Cavco Industries, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the CAVCO Industries second quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mark Fusler, Corporate Controller and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good day, and thank you for joining us for Capco Industries' second quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. During the call, you'll be hearing from Bill Bohr, President and Chief Executive Officer, Allison Aden, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Digby, Chief Accounting Officer. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that comments made during this conference call by management may contain forward-looking statements, including statements of expectations or assumptions about Capco's financial and operational performance, revenues, earnings per share, cash flow or use, cost savings, operational efficiencies, current or future volatility in the credit markets, or future market conditions. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could affect Capco's actual results and could cause its actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of Capco. I encourage you to review Capco's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation the company's most recent forms 10-K and 10-Q, which identify specific factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. This conference call also contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this live broadcast, Friday, November 3rd, 2023. CAFCO undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call, except as required by law. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill Bohr, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Bill? Welcome, and thank you for joining us today to review our second quarter results. I thought I'd jump right in with some perspective on what we're seeing in the market. As we previously reported, the dealer inventories that created a big drag on wholesale orders through the first half of the year are now generally under control. In our company-owned stores and broadly throughout our independent dealer network, home buyer interest as reflected in online leads and store traffic is healthy. However, as everyone knows, the macroeconomic environment is not providing any relief for those prospective buyers. Having said that, we continue to see quarter to quarter order improvement. That trend is largely coming from street dealers with communities still lagging as expected and discussed last quarter. Looking forward as those community operators work through their inventories, that will be another positive for wholesale manufactured housing orders. Against that backdrop, we continue to operate at a reduced level. Production was down from last quarter as certain plants dealt with the lack of orders and continued to slow production. In line with production, capacity utilization was down slightly, but still on the range of 60%. With the already mentioned order improvement, we've hit a balance point at the current overall production rate. As a result, our backlogs were consistent with last quarter. We ended the period at $170 million, which equates to five to seven weeks of production. Clearly, we're anxious and prepared to move plants back to full schedules as soon as the market supports. In the meantime, our plants have done an outstanding job maintaining healthy profitability and cash flow through the market challenges. In the second quarter, our housing gross margin was 23.2%, down 1.6% from last quarter and 3.6% from a year ago when we were running full schedules and 80% utilization. Allison will go into the gross margin shifts, but the point here is that reducing shipments about 17% year-over-year to match the lower demand and still maintaining margin to that extent only happens through discipline and operational excellence. Our retail business has performed exceptionally well. They adjusted quickly to the changing market conditions last year and stayed committed to their winning processes. On a same-store basis, excluding the added volume from solitaire retail, Homes sold through our company-owned stores were up slightly from the previous period. More importantly, the manufacturing and retail teams are working cohesively on product decisions and selling strategies to produce optimal results across the operations. This teamwork has demonstrated itself as we've brought the Solitaire stores into the retail operation and filled out product offerings to improve inventory turns. Overall, our revenues were down sequentially from 476 to 452 million, and pre-tax income was 52 million compared to 61 million last quarter. We generated strong cash flow, returned 47 million through share repurchases, and added 25 million to our cash balance. We remain convinced of the dire need for our homes over time, and our strong balance sheet enables us to pursue investments in organic and external opportunities, despite the near-term conditions. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Allison to discuss the financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Bill. Net revenue for the second fiscal quarter of 2024 was $452 million, down $125.4 million, or 21.7%, compared to $577.4 million during the prior year. Within the factory-built housing segment, Net revenue was $434.1 million, down $125.5 million, or 22.4% from $559.6 million in the prior year quarter. The decrease was primarily due to a decline in base business homes sold and a decrease in average revenue per home sold, partially offset by the Solitaire Homes acquisition, which contributed $35.6 million in the quarter. The decrease in average revenue per home was primarily due to more single-wides in the mix, and to a lesser extent, product pricing decreases. Factory utilization for Q2 of 2024 was approximately 60% when considering all available production days, but was nearly 70% excluding scheduled downtime for market or weather consistent with our last two quarters. Financial services segment net revenue increased 1.1% to $18 million from $17.8 million, primarily due to more insurance policies in force and higher insurance premium rates, partially offset by fewer loan sales. Consolidated gross profit in the second fiscal quarter as a percentage of net revenue was 23.7%. down 360 basis points from the 27.3% in the same period last year. In the factory-built housing segment, the gross profit decreased 350 basis points to 23.2% in Q2 of 2024 versus 26.7% in Q2 of 2023, driven by lower average selling prices partially offset by lower material costs per floor, primarily due to lower lumber prices. Growth margin as a percentage of revenue financial services decreased to 35.9% in Q2 of 2024 from 44.6% in Q2 of 2023 from multiple severe storms in Texas and in Arizona. Selling, general, and administrative expenses were $61.5 million compared to $66.9 million during the same quarter last year. The decrease in these expenses was primarily due to lower third-party support costs and lower incentive compensation costs, partially offset by the addition of Solitaire Homes SG&A costs. Interest income for the second quarter was $5.8 million, up 214% from the prior year quarter. This increase is primarily due to higher interest rates and greater invested cash balances. Net other income this quarter was 0.7 million compared to 0.5 million in the prior year quarter. Pre-tax profit was down 44.3% this quarter to 51.7 million from 92.8 million for the prior year period. Net income to Capco stockholders was $41.5 million compared to net income of $74.1 million in the same quarter of the prior year. And diluted earnings per share this quarter was $4.76 per share versus $8.25 per share in last year's second quarter. Now I'll turn it over to Paul to discuss the balance sheet.

