United Homes Group, Inc

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the United Homes Group fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, March 14, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Erin Reeves McGinnis, General Counsel for United Homes Group. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the United Homes Group fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. Before the call begins, I would like to note that this call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal security laws. United Homes Group cautions that forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, which change over time. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risk factors described by United Homes Group in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date, and you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. We do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made. whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Additionally, reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be accessed through the company's website and in its SEC filing. Hosting the call today are United Homes Group's President, Jack Masenko, Chief Operating Officer, Shelton Twine, and Chief Financial Officer, Keith Feldman. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jack.

Thanks, Erin. Good morning and thank you for joining us today as we review our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results and provide an update on current market conditions. United Homes Group made great strides in 2023 by executing on several of the strategic initiatives that we believe will set us on a path to becoming a large-scale production home builder in the southeast United States. We're pleased with what we've accomplished during the year and believe that we're in a much better place both financially and operationally today than we were a year ago. Here's a brief recap of some of the highlights from the year. In the spring of 2023, Great Southern Homes and Diamond Head Holdings closed their business combination and resulted in the formation of United Homes Group, a land-light home builder focused on building single-family homes at affordable price points. The goal was to take Great Southern Homes' proven track record of success and replicate it in other high-growth markets across the Southeast through acquisition of smaller private builders and a more efficient approach to land acquisition and development. Following the close of this transaction, we immediately set out putting our capital to use. In August, we announced the acquisition of Herring Homes in Raleigh, North Carolina, and quickly followed up with the acquisition of Rosewood Communities in the upstate region of South Carolina in October. The Herring acquisition marked our initial foray into the attractive Raleigh-Durham market, while Rosewood solidified our already strong presence in the Greenville, Spartanburg, and Clemson markets. Subsequent to the end of the year, we announced a third acquisition, Creekside, which has a strong presence in the coastal area of South Carolina. Similar to Herring and Rosewood, Creekside fits nicely into our land-light strategy, as well as affordable product focus. Our teams have already done a great job integrating these acquisitions into our existing home building platform. We look forward to their positive contributions in 2024. We continue to actively pursue other acquisition opportunities that have fit our company from an operational and cultural standpoint while remaining disciplined in our underwriting standard. With respect to our land acquisition development efforts, we remained active in 2023, fortifying our existing market presence with a pipeline of new lots. We strive to remain as land-led as possible with the goal of minimizing the risk associated with carrying the land as well as capital need to hold it on our balance sheet. Throughout the year, we expanded our relationships with land bankers, giving us more avenues through which we can employ this strategy. By controlling land via third parties, we can utilize our capital more efficiently and focus our efforts on creating value by doing what we know best, which is building and selling homes. We remain focused on the more affordable segments of the market, as evidenced by our average closing price for production of homes of $316,000 for the full year 2023. We believe that the lack of affordable resale home inventory will be a prevailing issue for some time, while the entry-level buyer cohort will continue to make up a good portion of demand. We are, however, starting to broaden out our product portfolio to appeal to more move-up buyers and expectations the existing home market will begin to thaw at some point. In summary, United Homes Group exited 2023 with a lot of momentum, successfully folded two smaller home builders into our operation and added a third in the early part of the new year we also improved our land banking capabilities and maintained the land life focus while keeping our balance sheet in great shape as a result we think united homes group is well positioned to build on our successes in 2023 and into the future now i'd like to turn the call over to shelton who will provide more detail on our operational performance in the quarter thanks jack and good morning to everyone net new orders for the fourth quarter came in at 294