Cavco Industries, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Capco Industries fourth quarter 2025 earnings 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 during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mark Fusler, Corporate Controller and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good day, and thank you for joining us for Capco Industries' fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. During this call, you'll be hearing from Bill Bohrer, 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 and non-GAAP financial measures. Forward-looking statements include statements about our expected future business and financial performance and are not promises or guarantees of future performance. They are expectations or assumptions about CABCO'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 credit 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. For discussion of material risks and the important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to those contained in our filings with the SEC, which are also available on our investor relations website and at sec.gov. The appendix to our press release also contains reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial metrics to the most comparable GAAP measure. This conference call also contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this live broadcast, Friday, May 23, 2025, 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?

Thanks, Mark. Welcome and thank you for joining us today to review our fourth quarter results. Seasonally, the fourth quarter ushers in the spring selling season. In our last call, we talked about the steady increase in orders over several quarters through calendar 2024 and how that has enabled us to increase production rates where our plants had supporting backlogs. The quarter-to-quarter trend of increasing orders continued in Q4, boosted by a pickup in March. This was after unusually challenging weather in February slowed installations in the field and caused some unplanned downtime in several plants. March-February weather is obviously expected in northern states, but the weather across the south was unexpected. Specifically, we lost 24 operating days across our system. The good news is that weather backs up installations and shipments, but it doesn't negate them. Again, in March, we saw the expected spring pickup to close out a solid quarter. More generally, a lot of economic uncertainty entered the mix in Q4. March's uptick indicates that our buyers are out there trying to purchase new homes. Overall, our unit shipments were up almost 29% year over year. The backlog was down sequentially. To dissect that a bit, backlogs were expected to be down in January. They continued to decline in February for the reasons outlined earlier. And then we saw a healthy increase in March. While there is a range in the individual plants, across the system we have five to seven weeks of backlog. Market activity across the retail channels is generally positive, and our plants are either holding production levels or looking to increase depending on their specific market conditions. Earlier in Q4, we announced that we renamed our manufacturing plants to the CAVCO name. This is part of a rebranding of our homes under product lines that tie directly to the characteristics of the homes rather than the legacy brands of the factories. Our new and cohesive branding approach will make it easier for homebuyers to quickly narrow their home search to the product lines that match their needs. Clearly, this change will better leverage all of the work we've done in digital marketing over the past few years and will benefit our dealers with improved leads from CAFCOhomes.com. Our plant investments and marketing improvements have CAFCO ready to continue ramping shipments through both industry growth and market share gains. Our steady strategic investment through the downturn in both acquisitions and plant improvements has meaningfully grown our peak-to-peak capacity. This consistent investment has been enabled by strong cash generation and our debt-free balance sheet. While we've continued investing strategically, we've also continued our four-plus-year buyback program. This quarter, we repurchased about $33 million of stock. Cumulatively, since the initial repurchase authorization in fiscal 2021, we've bought back 15.5% of our outstanding shares. We continue to be confident that we can repurchase shares without hindering any strategic opportunities. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Alison to provide more details around the fourth quarter results.