Thanks, Alison. I'll cover the balance sheet changes from September 30, 2023, compared to April 1, 2023. The cash balance was $377.3 million, up $105.9 million from $271.4 million at the end of the prior fiscal year. The increase is primarily due to a few factors. First, net income adjusted for non-cash items, such as depreciation and stock compensation expense, And secondly, working capital changes related to inventory decreases of $19.7 million from low raw materials at our manufacturing facilities and less finished goods at our retail locations, decrease of prepaid and other assets of $17.8 million, increase in accounts payable and accrued liabilities of $9.9 million, and decreases in consumer and commercial loans. These cash inflows were partially offset by common stock repurchases of $47.2 million. Restricted cash increased from cash collected on serviced loans in our financial services segment in excess of what was distributed. Consumer and commercial loans decreased from loan sales and the pay down of associated loans and fewer new loan originations. Prepaid and other assets decreased from lower prepaid income taxes and a reduction in the delinquent Ginnie Mae loans, as well as the normal amortization of prepaid expenses. Property plan equipment net is down from the sale of unutilized equipment acquired with the Saltar Homes acquisition we completed last January. Accrued expenses and other current liabilities are up slightly from higher insurance losses and warranty reserves, partially offset by lower customer deposits. Lastly, stockholders' equity exceeded $1 million, up $43 million from $976.3 million as of April 1, 2023. With that, I'll pass it back to Bill.

Our results this quarter highlight the ability of our organization to manage costs and generate cash even when conditions are challenging. Everyone at CAVCO is ready for the inevitable return of demand so we can help more families get the homes they need. Abigail, can we please open the line for questions?

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning, Bill, Allison, and Paul. I appreciate the time and taking the questions. Maybe start with just the order trends, Bill. Obviously, it ticked a bit higher, which is nice to see. That said, we're entering the typically slower period seasonally. Just maybe talk about your expectations for orders and shipments in fiscal Q3 relative to Q2 and, you know, when you expect to be in position to start to increase production rates.

