people have been buying is just accelerating. But there is no question, more renters are converting to homeowners. So maybe try to triangulate a little bit for us what you're seeing from maybe entry level versus move-up. Are people leaving New York City and buying move-up homes? Are you seeing maybe some delineation between product categories? You mentioned entry level being really strong. I'll stop because I can keep going, and I'm sure I'm confusing you with too much at once. So I'll just stop there.

Stuart Miller

Management

I know that we set the stage with long-winded introductions and you certainly carried it forward. So, your next question is going to have to be shorter. But -- so, let me say that there is no story. There are many stories, and many of the stories are playing out. Just to give you some data, I was talking this morning to our Southeast Florida division, Carlos Gonzalez, and Carlos enthusiastically said that 31% of his sales most recently have come from the City of Miami to the suburban areas of Miami, migrating to the suburban areas. So, we are hearing that kind of empirical data that is just starting to percolate up where we're starting to see that some of these stories are really playing out, the migration from rental communities to single-family homes or even single-family for rent. These are all stories that are just starting to play out. We don't have enough data around it. We will over time. But with that said, we don't know the permanence, how long-lasting it's going to be, and we want to moderate with that, but there a myriad of stories. And maybe Jon and Rick will chime in and share some of their thoughts.

Jon Jaffe

Management

I would add that I think we're seeing more people move out of apartments into new homes versus existing homes. So I think it makes sense to me that, on the multi-family side, they are not seeing a rapid spike in their turnover. But it doesn't take many basis points of market shift from existing to new to really impact the demand for us, and I think we're definitely seeing that because in all our divisions, as Stuart noted, with Southeast Florida, we're seeing a pickup in sales of people coming directly out of apartments.

Rick Beckwitt

Management

And Ivy, one other point, and you've seen it in how you're tracking the better run in higher Class A REITs, is in our multi-family business, our occupancy really hasn't changed much. We have people paying rent and really didn't have a big dip in any of that. And what we've seen as we've really drilled down is it's coming from the non-Class A lower-quality apartments, or people don't want to live there anymore. In the higher Class A that have good amenities, there's people that want to live there. But we're seeing a mass exodus from the lower-quality non-amenitized apartments across the U.S.

Ivy Zelman

Analyst

And from the perspective of affordability, as builders are right now taking advantage of the strength, they're raising prices and mortgage rates have obviously ticked considerably lower compared to last year, but is there a level that concerns you that that favorable affordability for those Class B tenants that might be driving this exodus -- what does it do to rents and what is it going to do to demand if homebuilders keep pushing price? And thank you, guys. I'm done.

Rick Beckwitt

Management

I think we're just going to have to monitor how things change in the economy. We're seeing a lot of double -- dual income folks coming to our communities where with mortgage rates as low as they are, small price changes, even incremental within a couple of months, really don't move the needle that much. But it's an interesting phenomenon right now.

Stuart Miller

Management

Yes. I think an additional point is, we're going to have to see how employment data starts to shake out; when we think about long term, how the market is actually going to be receptive to the way -- to the migrations that are out there. It seems and feels that employment is going to snap back to some extent. It's not going to be back at 3.5%. There are going to be some disruptions out there, but at the same time, there are a number of people who are finding that they have affordability. And remember, one of the most difficult things to accumulate is the down payments. And with people having stayed at home for so long, not having restaurants and movie theaters and other activities open, the ability to save has actually increased the amount of deposit money available to customers. So all of these things are working together. We'll see how they play out over time. It's part of the reason that we've conservatized some of our numbers because we recognize that we're going to have to wait and see on some of these items. So, next question?

Operator

Operator

Next, we have Truman Patterson from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Truman Patterson

Analyst

Hi, good morning, everyone, and thank you for all the detail. Really appreciate it. Let me also throw on great results. So, following up on Ivy's question, one of the big questions in the market clearly is how sustainable the demand is and whether this rebound is being driven by that pent-up demand potentially, which could trail off. So a couple of questions that I'm hoping you can give us a little bit of color on. One, what portion of your sales today are being driven by, we'll call it, pre-COVID traffic from the first half of March and before? And then, the second part, for sustainability, any idea of what portion of your entry-level purchasers are using government stimulus checks as down payments? A family of four essentially just got a $3,400 check from the government, which can usually go a long way toward a down payment. Any idea or any way you can help us with either of those questions, I'd appreciate it.

Stuart Miller

Management

Jon, Rick?