Thank you, Bill. Net revenue for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2025 was $508.4 million, up $88.2 million, or 21%, compared to $420.1 million during the prior year. Sequentially, net revenue decreased to $13.7 million, driven by a decline in average revenue per home sold. Within the factory-built housing segment, net revenue was $487.9 million, up 89.4 million, or 22.4%, from 398.5 million in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily due to a 28.5% increase in homes sold, partially offset by a 4.7% decline in average revenue per home sold. The decrease in average revenue per home was primarily due to a lower proportion of homes sold through our company-owned stores, product pricing decreases, and more single-wise in the mix. Factory utilization for Q4 of 2025 was approximately between 70 to 75% when considering all available production days. Utilization was approximately 60% in Q4 of the prior year. Financial services segment net revenue was 20.5 million, down 1.1 million, or 5.2%, from 21.6 million in the prior year. This decline was due to fewer loan sales and fewer insurance policies in force, partially offset by higher insurance premium rates. Consolidated gross margin in the fourth quarter as a percentage of net revenue was 22.8%, down 80 basis points from 23.6% in the same period last year. In the factory-built housing segment, The gross profit decreased 10 basis points to 22.3% in Q4 of 2025 versus 22.4% in Q4 of 2024, given by lower average selling prices. Financial services gross margin as a percentage of revenue decreased to 36.8% in Q4 of 2025 from 45% in Q4 of 2024 primarily due to reduced revenue from loan sales. Selling, general, and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 were 77.5 million, or 15.2% of net revenue, compared to 61.4 million, or 14.6% of net revenue during the same quarter last year. The increase in SG&A was primarily due to a $10 million write-off of intangible trade name values due to our brand realignment. Additionally, compensation increased as a result of higher bonuses and commission expenses on higher earnings compared to the prior year period. Pre-tax profit was flat at $42.9 million this quarter compared to the prior year quarter. Effective income tax rate was 15.4% for the fourth quarter compared to 21% in the same period last year. The decrease in the effective tax rate was due to higher Energy Star tax credits and greater tax benefits from stock option exercises. Net income was 36.3 million compared to net income of 33.9 million in the same quarter of the prior year and diluted earnings per share this quarter was $4.47 versus $4.03 in last year's fourth quarter. Adjusting for expenses associated with our brand realignment, adjusted net income was $43.9 million compared to $33.9 million with adjusted diluted EPS of $5.40 per share versus $4.03 per share in last year's fourth quarter. During the quarter, we also repurchased 33.2 million of common shares, and during the full year, we repurchased 150 million of shares. Also, the Board of Directors recently extended the authorization by an additional 150 million, reflecting confidence in our strong cash generation leaving approximately $228 million under authorization for future share repurchases. Now, I'll turn it over to Paul to discuss the balance sheet.

Thanks, Alison. In the quarter, we had a decrease in cash and restricted cash of $3.3 million, bringing our balance to $375.3 million. Cash provided by operating activities was $38.7 million, partially impacted by the increase of current liabilities and accounts receivable. Cash used in investing activities was $10.1 million, and cash used in financing activities was $31.9 million, primarily due to share repurchases. Comparing the March 29, 2025 balance sheet to March 30, 2024, the increase in accounts receivable is related to organic growth in the factory-built housing segment. Unit shipments are up 28.5% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 compared to a year ago. The increase in short-term consumer loans receivables due to higher origination of loans held for sale and excessive actual sales. Inventories increased from higher finished goods inventory at company-owned retail lots due to increased demand, as well as higher raw material purchases to support increased production. Goodwill and intangibles decreased from the $10 million write-off of intangible trade name values. Current liabilities are up from increased compensation and bonus accruals on higher earnings, increased insurance loss reserves, and higher customer deposits. Finally, Treasury stock increased $150 million due to buybacks executed in fiscal year 2025. With that, I'll turn it back to Bill.

Okay, thank you, Paul. Liz, let's go ahead and open up the line for questions.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1-1 on your touchtone phone. Our first question comes from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities.

Hi, good morning. This is Justin on for Dan. Can you talk about your expectations for production rates for fiscal first quarter relative to the fourth quarter? And then what can you tell us about your discussions with customers in both retail and community markets and the cadence of order rates in April and thus far in May?

Yeah, we don't usually get too far into the current quarter, but I know this, when we report on the fourth quarter, quite a bit of time has passed since the quarter ends, so I understand the question. The production rate question first. This quarter, we were kind of consistent with the previous quarter, pretty flat in Q4 with Q3. Like I said, the quarter started off kind of expectedly with January. We knew that we were entering into the year at a higher production rate than the order rates. We talked about that last quarter. That was a decision we made to kind of ramp up in anticipation of the spring selling season and March picked up. And what I'd say about the current quarter that we're in now, first quarter of the fiscal year is that, you know, April has pretty much been consistent with that March positive trend as far as orders and a little bit of backlog growth. So I can give you that much and say that from a production perspective, when we talk to all of our plants, We have a range of backlogs in the plants, and there are some plants that don't have the backlog really to increase production rate at the moment. But you really could only put our plants in two categories, those that are holding at this level, anticipating and hoping that they'll get a little backlog and be able to start ramping up, and a good number of our plants that are kind of talking about, hey, our next move will be up in production. So we really don't have any that seem to be looking at decreasing production rates for any reasons. So overall, the bias across our plants is for increasing production rates. And that'll be dependent on what the market gives us, for sure. You also have to think about the different channels. Retail, you know, the dealers have been pretty solid for quite a while now, and that continues. And communities, I almost hate to bring it up because it was such a long discussion, but with communities, For a long time, we were kind of held back on order rates as an industry because of inventory challenges and a little bit of hesitance with the market. We've seen them continue to, I guess, build back up. They got past the inventory. And now I would say the general feeling is they've moved pretty much back toward their proportionate share of order rates. So we feel good about that, too. That's been evolving over quite a bit of time. So really, I think, and when we talk communities, I always point out we're talking about both kind of the land lease and rental communities as well as the builder channel. So lumping all those together, they're kind of returning back to their proportionate share of orders, which is a real positive.