Yeah, thanks, Dan. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. We're now entering the period we hit about November, December. And typically, if you could isolate seasonal patterns, that would mean a slowdown in shipments. Some years, we don't really see that because it gets dwarfed by the macroeconomic factors that are probably a bigger impact. But certainly, it's something we have to really be keeping our eye on. And we're not, at this point, speculating on how that's going to develop. We're encouraged by the by a few things. One is we've reported a few quarters where we haven't intended to give an exaggerated view of this, but a few quarters where orders have increased quarter over quarter. And this quarter continued that. So that's a real positive. And then the other thing that I guess I'd point to that I'm sure I wasn't lost on you and others is that we've been able to kind of stabilize the backlog. So we feel like we're in balance right now going into it. I'm more personally focused on macroeconomic drivers than the seasonality. But if we can come through these winter months in good shape, then I think it'll be a real positive sign.

Maybe ask another way. You know, so far in the quarter, production rates held pretty steady with what we saw in fiscal Q2.

I think generally they have. We've kind of hit a balance point here, which is what we're trying to convey to people and We'd like it to be a balance point at a higher production level for sure, but it's good to feel like orders are supporting at least the current production level. So I'd say that's continued.

Okay, excellent. And maybe just in terms of the gross margin, if we could either dive into it a little bit more or rank order sort of the impacts. Obviously, you know, the financial services notwithstanding focusing on the residential housing, or focusing on just the housing segment, between input costs, mix, fixed cost absorption, you know, what were kind of the key elements that maybe pushed lower sequentially, and are you seeing any pricing or competitive pressures, or is it more a function of those things that I just mentioned?

I think maybe a way to think about margins this quarter to Q1, It's really margins in this quarter are kind of the story was really more around cost and not really around price. It's all price hold fairly consistent. But we have seen inflationary pressures that's driving up price per OSB, which, as you know, is one of our larger inputs for materials. So that slight elevation is finding its ripple effect through the margin and obviously something that we'll stay close to. We continue to be very efficient in our cost structures in our plans as we adjust to production levels. And we can certainly see consistent leverage of a fixed cost at the plant level and then also at the SG&A level.

Got it. And so given that and where we've seen OSB pricing, likely this kind of beats hanging around in those areas.

levels the gross margin likely to remain in those levels for maybe one more quarter and would you expect to start to see some you know increase beyond that i think you know we we don't really project on uh grunt margins but we you know fact the the factors that we stay very close to is pricing which has been really consistent and rational and then of course the input cost that the majority of our materials are lumber and osp So as those contracts and that level of cost and the cost pricing increases or decreases, those fall through our margin in about a 60-day trend. So that's information that can be accessed. And then our overhead support continues to be leveraged. So all in all, I think, you know, as we stay close to the story that's evolving on the OSP, we should be able to factor that into where we currently are at the Q2 level for Q3.

Very helpful. One more, I'll jump out. Are you seeing, you know, more of a mix shift to lower price point entry level homes? Is that trend continued? And just maybe talk about your expectations for ASPs as we look forward over the next couple of quarters.

So we are seeing the trend go toward more single. But as we've kind of said in the past, we think about margin, gross margin associated with the singles and multis. More of a function of time or time spent of productivity within the plants and not so much a distinguishing factor between multi and single at the growth margin level. Clearly, there is a price point differential at the revenue level.

Dan, just to jump in, there are definitely, as you know, following the industry for a long time for many years. I think, years, we were seeing a move toward multi-section in the mix. And for several quarters now, we've reported that that's reversed. The quarter-to-quarter change wasn't that significant, but it was a little bit more to singles again. And I think that's, you know, our view is that that's just a really strong indication of the affordability challenges people are facing out there. And folks who have still been coming out to shop for homes, we reported consistently the Traffic is healthy. So they're out there. They're trying to figure out how to solve their home need. Many of them, I think, are coming to realization that they're going to have to accept less than they might have been able to purchase in years past. So I think that's really what we're seeing through that continuing trend towards single. Over the last year, it's been pretty dramatic. Over the last quarter, it was pretty mild as far as the shift.

Perfect. Okay. I'll jump back a little bit to follow-ups. Thank you. Thanks.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Greg Palm with Craig Hallam. Your line is open.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to, you know, follow up a little bit on, you know, kind of the Community Read channel. Figure out whether your visibility has improved, changed at all relative to a few months ago.

