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spk02: After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 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 Fussler. Corporate Controller and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk01: Good day, and thank you for joining us for Capco Industries' first quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. During this call, you'll be hearing from Bill Bohr, President and Chief Executive Officer, Allison Aiden, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Bigby, 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 CAFCO'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 CAFCO'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 CAFCO. I encourage you to review CAFCO'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 any forward-looking statements. This conference call also contains time-sensitive information that is only accurate as of the date of this live broadcast, Friday, August 2nd, 2024. 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 Bohrer, President and Chief Executive Officer. Bill?
spk04: Welcome and thank you for joining us today to review our first quarter results. The positive order trend we saw in Q4 continued this quarter, enabling our plants to increase production, with rising shipments and a growing backlog. Obviously, we want to spend time discussing this in more detail, but first I'd like to take a few minutes on the financial services segment, specifically insurance. Our insurance operations incurred very high losses in Q1. Nobody likes to use or hear the weather excuse, but the unusually high number of convective storms in Texas and the fires in Ruidoso, New Mexico, combined to create a level of claims we haven't seen before. We incurred a number of individual events, none of which reached our reinsurance coverage. Insurance is by its nature a volatile business, and it gets a lot of attention when results are down. We're managing for the long term, and with that mindset, we can tolerate challenging periods as long as the fundamentals of the business are sound. The key to success over time is being on top of the risks you're willing to cover and making sure you're getting premiums appropriate to those covered risks. We're actively managing these fundamentals in a very difficult insurance environment. Over time, our insurance operations have provided healthy returns, and we're confident that will continue to be the case despite the recent results. Insurance is an adjacent business. We understand it, and it adds value both to our retail operations and to our home buyers who need ready access to our policies in order to complete their transaction and protect their homes. Given the losses this quarter, financial services deserve some upfront discussion, and of course, we'll be happy to answer questions. But I don't want that to take focus away from the main event, our factory-built housing results, which continue to improve. So let's turn our attention to that. Momentum was building through this quarter. For seven quarters now, we've reported that same-plan orders were increasing, not dramatically, but headed in the right direction. This quarter, the sequential increase was a bit more significant, up about 25%. As a result, we were able to increase shipments 20% and our units in backlog climbed 22%. Our working backlog remained at about seven to eight weeks, held in check by a significant increase in our weekly production rate. Sequentially, our average selling price dropped 4%. I think what's most relevant is what we're seeing on a same product basis in wholesale pricing. The takeaway there is that wholesale pricing has been pretty stable, dropping less than 1%. As we've talked in the past, there are a lot of dynamics in our reported ASP. And most of the 4% drop is the result of a lower percent of our product going through company-owned stores, the mixed shift we saw towards single-section units, and pricing in our retail operations, which can vary period to period. Notably, our factory gross margin remained very steady, up 20 basis points sequentially. Without the help of any significant interest rate relief, buyers are placing orders because they need homes, and rate stability enables them to have confidence in their monthly payment. The strongest part of the market is the lower-cost single-section home. In my view, affordability affects which home a family can afford across the spectrum of home prices, but at the lowest price homes, it affects whether they can afford to own. There are a startlingly high number of families right on that cusp of being able to afford a home at all. They've been priced out by inflation and rate increases, but they will come back into the market if they get monthly payment relief in any form. Community orders are not back to normal, but they are improving. For a number of quarters, it was correct to assume community orders were off significantly across the board. Now we're starting to see some feathering in of increases as specific communities get back to more normal order rates. This is consistent with what we've been expecting from the segment, and we anticipate improvement through the remainder of the year. This is a story-by-story situation, just as it was when retailers recovered from their inventory issues a year ago. It's regional and community-specific. Regarding regional differences, Florida remains well off what we'd consider normal community order rates. To a lesser extent, we continue to see lagging community orders in the Southwest. Ultimately, community orders will recover, and this will provide added shipments over current levels. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Alison to discuss the financial results in more detail.