All right, that's helpful. And then one more, if I could. How should we think about gross margin and operating margins in Q1 and over the next quarters relative to the Q4 results?

Yes, thank you. While we saw some downward impact from reduced average selling prices of our homes, we saw lower input costs and reduced costs on service with our factory-built gross margins declining only really 10 basis points year over year to 22.3. And what I would say is that this demonstrates a couple of elements that we're going to, that will determine our future margins in the factory-built housing. First is pricing, and we are seeing regions where pricing is becoming more apparent. Pricing pressures are a little bit more apparent and starting to see some competition in pricing in regions. The second really component to look to will be cost. The movement in commodities, as you know, can be volatile and hard to predict. It's difficult to say, but we typically see increases this time of year as builders and wholesalers order for the spring building season. And while prices are trending flat at the moment, there is a possibility of another surge soon. And we'll also have to see how tariffs play through. I'd say last point is on the consolidated margins. Our consolidated margins also depends on the activity in our financial services segment, most notably in our insurance division. Given the recent activity in that division, While we're making strategic structural changes to limit losses, large storm activity can result in increased claims that could impact margins in the future. Does that help?

Yeah, very helpful. I appreciate you taking the question. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Greg Palm with Craig Hallam.

Yeah, morning, thanks. I wanted to just start with a little bit on what you saw in February. You mentioned some lost production days. What states or what regions exactly did you see that? And just to be clear, it was the month of February, was that right?

Yeah, February was really unusual. I mean, it seems like a long time ago, but February, the weather, and it really was kind of, I would say across the Sun Belt, but to be more precise, I think it really Texas got hit with a lot of very unusual weather and the southeast states. So we did lose. I mean, really, there's a couple effects that I I talked about briefly in the opening comments. The, you know, in the field setups really kind of stopped in a period of time in some of those states where they should have been fine from a weather perspective historically. And then we did lose some time in some of our plants across the southeast in Texas. I think I commented that there were about 24 down days across our plants due to just February's weather. And that's pretty unusual. So at that point, you know, we were always kind of anxious, all of us. I know you guys as well as us are always kind of anxious to see how spring dates up for us and February made us wait a little bit to really get an indication of that. Does that help, Greg?

Yeah. And just to be clear, did that, or I mean, I assume that impacted the margin somewhat, but any way to quantify exactly how, you know, sort of those lost production days might've impacted factory margins?

Yeah, I think you're directionally, I'll take a stab at it, but then Allison, maybe you can correct or fill in anything. I think directionally, you're right. We've talked in the past, well, we try to keep our, you know, we focus as an organization on trying to keep our costs as variable as possible. Even above gross margin, there is a component of sticking costs. And so anytime you kind of lose a little bit of volume directionally, there's a downward pressure on gross margin. My sense, but happy if Allison feels differently, my sense is it probably wasn't a huge impact on our gross margin. that we reported, but directionally it would have been a downward pressure. Is that fair, Allison?

Yeah, I think that's balanced, Bill.

And I guess maybe looking ahead, you know, as it relates to the kind of the rebrand, maybe let's unpack or dig into that a little bit more in kind of the, you know, number one, the rationale and, you know, maybe the feedback so far and what you really hope to get out of that.