Yeah, this is a good topic to hit on. I commented very briefly on it that they really haven't come back at this point. The street dealers are carrying the load right now. A lot of that we've talked in the past is really driven mostly by communities that have spaces to fill and they've got inventory. but they're having trouble getting it placed as fast as they'd like. All my discussions with operators, community operators, is that it's not a question about whether there's a resident demand. It's just been a function of them having inventory on hand, kind of similar to the previous problem at street dealerships, and how fast they can place that product. So I think we even commented last quarter that we expected it to be, you know, I'm not trying to pinpoint too many estimates when we don't have perfect visibility, but last quarter we said this will probably last through the calendar year. And I think that's still true. I don't know that we'll be completely through it in the current quarter or whether it'll leak into the next year a little bit. But once that does clear, just as when we saw the street dealer inventories get balanced, that's a positive for our orders. Greg, I will open up another topic because you and I have talked about this over time. I think everything I'm saying is, the way to think about it is it's very true for existing communities. Just even following some of the public statements of some of the REIT operators, now we're starting to hear people say if the cost of capital keeps going up, new development is something they're going to hold off on. So not really thrilled to hear that, but it stands to reason that as interest rates continue going up, those operators are balancing whether to invest in new developments or to just kind of hold the capital or pay down debt. We haven't heard that consistently. It hasn't been a loud message, but it's something I think for us to keep our eye on. Not really an impact on the inventory discussion we've had, but just kind of a down-the-road thing to keep an eye on.

Yep, that makes sense. Wouldn't be a huge surprise. In terms of order rates coming through when they're ready, would you expect them at kind of similar levels as retail has placed those orders post-destocking? Would there be any change in how the community read channel places orders versus what you've seen in retail over the last two quarters?

I don't think so. I think once they get... once they get cleared of the inventory that they're trying to work through, um, you know, we talked with the street dealers on the concept of one-to-one, right? They sell a house, they need a house. And I think we'll see the same thing. And communities are a meaningful portion of the overall, and we kind of, in this discussion, I'm grouping developers communities kind of as one package, but this is a meaningful part of the overall demand. So, you know, we typically talk about that being 30, 33% of the market. and they haven't been carrying the 33% or so of the current orders. So we'll see it pick up once that continues to clear. I'm not sure. Did that, did that address your question?

Yeah. Yeah, totally did. And I guess just lastly, I know you've, you've kind of characterized this as kind of a challenging time and, you know, Cavco, you know, as a, as a company is fortunate, you know, good balance sheet, um, There's a lot of operators out there that probably don't have any backlog. They don't have a good balance sheet. I'm curious, does this change your appetite for M&A? Have you seen additional opportunities hit the pipeline? What's your visibility level there?

I wouldn't say it's been a big impact right now as far as people being distressed and therefore having to look for alternatives on the manufacturing side as far as M&A work, we're always interested and always in kind of some stated discussion to stay connected with those folks. So I wouldn't characterize that I've seen a lot of distress type situations. And I think really we have to look at it. You're right. If you lose your backlog, that could be an issue, obviously. But pricing has held up. So I think margins through the industry are still more healthy than would be the case in a time when manufacturers are really on the verge of failing.

Yeah, that's a good point. Okay. I will leave it there. Best of luck. Thanks, Greg.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jay McCandless with Wedbush. Your line is open.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. So actually, Bill, I was going to ask you the pricing question, too. So it sounds like things are holding up. You haven't had to be really aggressive on cutting price.

Yeah, we haven't seen it. I mean, I would say it's been consistent over the last couple of quarters where there are markets where you see a little bit of price competition, but it's been a little bit. And you see other markets where it really hasn't been a factor at all. And you can see that in, you know, I know our average selling price that we report has a lot in it with retail and mix and everything else. But, you know, you can see that prices just haven't materially dropped. So we always say it's a local business. So when we talk to all of our plants and kind of check in with how things are going, we hear slightly different stories from plant to plant and region to region. But where it's been noticeable that there's a little price competition, it hasn't been very dramatic. That's good to hear.