spk00: Thank you, Bill. Net revenue for the first fiscal quarter of 2025 was $477.6 million, up $1.7 million, or 0.4%, compared to $475.9 million during the prior year. Sequentially, net revenues increased $57.5 million, driven by an increase of units sold partially offset by lower average selling prices and lower revenues in financial services. Within the factory-built housing segment, first quarter net revenue was $458 million, up 0.9 million, or 0.2%, from $457.1 million in the prior year quarter. This increase was primarily due to a 3% increase in homes sold, partially offset by a 2.7% decrease and average revenue per home sold. Factory utilization for Q1 of 2025 was approximately 65% when considering all available production days, but was nearly 70% excluding scheduled downtime for market and a holiday. Utilization was approximately 60% in the prior year period. For the financial services segment, net revenue increased 4.2% to $19.6 million from $18.8 million. This increase was primarily due to more insurance policies in force and higher insurance premium rates, partially offset by fewer loan sales and lower interest income earned on the acquired consumer loan portfolio. Consolidated growth margin in the first fiscal quarter as a percentage of net revenue was 21.7%, down 310 basis points from 24.8% in the same period last year. This decrease was due to lower average selling prices in the factory-built housing segment and losses in financial services. In the factory-built housing segment, the gross profit decreased 220 basis points to 22.6% in Q1 of 2025 versus 24.8% in Q1 of 2024, driven by lower average selling prices. Financial services gross margin as a percentage of revenue decreased to negative 0.6% in Q1 of 2025 from 24% in Q1 of 2024. The insurance division was significantly impacted by multiple weather events in Texas, as well as the forest fires in New Mexico, resulting in a segment pre-tax net loss of $5.2 million. Selling, general, and administrative expenses in the first quarter of 2025 were $64.9 million, or 13.6% of net revenue, compared to $61.7 million, or 13% of net revenue during the same quarter last year. The increase in these expenses was primarily due to $1.5 million related to the Kentucky Dream Home acquisition that occurred in the third quarter of fiscal 2024. increased employee compensation, and increases in healthcare and professional services support. Interest income for the first quarter was $5.5 million, up 19.3% from the prior year quarter. The increase over the prior year is primarily due to higher interest rates on larger cash balances. Pre-tax profit was down 27.7% this quarter to $43.9 million, from $60.7 million for the prior year period. The current period includes a pre-tax loss of $5.2 million in the financial services segment. The effective income tax rate was 21.5% for the first fiscal quarter compared to 23.5% in the same period last year. Net income to Capco stockholders was $34.4 million compared to net income of 46.4 million in the same quarter of the prior year. Diluted earnings per share this quarter were $4.11 per share versus $5.29 per share in last year's first quarter. The pre-tax net loss of 5.2 million in the financial services segment resulted in a reduction of diluted net income per share of approximately 49 cents on an after-tax basis. Additionally, from a sequential perspective, financial services posted an after-tax earnings of 3.3 million in Q4 of 2024. The sequential swing relative to our positive Q4 2024 financial services performance is approximately 89 cents. As insurance results have been a focus this quarter, We also wanted to alert you to an additional weather event that occurred after the end of the first quarter that will impact our second quarter results. In early July, Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Houston, Texas. While we don't write insurance coverage in coastal counties, several of our inland policy holders were impacted by severe wind damage. Currently, we expect losses to be in the range of our reinsurance limit which is $4 million. Anything over $4 million will be covered by our reinsurance. Now I'll turn it over to Paul to discuss the balance sheet.
spk05: Thanks, Allison. Comparing the June 29, 2024 balance sheet to March 30, 2024, the cash balance was $359.3 million, up $6.6 million from $352.7 million at the end of the prior fiscal year. The change in the balance consists of a series of pluses and minuses. I'll start with the increases in cash, which include net income adjusted for non-cash items such as depreciation and stock-based compensation expense, prepaid and other current asset decreases of $5.6 million, and an increase in current liabilities of $22.7 million. Decreases to cash include accounts receivable increase of $8 million, purchases of property, land, and equipment of $5 million, Inventory increases of $3.5 million. Commercial and consumer loan originations greater than sales and payments of $10.9 million. And lastly, share repurchases of $29.2 million. Restricted cash and the related other current liability increased from cash collected on service loans in our financial services segment. Prepaid and other assets was down due to lower prepaid insurance and workers' compensation balances. partially offset by normal amortization of other prepaids. Property plant equipment increased from additional investment in equipment and plant locations. Accrued expenses and other current liabilities are up from increased insurance loss reserves, higher customer deposits, and an increase in volume rebates. Finally, stockholders' equity was essentially flat at $1 billion. Now I'll turn it back to Bill.
spk04: Thank you, Paul. DeeDee, let's go ahead and move on to the questions.
spk02: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please 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. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from Daniel Moore of CJS Securities. Your line is open.
spk06: Bill, Allison, Paul, good morning, and thanks for taking the questions. Good morning. Good morning. Start with financial services and then get back to the main events, as you described, Bill. Just to clarify, Allison, it sounds like the full impact in the quarter – was maybe closer to $8 or $9 million in terms of the claims or $0.89. Is that relative to what a sort of more normal profitable quarter would look like in that business? Is that the right way to think about it?