Yeah, I appreciate that question because it's so hard to give this justice and we try to be pretty concise in our prepared remarks. Just to give a little bit of history, we've got 31 plants and for the most part, those plants have come through a number of acquisitions over the years, really dating back to the Fleetwood acquisition, which was, I think, 2009. What we've done in the past is if we had a plant that came to us through Fleetwood, they were they continue to be called the Fleetwood plant in the market. And as a result of that, their products tended to be branded as Fleetwood products. And it didn't matter what they were making. So if they were making a lower price product, or even if they were making, you know, a higher price, no matter what the characteristics of the product was that was coming out of that plant, people would refer to it as a Fleetwood home. And, you know, that was fine for a while, but we're getting to the point now where with, The investments we've made in online marketing and the opportunity we see to do more national marketing or programs that are national in scope, that started to not work well, you know, or we saw the opportunity. And so what we've really done is we've said, okay, all of our plants are CAFCO plants. And whatever products they make, we're really not changing the physical product a given plant makes, but no longer changing is the name of that product tied to the name of that plant. So now we'll have product lines, which are categories of homes that we make, and they'll be named with that short list of products. Think about maybe four product lines across the nation. And those product line names will tie to characteristics of the home. So if it's a high-end, customizable product, you know, higher price product, full tape and texture, that will fit into a given product line rather than just having the plant's name associated with it. If it's a lower priced VOG, vinyl and gypsum product with less customization, that'll be in a different product line. So you can imagine if you're a customer starting your search online, you're going to be looking at, um, Trying to figure out, okay, I think I'm in this category of homes and we're going to be able to more directly help you say, okay, you're looking for this product line. And here are some independent or company dealers that can help you after you're ready to go talk to a dealer. So it's really going to improve the leads that go to those dealers. And it's going to help the customer much quickly, much more quickly get their search narrowed down to homes that really fit their needs. So this is a big deal. It's going to allow us to do some interesting things. We've recently introduced some national products that are going to be available in all of our markets because plants in every market can produce those. The ability to do marketing campaigns much more efficiently on kafkahomes.com is greatly improved. So we really think this is going to add a lot of clarity for folks shopping for our homes. It might have been a little long-winded there, Greg, instead of too concise in the opening statements. Does that do a good job of explaining it?

Yeah, makes sense. I will get back in queue. Thanks. Thanks.

Our next question comes from the line of Jay McCandless with Wedbush.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. So digging down on the tariffs, I know during the supply chain crisis, Tankless water heaters were an issue, some other things like that. I guess if you think about your cost of goods sold bucket, your input bucket, is there anything in there that we need to really be concerned about from a tariff perspective? I know Renai has a plant in Georgia now, so that should, I think, at least protect them partially. But are there any other things in the COGS bucket we need to be keeping an eye on?

Jay, if I could, let me just share. Okay. key points and please jump in where you want to add your comments. I think there's really three key points as we think about tariffs and how they could impact our business. The first is that many products we use are exempted really from any recent tariffs and that includes U.S. lumber and steel. Second, we've been successful managing tariffs on Canadian lumber that have been in place for several years now. And although a few months ago there was some discussion around potentially increasing this tariff rate associated with Canadian lumber, those discussions have now been set aside, so we don't see any incremental impact there. Lastly, important to note that we do purchase many lighting, electrical and plumbing components, windows and doors that are sourced from China. And therefore, we do expect to see some impact that could reach between call it 5 to 8% of our material costs. And just as a reminder, the material costs are roughly about half of the cost of goods sold. Does that help?

And yes, so 5 to 8% on basically 50% of the COGS bucket. Is that the way to think about it, Allison?

Yeah, that'd be the way to think about it at this point, Jay.

Okay, and I'm sorry, Bill, I cut you off.

No, no, it's good to clarify that. I was going to say your question, I'm not sure I'm adding a lot of value, but your question really kind of has two components, right? The cost increase, which Allison covered, and also are we worried about just supply, just the access to the materials? So far, I don't believe we've gotten to the point where we feel like our ability to get the materials we need for a home has been really challenged. I guess the scenario where that might take place is if site building, remodel, repair and remodel, and our business kind of takes off. But right now, you know, we'll keep our eye on it, but I don't think we have a high degree of concern about just being able to access the materials we need. Okay.

That's great. Thank you, Bill and Allison also. So, my second question, could you talk about where travel rates are now and what you guys are seeing on credit availability for consumers?

Yeah, I can take the interest rate. We've seen a little bit of a spread start happening with lenders, so right now the range is about 8 to 9 percent, but haven't really seen any impact to availability.

It's good to hear. And then more of a broad question on the price competition. You talked about, Allison, the prepared remarks. Is it price competition across the board Or is it more focused on lower priced homes, single wide, any more detail you can give us on that price competition comment would be helpful.