Could you talk about where chattel rates are now and what type of availability you think is out there in the market on the chattel side?

Yes, on the rate side right now, they've held pretty steady from last quarter, so they're still about 9% to 9.5%.

Yeah, availability is kind of consistent in that sense. So I think if you're, you know, what Mark's quoting is a pretty good credit score, good loan to value, we try to report that consistently in that sense. But I wouldn't say that, you know, if you've got the credit, I don't think the availability has gone down.

My last question is, So we've heard from one of your competitors that there may be some people walking away from floor plan financing for street dealers. Can you talk about your appetite to maybe pick up some of that business, especially with having the sizable cash balance you do, even notwithstanding the buyback, still have a pretty healthy cash balance? Is that something where Capco might want to go deeper? Sure.

Yeah, I think we just kind of react to the situation for the most part. As you know, we've got a reasonably sizable portfolio of floor plan loans with our independent dealers. And I think as we've stayed very close, by virtue of having that, you stay very close to the credit situation out there. So yeah, we absolutely would provide floor plan financing in the right situations. We wouldn't shy away from it in this market. Okay, great. That's all I have. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Jay.

One moment for our next question. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question comes from Michael Chapman with Aviance Capital Partners. Your line is open.

Thanks. Quick question on the revenue per module. It's been kind of flat, like you mentioned, for the last probably five quarters. If the if the developers are rolling off with, I'm assuming they'd be at more of a kind of a wholesale margin, do you think that kind of gets picked up by more wholesale or could that actually have some upward bias on your rep per module? You're saying if we're, when we're working with developers or we saw them at wholesale price or retail? Yeah. I mean, if developers are moving out, I'm assuming that, that they kind of get, you know, wholesale pricing. Is there any opportunity to get price increase just because you're going to have more retail? I'm not sure. I'm following, unfortunately. I think you're right that there would be kind of a distribution partner in the sense they'd be getting wholesale price. So the extent that picks up, we'll see a little bit of a shift within our consolidated financials to more wholesale pricing. And as we've tried to explain through time about our average selling price, our average selling price is affected by the proportion of wholesale pricing to retail pricing. So in that case, as communities and developers come up, I think I'm getting to your question, you would see wholesale take a bigger portion and you might see our reported average selling price drop a little bit, right? Am I getting at it, Michael? Yeah, no, you did. You got to it. I appreciate that. And then just kind of looking at... Yeah, and we wouldn't consider that to be a negative because that would be incremental volume over where we're at now. So, you know, we'd be thrilled with that. Average selling price is an indicator, but we're looking at the bottom line. No, fair enough. And then just kind of on inventory levels, you know, over the last couple of years, inventory turns have gone up, inventory days have come down. Obviously, through the pandemic and everything, it's changed. Are those going to come back, or what's the time period that you would think that those would get back to levels that they were in, say, the 19 area? Yeah, it's interesting because as we've gotten through the inventory problem, and this is kind of a general industry statement, but certainly a statement of our company and stores as well, turns are getting back into good ranges anyway. They're kind of stocking at a level to... And you think about the incentives. Let's take an independent dealer. You think about their incentives. Floor plant financing has gone up in cost, so they're going to carry less inventory and make sure their turns are pretty solid. So when we look at turns, even within our own system, they're pretty good right now. They're not bad at all because inventory is being managed down. Okay. And then just kind of following on on the financing side, I mean, homebuilders, have been kind of keeping volumes up. These are stick-gold home builders, keeping volumes up by basically buying down yield. So basically using their balance sheet to increase the volume. You guys, all the big guys, have really good balance sheets on that. How do you go about doing that? Or is that just something you wouldn't do in the chattel market because of the credit profile that you face? Yeah, I mean, it's something that I'd say as a general rule has not been a main driver of how people have gone to market. Traditionally in our industry, the manufacturer sales teams working with dealers, for example, have been selling on price and product. And so there hasn't been a lot of subsidizing consumer rates. but it's always a tool that you kind of keep an eye on and it's something that could become a factor. That's why I think it's good for us to, so I'm happy that we're kind of in the position we are with country place because we can always keep an eye on that. And if the opportunity came to drive more volume by providing this kind of programs, you know, we've got the capability to do it. It hasn't happened a lot yet, but in the end you're trying to manage for integrated value. And so it's something that we do look at and, and opportunistically we'd be willing to do it. Just to explain the discipline on that and just to finish that, we have what's commonly called an asset-light model in our lending business where we don't want to hold loans. And so it creates a natural discipline that we have to have investors buying those loans and they're going to want to buy loans at market. And so if we buy it down, it's a good discipline because the economic reality of buying down that rate is staring us right in the face, right? So I think there's a lot of discipline in that. Okay. And then just kind of my last one. I mean, you guys in this quarter generated strong free cash flow by any stretch of the imagination.