Jon Jaffe

Management

I think with respect to your last question, Truman, as you think about qualification requirements to purchase a home, the people that we're seeing buying our homes today for the most part are not relying on the government assistance checks. They are employed for someone to purchase and close. They we've got job security. So, we're really not seeing that. Stuart said a moment ago, it's -- we really -- and Rick said, we really have to wait and see how things unfold with how sustainable some of these trends are and how much of it is a pullback from what was missed in second half of March and beginning of April, which was in the middle of a very strong spring selling season. How much of these are trends of a strengthening of the millennials moving to the suburbs, people looking for a better way to have a home office, all the factors that we know are playing out right now, we're going to have to see how sustainable they are.

Stuart Miller

Management

I would just add to that, Jon, and say let's remember that what was disrupted by the pandemic was an already very strong housing market, and we were just entering the selling season in a market that was already revealing itself as being fairly robust. When we announced our first quarter earnings, while it took a backseat to the discussion about what was happening to the broader economy, our earnings picture was very strong, our sales were very strong. And so, it makes sense that with a basically two to three-month hiatus or slowdown in the middle, the traffic that was already embedded is somewhat coming forward, but it's added to by the number of narratives that are playing out at the same time. Deciphering which is which is a little bit complicated. And the other thing I want to highlight and remind people is, we have talked for the past years about a production deficit. We have been underproducing homes dwellings from multi-family, rental, all the way through to single-family, suburban. Across the board, the country has been underproducing homes for a very long time, for certainly the past 10 years. And that underproduction means we have short supply against strong demand, pent-up demand, stalled demand, and this is likely to be with us for some period of time. We do not have an overstated inventory to absorb that demand. So we're likely to see an under-supply meeting with a strong demand for some period of time.

Truman Patterson

Analyst

Okay, thank you for that. If I could just parse the data a little bit further, really kind of micro near-term trends, what was the back half of May's year-over-year growth rate? And with June trending up over 20% year-over-year, could you maybe discuss the gross order improvement? Is this to an extent being driven by a massive decline in the cancellation rate?

Rick Beckwitt

Management

So the cancellation rate really has come down, as I highlighted. And we also pointed out that through the month of May, each week got picked up in activity. So the last week of May was stronger than the first week of May. And then, really going back over the last six weeks, in each of those weeks, we sold north of 1,000 homes, increasing during that time period. So we did see the market solidify. That continued into June. And the market has got a good solid footing right now.

Truman Patterson

Analyst

Okay. Is there any way to parse out the back half of May's growth rate and that can rate versus how June's can rate is trending?

Rick Beckwitt

Management

We really haven't talked about June can rate, but that has come down. And I just want to be very careful to not give too many micro statistics associated with the business. The trend line was consistent throughout the month, increasing week-to-week and continuing into June.

Truman Patterson

Analyst

Okay. Thank you, all.

Stuart Miller

Management

Next question? And we'll probably cut it at that point. Two more questions. Okay, go ahead.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Rehaut from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

Great. Thanks very much guys, and appreciate all the detail and the thoughtfulness in your remarks. The first thing, I just wanted to circle back, for my first question, on the order guidance. And you kind of talked about, Stuart, that there is an element of conservatism here, which is understandable, as well as concern -- not concern, but a trajectory around community count being impacted by some of the land spend and other constraints out there. Hoping to get a sense for what you're thinking about in particular with regards to community count, trying to decouple those drivers and get a sense for how you're thinking of the community count trajectory that ended quarter at 1,245, where that could be by year-end. And from that, is there kind of a margin of error that you're injecting? From a conservative standpoint, are you kind of taking a 10% haircut, let's say, if there is any type of quantification of what that conservatism might be?

Stuart Miller

Management

Well, before I let Rick answer that question, let me just say that community count, we have all learned together, is one of the most difficult numbers to project. It moves around a lot. And in the context of the environment that we've been working in with municipality offices shutting down, being less available, getting fewer of permits out of them for land development, it becomes even more difficult. So I'll let Rick take it from there.

Rick Beckwitt

Management

So, I'll take the question that we really don't know the great answer to, which is, we expect our community count to dip slightly in Q3, stabilize in Q4, and we're optimistic as we enter 2021, through the balance of 2021 that we'll see probably a 5% increase in community count in 2021. Just really can't underestimate the -- the difficulty it has been getting communities out of the ground as towns and municipalities reopen up and do permitting.

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

Okay. Appreciate that. And I assume you mean -- when you say dip slightly, you mean from 2Q levels. The second question I had was also just kind of circling back to the various initiatives that you've had in place for quite some time around efficiency measures, both on the construction side and on the SG&A, and recognizing that there are probably dozens of initiatives on both of those line items, maybe a little hard to quantify, but I was hoping for any type of thought around what this means over the next couple of years from a margin benefit standpoint, both on the growth side with the various construction initiatives that you've done, as well as the SG&A cost reducing efforts. If there's any way to kind of think about this, or some type of guidance that may be not a formal guidance but just directional guidance, how we should think about, all else equal obviously, what this means for those metrics, the growth side and the SG&A side?