Yeah, I can jump in there, Allison. I think, you know, I wouldn't say in general we're seeing a huge pickup in price competition. There are parts of the country, and the one that has stood out for quite a while is Florida, where the market's just been down. And it's kind of interesting because you look at the Southeast and speaking over the last, you know, really one to two years, the Southeast has been fairly strong, but then Florida stands out as a very challenging market and it continues to be so. So it's pretty isolated where we've seen any meaningful price competition. And generally I'd say we haven't across the country. Your comment or your question really, hit on an interesting point. We have seen kind of, particularly this quarter, we've seen kind of the product for product pricing on single wides has a little more pressure than multi-section. So it seems like it is the low end one that's picking up because we've seen a mixed shift towards single wides. But also that's where we've seen a little bit, relatively a little bit more leakage in product for product pricing.

That's good to know. So more competitive on single section homes.

Yeah, we'll keep our eye on that, Jake, because sometimes, and I think we all do this, I know we do it internally, sometimes we're looking with the magnifying glasses, some of these small number changes. We've commented before, if you look back at the cycle that we've been coming out of, this industry pricing has held up pretty well. And for a number of quarters, we've kind of seen the true price, true wholesale, same product, what's its price quarter to quarter. It's been a very slow, small decline.

Great. Thank you, Bill. And I think that's it for now. I'll jump back into you. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff.

Our next question comes from Jesse Letterman with Zellman and Associates.

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Bill, I'd love for you to clarify, you made a comment about April being, you know, pretty consistent with March as far as orders. I just want to clarify, are you saying that like from an absolute perspective, April is consistent with March? Or are you saying that the momentum you saw in April in March rather, has continued into April because I would have expected as you continue into the spring selling season and go from March to April that you would see some lift in activity. So I'm just trying to clarify what you meant earlier.

Yeah, without parsing it too much, I wasn't trying to imply that it was flat. I was saying that March was an uptick and April has kind of seasonally been consistent with that uptick. We didn't see a reverse course on the trend.

Got it. So April, in other words, is following normal seasonality, you would say. Is that right?

I think generally. I think generally that's fair. Yeah. I'm not trying to be evasive, but again, seasonality is kind of an interesting thing to track too, because one year the seasonality looks a little different than the next, but we feel good about April kind of continuing the positive momentum that we saw in March.

Okay, great. But even still, it sounds like Pricing is flattish, maybe down incrementally on an apples to apples basis, just because of pressure in some region like Florida specifically. Would you normally see an increase in kind of the spring months as you enter the spring selling season, which is typically stronger from a demand perspective, or do you not normally have seasonality in pricing from that standpoint?

I don't think we've ever really noted seasonality in pricing because the industry kind of knows what's coming. And so, um, if, if orders are hard to come by, you might see some price pressure and if orders are flowing pretty good to everyone, you might see it tick up, but it doesn't seem, this is kind of my sense because it's not something I've looked at that closely, but we don't generally go into a easily stronger season and expect to see price jump up. For example, I think it's pretty, um, It's not, pricing does not seem to be seasonal. Okay. I think, you know, where we are in the pricing is kind of interesting because we've had, as I said, we've had a number of quarters. Now I probably should keep track of the number where we just saw this nice incremental growth in orders quarter to quarter. And yet we've continued to see that very slow same product price leakage. I call it because it's not really dropping. at some point, if the market continues to strengthen, that's going to flatten out and maybe increase as we would normally see. But there's always the economic, you know, macroeconomic risks and interest rates and all those things. And if it reverses the trend that we're kind of seeing in March, April, and volume goes down, then, you know, you could see continued leakage or even acceleration. We know it's volatile. You know, it's a cyclical industry, but it's really a question of of whether the orders continue to strengthen. And if they do, I think we'll see that pricing at least steady and start to increase.

Fair enough. Yeah, that makes sense. And then just to clarify, the fiscal 4Q margin did not include yet any impact from tariffs. Is that correct? And if so, when do you expect to see that flow through? In other words, if pricing is relatively stable and then you get kind of a a 2 to 3% increase in the overall cost of the home, presumably margin could come under pressure. Can you talk a little bit more about maybe the timing currently of, you know, if tariffs were in that 4Q number, and if not, when that may expect to come through?

So tariffs really didn't have an impact in Q4, and consistent with the way that we talked about materials working their way through our calls, from the time that we see the pricing in commodities to the time that it's actually within the cost of goods. It's about 60 to 90 days. So, as tariffs just kind of now begin to take effect, it'd probably be another 60 days. So, you know, if you put those elements together, suggest maybe some limited impact at the end of Q1. and then maybe a little bit heavier impact in Q2. But again, I think we're very keenly focused on a tight level and a tight number of products or input costs that it will affect for us. We've been very successful in managing supply chain shortages in the past, and we stay keenly aware of and very close to our vendor relationships. So, we believe that we're going to be able to be very proactive in the management of the impacts of the tariffs in the quarters to come.