spk00: That's the right way to think of it, Dan. It would have been an increase of instead of posting a loss of $0.49, typically we would have posted a gain of $0.40 as we did in Q4. So that would have swung us $0.89. Perfect. That makes sense.
spk06: And then for fiscal Q2, Hurricane Beryl, is it the impact is $4 million or you expect an operating income loss of $4 million?
spk00: Right now, the impact is estimated to be right at $4 million.
spk06: Okay.
spk00: Okay. That's really helpful.
spk06: And no other weather events that are significant, at least as of this stage, that we're aware of?
spk00: Not that we have visibility to now.
spk06: Not yet. Perfect. What can you tell us about potential premium rate increases or other measures that you might consider given the higher claims occurrences?
spk04: Yeah, it's been a bit of an ongoing process. You have to basically file with each state when you are looking for an increase, and that's been going on actually for some time. Probably anyone on the call who owns a home knows insurance rates have been skyrocketing for all of us. So we've been getting those premium increases, and we continue to be pretty active in that process. So there's more pretty sizable increases coming. The dynamics of insurance, and maybe I'm telling you things you already understand about it, it basically is you've got to incur the losses in order to go ask for the premium increase. And then when you get the approval, it takes a renewal cycle, so about a year before the whole premium increase takes hold. So that's just kind of the nature of the business. But to your question, Dan, we absolutely have pretty sizable increases coming in all the states we operate in.
spk06: Perfect. Up to the more interesting stuff. With backlog up 21% sequentially, how should we think about production or shipment growth in fiscal Q2 and beyond versus Q1?
spk04: Yeah, I guess what I can tell you, I mean, short of giving guidance on the quarter, we can kind of tell you being a bit into the quarter now that the trends continue. So I guess what I'd say is our backlog is up at this point in the quarter compared to where we finished, as well as production and order rates. So everything is continuing on an upper trend at this point. You know, we're in that mode. We really don't want to see backlogs get away from us. So we're in the mode of trying to figure out, not trying to figure out, but putting the efforts in place to ramp production up pretty aggressively in order to try to match this stronger order rate that we're seeing.
spk06: Very good. And it sounds like it's really still mostly retail. You know, trickle an order here, an order there from
spk04: community but but waiting for that to come back in a more meaningful way is that the right way to think about it yeah communities are definitely showing up now I mean I'm kind of somewhere in between I guess as I've described that the retail remains pretty solid as it has been and growing communities are starting to come back it's just kind of there's a ways to go if that makes sense so we're somewhere in the middle and I remember talking about that a couple quarters ago that given the inventory levels if demand supported it, which it really has, then we were kind of looking mid this calendar year to start seeing some relief and that it would take a little time to get 100% back. So we're kind of right on that schedule and we think there's still some improvement to go. Helpful.
spk06: Last one. I'll jump back. Thank you. Factory bill growth margin 22% up a little bit. And despite ASPs being down, which you described partially due to maybe a few less houses sold through your retail. As capacity ramps and as production ramps and utilization improves, is there some upside to that, or should we think of that as the new sort of run rate, at least for now? Thanks again. You want to try?
spk00: Sure. I mean, I would think that on the positive side, as we continue to ramp, as we've seen in our historical financials, We'll have leverage in our factory overhead component. The second element is clearly the cost of materials, primarily lumber and OSB. As we've talked about before, we got about a 60-day lag from what we can see in the commodities market, which during the period that would most likely impact our second quarter, it's been relatively low. If we take all those factors, the pricing, the cost of our materials and our leveraging of factory overheads. That would be where we land with Q2.
spk06: Really helpful, Allison. Okay, I'll jump back to any follow-ups. Thank you. Thanks, Dan.
spk02: Thank you. Our next question comes from Greg Palm of Craig Hallam. Your line is open.
spk03: Yeah, thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to confirm, just based on what you're seeing in July, you said that backlog's up since quarter end, so order rates, production rates, you said all that is actually up relative to how it finished end of quarter?
spk04: Yeah, that's correct.
spk03: And As it relates to community orders in general, are you seeing any notable difference between, you know, call it when they're ordering and when they want to actually receive the homes, you know, for instance, you know, is is is that backlog stretching out maybe a little bit longer than it is historically, or the communities actually taking the orders, you know, for near term delivery?
spk04: Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's the taking or making orders that they know are going to come relatively quickly. You know, we're in a pretty good spot on backlog being in that seven or eight week range. And so, you know, we focus our view of the backlog on units that we can make and ship, right? We're not really focused on orders that are way out in time. And so if someone places an order with us right now, they know that they're going to have that home in a couple months. So they're not placing orders and saying, okay, here's an order that I wanted nine months from now.