Stuart Miller

Management

So, look Mike, we have daylighted that our focus has been on all ranges of technology across our platform because there is a direct translation to bringing the cost side of our world down. It's everything from construction costs to labor costs, to internal efficiencies and the way that we internally transmit and report our numbers, and all the way through to our customer experience and the way that we interact with our customers. A part of our initiative is designed to make sure that we're able to produce affordable housing. So it's not going to all flow through to margin. It's going to help us keep our home prices affordable as we go forward. And so, there's not a direct relationship to our margin because some of these initiatives are going to flow through to the benefit of our customers. But with that said, we think that our margins will improve. You're already seeing some of that improvement injected going forward. Some of that derives from things like pricing power. Some of it derives from things like reduced incentives or reduced realtor cooperation. But it's -- all parts of our business are bringing our cost structure down. With that said, and to directly answer your question, we look over the next couple of years at the 100 basis points, maybe a couple of hundred basis points that flow through. And these are our objectives. As we think about it, it's more of an internal number than part of our guidance right now. But you're definitely seeing improvement in the way that our cost structure is configured.

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

Great, thank you.

Stuart Miller

Management

You're welcome. Last question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our last question is from Mike Dahl from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Michael Dahl

Analyst

All right. Thanks for squeezing me in. Stuart, actually just a couple of follow-ups on some of the internal initiatives, I guess specifically, first on the virtual sales shift, and in addition to an enhanced customer experience, it sounds like some nice financial benefits. But within those comments around the margin, can you help us understand what percentage or any metrics around what portion of your sales force has effectively shifted to more of the virtual new home coordinators versus in-community salespeople?

Stuart Miller

Management

The shift today has been fairly mild. People are still learning to properly use and engage the digital technologies, and that learning curve, it takes some time to implement and to perfect. But as we perfect that, we're going to see a greater number of both our customers enjoying the digital engagement and the autonomy, as well as our new home consultants and what we call our Internet new home consultants, or ISCs, really being able to work with those tools and be far more effective and efficient. This is a migration that's going to take place over the next quarters and years. And I think we'll be better equipped to answer as we develop additional experience. But I will say that the way I think about this is, we've had probably a year or two of change management get incorporated over just the past three months as we've reeducated or educated our new home consultants and our customer base that these tools exist and are quite beneficial to a better experience.

Jon Jaffe

Management

And I would just add that I agree with Stuart, but really 100% of our new home consultants and Internet sales consultants are using our virtual tools today. It's really a question of them becoming experts at it really comfortable with it. We've launched a series of training programs that we take our associates through to how to sell virtually, and it's rapidly accelerating. But it is change management and it will continue to improve.

Michael Dahl

Analyst

Okay, thanks for that. And then a follow-up for me is then another internal initiatives question just around build cycles. You talked about some of the centralized scheduling. And I was wondering if you could just quantify -- clearly, there are some moving pieces with some of the shutdowns, but maybe at the trough of the issues in March or April, how much had your build cycle widened out or lengthened? And then, do you have any sort of metric you're tracking against with some of these initiatives in terms of how many days you think you can shave off the build cycle by some of these -- with some of these efficiency and digital tools?

Jon Jaffe

Management

What we are seeing is a steady decline as we look year-over-year and sequentially the quarter is a decline in our build cycle time. And so, we've seen -- as an example, this quarter compared to a year ago, about a 15-day decline in our cycle time. So all elements of efficiency from the coordination with our trade, even flow focus, the benefits of everything is included in today's world. I think, just our total Builder of Choice program has attracted trades to us, making sure that we have the trade power that we need on the job as we need them. And we're there to facilitate things flowing more smoothly for them. So, I think that's another trend that I expect to see continue for us as a continued contraction of that.

Stuart Miller

Management

Rick, do you want to weigh in on that?

Rick Beckwitt

Management

Going down.

Stuart Miller

Management

Going down.

Michael Dahl

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Stuart Miller

Management

So, I think with that succinct answer, we'll end it there. I want to thank everybody for joining us and for enduring some rather long and windy opening remarks. I know it starts with me, but we felt that we wanted to share more information at what can be a confusing time and look forward to reporting in a more condensed way. Our third quarter is a few months from now. Thank you for joining.

Operator

Operator

Thank you all for participating in today's conference. You may disconnect your line and enjoy the rest of your day.