Awesome. Thanks, Allison. And last one for me, Bill, you did a really great job at the House subcommittee hearing last week. It'd be great to just get your thoughts on, you know, what you think the key takeaway was from the hearing. Yeah, if you could give some color on that, that'd be great. Thanks so much.

I appreciate your comments on it. Things happen slowly in that town. And every opportunity is an opportunity for politics to creep in. And I think we saw that even on a discussion about affordable housing, which clearly is something both sides of the aisle agree about trying to improve the supply. I think it was good that the discussion focused on supply. We've talked in the past that if the government steps in and tries to put more money in people's hands to buy homes, to me, that's just inflationary on the price of the homes. It doesn't really help the true root cause problem, which is a supply problem. And I think the conversation did focus on supply, which was encouraging. There are two house bills that are in place that I think would be important. I'm not going to go too long on this because I know it's, you know, I have a risk of doing that. One of them is to clarify HUD as the sole regulator of our industry. And some of you might remember that we've been working through a situation with the Department of Energy where they've proposed rules on energy efficiency that really weren't well-tuned to our processes. And that's created, you know, some dysfunction in a regulatory environment. And so getting the HUD involved clarity that HUD is the sole regulator, I think it's a big deal. And I do believe there's a good chance that that'll happen legislatively. The other is interesting too, and it's removing the chassis from the definition of a manufactured house under the HUD code. And the way I think about this is pretty simple. We would still make a lot of homes that have the permanent chassis affixed to the home, but just removing that from the definition of a manufactured home just opens up innovation opportunities for our industry. It opens up the possibility of more easily being able to do multi-story homes. A lot of the innovation that could take place, it opens up the possibility of more easily setting at ground level or at or near ground level and not having the elevation that's required by the chassis in certain ways that we set up homes. And if you think about those kinds of opportunities, you start to see the opportunity for product innovation for urban and suburban markets. And that opens up a whole new market opportunity for this industry. So those things will not, I always will caution, like let's say take the chassis removal. That won't open up opportunities overnight. There's a lot of work that has to happen at the state level once the federal definition is improved. But all of these things are aimed toward more supply of factory-built housing, which is the supply the country needs at the lower end of the affordability discussion. So I appreciate the question. I'll try not to ramble on too much, but those are actions. Those are things that are really active right now in Congress, and if we can kind of push them through, I think that's real good momentum for the industry.

Great to hear. Thanks so much again for all the color. Thanks, Jesse.

As a reminder, that is star 1-1 to ask a question. We have a follow-up question from Greg Palm with Craig Hallam.

Yeah, thanks. I guess just on the tariffs and whether that's on some of the inputs that you alluded to or even something like steel, I guess the question is how are you and some of your peers acting? Like are there surcharges that are being put in place in case or how would you expect to sort of counter if things actually get bad from here?

I'll take a shot at that. We've seen in some markets different manufacturers propose that they're going to increase price or add surcharges for the tariffs. And we've seen a lot of manufacturers, including us, saying to our customers, hey, this is happening, so we're not going to try to be preemptive, but understand that our pricing is going to be, you know, it could be more volatile. We could be week to week, or we could put a price increase in because of tariffs. So our position has been more skewed toward that, just telling people in an open, transparent way, you know, just understand that if the tariffs do have a meaningful impact on our cost structure, that price could be affected. I don't know if that's helpful in the sense that people can't really plan for it, but we're just setting the stage to try to be very reactive to what the cost structure might be impacted. Now, having said that, I've always talked that cost and price in our industry over the years have become more independent in my mind. So whether we can push through a cost increase in a given location is really a function more of supply-demand dynamics in that region. So, you know, I could envision if we see some meaningful impact of tariffs, there will be markets where we can increase price and kind of push it through and try to maintain our margins. But if we have other areas, you know, I mentioned Florida earlier, we've got other areas where the demand's just not there, then the price will probably not be affected by the tariffs. So I hope that's not a non-answer, but I think people are more in the mode of just being ready to be fluid with this whole situation. And we've seen more with us, and I think also with our competitors, we've seen more open discussion about the potential reality of this and be ready than we have seen a lot of preemptive moves.