In good times, you'll obviously generate more.

Do you have constraints on... uh acquisitions or the the volume of acquisitions you can make just because of the concentration of the industry because i mean if you're going to do give or take 200 million in free cash flow and given at what you guys have been paying on price of sales you guys could make you know two three four hundred million in in revenue purchases a year but that's that's a lot of revenue for what's remaining outside the big three or four guys so i mean I look at it and the cash flow that you guys have seems like you have almost too much to just do nothing with it. So I'm kind of wondering what the thought process is given the volume of cash flow and your ability to apply that in the market in acquisitions. Thanks. Yeah, I think one answer to your question is we don't feel constrained on acquisitions. kind of maintain our balance sheet so that we can act strategically and acquisitions. You can look through our history have been an important part of that. So certainly don't feel constrained with either the cash balance or the cashflow that we've been generating as you identify. So we want to make sure we get those deals at the right prices, I think is the limiting factor for us. We're always kind of looking to make sure it's a failed fair deal for both sides. So, you know, we've, We've obviously used repurchases as a balancing tool on our balance sheet. We've been pretty clear with folks that we want to maintain a responsible balance sheet, and that's where the repurchases come out back into play. They're not really speculating on price. They're more trying to keep our balance sheet appropriate for keeping the dry powder to do the deals you're talking about. So anyway, I think I think the bottom line to your question is we do not feel constrained, and when we see good opportunities and acquisitions, we feel free to do them given our strong balance sheet. And there's no regulatory constraints to increasing your market share? We haven't gotten to that point yet, and I think there's a couple things there. One is, as I said in my earlier remarks, it's local business, and so that analysis really has to be done at a local business. And secondly, when you look at deals in this industry, I think we're part of the overall home building industry, not just the manufactured housing industry. So we haven't really felt that we're bumping up against any kind of regulatory constraint on concentration. Okay. Great. Thanks. That's all my questions. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes the question and answer session. At this time, I would like to turn it back to Bill Bohr, President and CEO, for closing remarks.

Thank you. Obviously, the focus of the call has been on financial results and understanding market dynamics at the moment. Internally, the various parts of our company are really working better than ever. For example, our marketing team continues to leverage the digital investments we've made, and that's benefiting our dealers and home shoppers. And they're working seamlessly with our expanding national sales team to grow the business. We've got a lot going on in learning and development where I feel like we've created Really world-class programs aimed at improving leadership across the enterprise and providing clear pathways for our people. And finally, the business leadership across manufacturing, retail, and financial services are doing a great job teaming up to ensure we have the right products and services for our distribution partners. As I've said before, our operators in all business segments are doing an outstanding job managing the challenging market conditions. And that's reflected in the strong cash flows despite the environment. But the real focus throughout the company is on getting ready to run when economic conditions support turning the tide on the huge deficit of attainable housing in our country and getting more families into quality CAFCO homes. That's our real focus. And these conditions really haven't taken our eye off that ball at all. So thank you as always for your interest in CAFCO. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.