spk03: Yeah, okay. And I'm curious, has anything notable happened with rates over the last couple months? And I think where I'm sort of going with all these questions is what's, you know, anything changing that's, you know, essentially proven increasing or accelerating it sounds like the orders at retail and and finally starting to get some of those communities to come back i'm not sure if there's an underlying reason at all but curious if you can comment on on what's happened with rates over the last few months as well yeah rates have actually been very stable they haven't been noticeably dropping um and so to your question i think there's a couple things going on in my mind one is um you know our
spk04: Our prospective buyers have been there throughout. We've seen it in the traffic numbers. There's a need for housing. They're out there trying to figure out how to make it happen for their family. And so when they get the stability in rates, they at least can understand what their monthly cost is going to be, and it stays in that zone all the way through to get their loan done. And so just the stability has really facilitated traffic turning into orders, and I'd say that on the retail side, basically. The community improvement is really what we've been talking about. They got slugged with a lot of inventory. It kind of hit them after it hit retailers when we turned to communities and said, the retailers aren't ordering, so here come your homes. And that was kind of a year ago, or a little more, actually. And they're working through that. And as they get inventories under control, to the extent they're confident in having a resident for any home that they set up, they're starting to kind of order as fast as they can set them up. So really two different dynamics, Greg. I hope I explained that clearly.
spk03: Yep. Yeah, that's great. And then on ASPs, Allison, can you just go through, or I don't know if it was you or Bill, just go through the various dynamics you know, reasons. I think it was mostly mixed related overall, just number of homes going through company-owned stores, maybe a mix towards, you know, singles versus doubles. But I don't know if you can quantify or just go through that again. That'd be great.
spk00: I would characterize it as primarily a shift more towards single units, which are the lower price. A like-for-like pricing, there was a slight decrease as we do see continued pricing pressure. But as volumes increase, we'll see that subside. Okay.
spk04: And, Greg, just on the point about our company-owned retail stores, we've kind of brought that into the mix because as we've grown retail over the last year, it's shifted that a little bit for us. But if you think about it, we put more multi-sections through retail, but we put even more single sections through retail. So both grew in our retail operations, but overall, the percent of our homes that went through retail was down as a percentage. And so if you think about our ASP, and maybe I'm stating the obvious, if you think about our ASP, if period to period you see a lower percent going through retail, then we've got less retail pricing in our ASP and more wholesale pricing. We're automatically just going to drive the ASP down a little bit. But I think it's a little bit of a cloud because what we're all really interested in is how is pricing holding up. And that's why I wanted to give the perspective that wholesale pricing for our plants was down less than a percent. You know, it's still leaking a little bit, but it has not been that significant.
spk03: No, I appreciate that. I'm glad you gave that color. I'll leave it there. Best of luck. Thanks. Thank you.
spk02: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11. And our next question comes from Jay McCandless of Wedbush. Your line is open.
spk07: Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. So, Bill, could we talk a little bit more about the price issue and what your retail stores are seeing right now in terms of price competition from other retailers? How is that shaping up?
spk04: Yeah, it's – Man, it can vary from quarter to quarter. You can see their pricing on average, even if you look at it just single or just multi-section, it can move on you quarter to quarter because they're out there on kind of on the street corner competing for deals. And I'll also remind people that while we've grown in some other areas, we're still pretty concentrated in Texas. And so our retail is largely a reflection of Texas market, not the whole country. And the reason I say that is, I hope I'm not going too far here to lose people, but the reason I say that is our retail, if you think of us being in Texas, Texas came out of this downturn a little ahead of other regions. So they were already kind of on the stronger end and improving. So we're not seeing the sequential growth. What we see in our retail sequentially isn't really reflective of the whole country. Other regions are kind of catching up in a positive way. I'm not sure if I'm really touching on your question, but retail pricing for us, mostly focused in Texas, did drop a bit this quarter. It was a factor in that 4% overall ASP, not a huge one. And I wouldn't be too concerned about it because I think it's kind of normal variation on that street corner by street corner competition for deals. No, that's what I was trying to find out.
spk07: And thank you for the detail around Texas, but that's where I was trying to get to is what happened with retail pricing. It sounds like it's a pretty competitive environment, especially when we're talking about lower cost single section homes. Is that the right way to think about it?
spk04: That's right. And I guess you should draw your own judgment. I'm just kind of given my perspective that when we see variation period to period net, I wouldn't get, I don't get too worked up about it because I think there can be a lot of variability in the next quarter. It can bounce up. You know, it's just kind of going to move on us. Got it. Okay. And then on. Sorry. I'm sorry, Bill. I'll cut you off. Could you say that again? I don't see any structural or trending issue in that. I think it's just variation.