Yeah, I guess what I was asking is whether you expect to pass it along or take the hit yourself, and the way I understand it is, It depends on the market, but for the most part, it sounds like you're still focused on maintaining that margin to some extent.

Yeah, I'm kind of a bit of an econ 101 thinker on a lot of this stuff. And if we have a market that demands really exceeding supply, then the market price of our homes is going to go up really regardless of what's going on in that area. on the cost side. So, you know, I really do think of the pricing of our products being somewhat independent from the cost.

Yep. Okay. And I guess just maybe a follow-up on just sort of the, you know, the activity in March or April, because I think what you're seeing is definitely quite a bit better than, you know, call it general housing. So any thoughts on whether that's a byproduct of the customer base, a byproduct of maybe the, the financing market and, you know, it not being as important to manufacturer housing. I'm just curious if you've got any theories why, you know, demand is holding up at least better on a relative basis.

And Greg, your question is really in comparison to the site builder dynamics.

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, I'm going to try to keep myself from being long-winded because you guys are hitting on questions I can talk a lot about. I think it's been interesting, and I don't consider myself an expert on this, but I'll give you my view. The site builders actually got a period of a boost when the mortgage lock-in effect on people who already owned houses at 3% rates kept people, kept, you know, previously owned homes or the previously owned home market, the inventory was really low. And so if people needed a new home or needed a home, they were probably going to be buying a new home because that's what was available for a while. Now, if you look at the stats on the broader housing market, the average mortgage rate is starting to move up and we're starting to see more inventory of not new homes in the market. And so It seems to me like they got a period where their market opportunity was expanded by the lack of used homes on the market, and now they're getting kind of compressed back into a more historic proportion of home sales. And so you've seen, I don't think it's really stopped their market, but you've seen the growth opportunity kind of compress down a little bit. We're not as subject to those dynamics. Our buyers, I think, are completely, not completely, but a large segment of our buyers are fairly about monthly price. Many more historically, a larger proportion of all the manufactured home purchases are new manufactured homes. So it really is a different customer base and it's a different market dynamics. And I don't think we're as affected by the concept of how many days of inventory are there on the market for home sales. So I don't know if that made sense, but I really think the dynamics are completely different and site builders are growing a bit slower than we are right now because the previously owned homes are coming back on the market and inventory is rising.

Got it. Okay. Yeah, that's a good call. All right. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Greg.

We have a question from Jay McCandless with Wedbush. Jay, you may be on mute.

Sorry about that, everyone. Thanks for taking my follow-up. Two questions for me. The first one, since you talked so much about Florida, could you give us any sense of what Florida is for annual shipments for CAVCO or percentage of annual revenue, just so we have a sense of what's going on there?

I'm not sure I have an actual number. I mean, we've got We've got two plants in Florida. So you can get a, if you just do a ratio of two out of 31, I think that's at a very high level about right for the production capacity we have down there. And certainly the market's not entirely gone. So those plants, while they're running with pretty low backlogs and have been for quite a while, their production level's down, but obviously we haven't shot either one of those lines. So, you know, overall, I don't think When you look at it in comparison to the total company, I don't think it's a huge amount, and it's been the case for quite a while.

That's good to know. And then specifically on OSB prices, we've seen those come down pretty dramatically and seem like they keep going down every week. Do you guys expect that to be a tailwind on your first quarter, your second quarter gross margin, just given how much OSB you typically use in a home?

I think you're right. You know, we have seen prices in March that reflected a kind of a steady demand that's almost back to the lows that we saw in 2020. I just say, Jay, from a history and experience perspective, that picture can change pretty quickly. And we do, going back to my earlier comment, we do typically see increases in builders and wholesaler orders in the spring building season. I think this is just something, a specific factor we'll have to stay close to.

Okay. Great. Thanks. Appreciate it.

That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Bill Bohrer for closing remarks.

Bill, I think you're on mute.

Oh, thanks. Thanks for the heads up. Sorry, folks. Thanks, Liz. In a cyclical industry like ours, clearly macroeconomic drivers can have a big impact on demand. And we've talked about that a lot in the call. And so we're very focused on the key to success being making real-time adjustments across our system. I think our results continue to reflect both a positive view about the general direction of the industry's volume opportunity, but at the same time, an organization that stays very nimble. and we're able to react accordingly to whatever the market gives us. We feel very well positioned to react to market shifts and to continue to get solid results for our shareholders. 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.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.