Earnings Labs

Pure Cycle Corporation (PCYO)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Dec 3, 2013

$11.52

+0.22%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Pure Cycle earnings conference call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mark Harding, President and CEO. Please begin.

Mark W. Harding

Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome you all to our 2013 year-end call. As with the prior calls, we have a slide deck for this call that you'll have to access through our website. So you can go over to purecyclewater.com and on the front page of our website, you'll see a section down there called Latest Report and you can click on that presentation. The slides are right there. As you're on your computers, I will note the transition of slides through my presentation so that you can match the slides to the dialogue in the presentation. So with that, let's begin. Our first slide is of course, our Safe Harbor statement that's referencing the statements that are not historical facts contained in this presentation are forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the projected results. Such statements reflect our current views with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We cannot assure you that any of the expectations will be realized. For additional disclosures of our Safe Harbor statement, please refer to this slide. Okay. On our first slide, or move to the Slide 3. I want to lead off with a really good slide that really set the tone for our year end. We had a terrific year end. I want to note a very important fiscal note, which is revenues this year. The company generated more than $1.8 million in revenues for 2013. We have a typo in there, its fiscal year 2013. We generated a little over $1.8 million, the difference there between $1.79 million is we had some consulting revenues that really weren't part of our 4 operating business revenue sources. So to highlight our 4 areas of…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first question is from Brent Rystrom of Feltl.

Brent R. Rystrom - Feltl and Company, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Just a couple of quick questions. Mark, can you kind of give us some thoughts on the crop share leases? I would assume that you're doing, as we've talked in the past, maybe a 30%, 35% share. Have you further thoughts on how you're going to do those crop share leases with the center pivot irrigation?

Mark W. Harding

Analyst

We have. Most of these are going to be 1/3, 2/3. So we will participate in the actual crop benefits of that, at the 1/3, 2/3 level. The farmer itself will be responsible for all the input cost. So the company doesn't incur anything other than the investment in the sprinkler system and then the farmer -- the tenant farmer will manage the crops if they grow. They'll manage the seed, the water, operating cost to operate the sprinklers and all of the input costs to that crop, whether that's going to be any chemicals, any harvesting, bringing that to market. So we will participate in auditing that trail as they bring that crop to market and then divide those proceeds 1/3, 2/3.

Brent R. Rystrom - Feltl and Company, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

And so it will be proceeds? You don't have a choice to take the grain, for example, if you want it?

Mark W. Harding

Analyst

That's the one thing that we're still having outstanding is whether or not we want to take delivery of the commodity rather than deliver to market.

Brent R. Rystrom - Feltl and Company, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

All right. And then just from a simplistic perspective, the center pivot is going to cover roughly 111 acres on each 160. Will you be doing anything on the corners or will that land lay fallow?

Mark W. Harding

Analyst

No. We will typically use the same sort of the old system of flood irrigation on the corners to the extent that some of those corners are -- some corners may roll out of production to leverage the use of the water, but it kind of depends on the farm. We're doing, I think, 3 of these this year -- 2 or 3 of these this year and it depends on -- I think, 2 of them, the corners can be irrigated in the normal flood system to allow us to continue to get yield on that productive ground, and then 1 of them has a difficulty with getting the delivery of the water to the corners of it.

Brent R. Rystrom - Feltl and Company, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

All right. So from a simplistic perspective, you will have 40-some acres on the old system at 100 or 125 an acre, and then 110 acres or so on the new system at the crop share rate?

Mark W. Harding

Analyst

Correct.

Brent R. Rystrom - Feltl and Company, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

All right. As far as the Tap Participation Fee, did I read it right in the 10-K that subsequent to the quarter, there's been another $11.9 million resolved?

Mark W. Harding

Analyst

Yes. We had a few that were all together, so they kind of straddled the August 31 year. So we had some that were in the end of August, some that were in the beginning of September. And then a lot of these have a very long lead time in processing those. So we keep chipping away at these or will continue to chip away at these. We did have the High Plains sort of challenge the foreclosure process. We did do a court proceeding on that. The court ruled in our favor. We're sort of waiting to see how that settles out, but we will continue to process these through throughout the year.

Brent R. Rystrom - Feltl and Company, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

And then final question on that. How should we think about the Tap Participation Fee in the forward quarter? Should we base it proportionally on the remaining liability, the proportional amount of parcels that are still out there that haven't been resolved? I would assume it's an amount that diminishes considerably, quarterly as the quarter goes forward. Is that a fair way of looking at it?

Mark W. Harding

Analyst

Yes, I think so. We're still working with High Plains on this and as I sort of mentioned at the outset, we'd really like to find a settlement route with them but are prepared to fully proceed and really have the ability to proceed through each of these foreclosures. So we'll kind of chip away at that. I think our preference would be to be able to resolve it with one fell swoop, but barring that as an option for us, I think we have a path and a remedy where we can address these a few each quarter. It will likely take us through most of the fiscal year to be able to take a look at most of these foreclosures just because of the lead time on them.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back over for closing remarks.

Mark W. Harding

Analyst

Super. Thank you. So really, just to close out the year, the company really is excited about being able to really demonstrate the value of these assets. They have continued to grow in value year-over-year. The company's ideology continues -- has been and continues to be that water continues to grow in its value and, really, this has been one of the first years we've been able to demonstrate that to the market. Some of the things that we're working on -- I know a lot of you are interested in sort of the real estate market here in the Denver area and it is been a very exciting market. It's probably one of the best-performing real estate markets, major metropolitan areas in the country. We continue to work on our Sky Ranch project. That's the bulk of the company's energies right now. Most of my time is spent really understanding what the development of that property would look like. So the company is going to spend and dedicate a considerable amount of time in 2014 really to identify how -- perhaps who we are going to work with in developing that property. We think we understand a great deal about the utility side of it, but we also understand that we're not a developer and probably don't look to be the developer, but have a certain interest in partnering with a developer on that and being able to bring that expertise to Sky Ranch and being able to kick that project off with a very exciting start. Don't have any real guidance to give you on that yet. We want to be cautious about that because we have the ability to do a lot of different structures for that Sky Ranch property. We have a tremendous amount of flexibility…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect. Good day.