spk07: That's good to know. Thank you. Secondly, where are chattel rates right now, and where were they maybe a quarter ago and a year ago?
spk01: Yeah, so right now, Jay, they're at 9 percent to 9.4 percent. And as Bill mentioned earlier, that is pretty consistent with where they were last quarter and even last year.
spk07: I mean, if this move that we're seeing in the 10-year turns out to be more permanent than not and we see it keep going down, how fast do you guys think, whether with CountryPlace or some of y'all's competitors, how quickly do you think people are going to try and start bringing rates down?
spk04: I think the reaction time on land-home deals, whether they're conforming or non-conforming, would be kind of more correlated. I don't think that I would make any assumption personally about what that will do to chattel rates, which are much stickier over time. You know, they really don't react upward or downward in a highly correlated way with 10-year or any other mortgage index. So we'd get relief on land-home deals, and certainly GSE rates would react, but not necessarily chattel.
spk07: That's great to know. And then last one for me on the community business. It sounds like things are finally starting to get better there, but how much longer do you think it's going to take? Another couple quarters until they're back to normal order rates? How are you thinking about that, Bill?
spk04: Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, it's always depending on overall health of the market, for sure, but that's going in a positive way. You know, I remember talking about this when we were having the inventory glut in retail. And, you know, we want to think about it as just being a problem one day and gone the next, but how it really happens is you get a critical mass of communities that get back to, you know, normal order patterns and you just kind of stop talking about it because the problem's drifted away from you. So I think, you know, we've been saying for a long time we thought we'd see improvement mid-calendar year. That's where we're at. And I think it'll continue to improve by the end of the year.
spk07: Great. It's all good. Thank you.
spk04: Thanks.
spk02: Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Daniel Moore of CJS Securities. Your line is open.
spk06: Yeah, thanks again. Just a favorite, you know, capital allocation, $370 million cash and growing despite buying that stock. Any, you know, what's the M&A pipeline look like and what are your thoughts in terms of just aggressiveness of putting the remaining authorization to work? Thank you.
spk00: Yeah, thanks. So, as we shared, we, you know, stock repurchases was about $29 million in the first quarter. That leaves us $97.5 million remaining on the January 2024 board authorization of $100 million. We stay, as always, consistent in our capital allocation strategy, and we continue to put dollars into planned improvement and expanding capacity and efficiencies in our plans. To your point, we continually vet an active pipeline of M&A, and that's ongoing. And then we are looking, as we've talked about, opportunities in our lending operations. And, you know, we stay focused on consistency in our capital allocation.
spk06: Understood. And then last one. Anthem, just, you know, any update there? Or should we ask maybe once a year instead of once a quarter in terms of how you see that kind of wrapping up? Thank you.
spk04: I love the question because it's a product line we're still really excited about. So you can ask every quarter or call us up in between and ask. we're really happy with the receptivity. We are seeing some orders. I don't want to report on, on the actual numbers. We're seeing a huge number of, um, kind of quotes. So it's a process. It takes some time. Um, but I think, you know, I guess it was since the last call we had homes on the Hill. We showed a new single section duplex still under the Anthem line at, um, homes on the Hill where we set that home up on the lawn, in front of the Capitol building, and people are coming through. That's an event we've done, I think, four years now. And I think that's a game-changing product, maybe even more than the multi-section duplex. So it's going to keep picking up. I think there are going to be particularly early adopters in the rental community space. We have some things going on there. So I'm not giving you specific numbers, Dan. I really think it's going very well there. and we are starting to sell actual units.
spk06: All right. Very helpful. Appreciate it.
spk04: Thank you.
spk02: Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn it back to Bill Borle for closing remarks.
spk04: Great. As we discussed, our internal operating discussions have clearly shifted over the last couple quarters, and we're focused on ramping volume back up in line with orders that we're seeing. It definitely feels good to be having those discussions after a lengthy period of kind of throttling back production. It's important to reflect on how this reduced volume period was managed. Very complimentary of our operators who were able to maintain healthy gross margins even while running at 60 percent capacity utilization. And this backs up discussions we've had over time about how we work hard to maintain a cost structure that's as variable as possible. I look back over the five quarters that we reported 60 percent capacity utilization, and during that period, we continued to invest in operational improvement. We repurchased about $140 million of our stock, and our cash balance grew about $80 million. So, as we sit here today, our teams across the company have really managed extremely well waiting for the market to return, and we're very anxious to demonstrate our potential in a stronger environment. I want to thank you for joining us today and for your interest in CAVCO and we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. Thank you.
spk02: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.
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