United Homes Group, Inc

Good day everyone and welcome to the United Homes Group first quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. Later you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask questions by pressing star and one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question by pressing star two. Please note this call may be recorded and it will be sent in by should you need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Erin. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to United Homes Group's first quarter of 2024 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.

Hi, Karen. Good morning, everyone. United Homes Group made progress on a number of fronts in the first quarter. 2024 as we continue to pursue our goal of becoming one of the premier homebuilders in the southeastern United States. With a focus on affordability, a land-light operating strategy, and a strong track record of homebuilding success, United Homes is poised to grow beyond its existing footprint for both strategic M&A and organic growth. We continue to see a favorable homebuilding landscape in our markets thanks to a lack of home inventory in the resale market, continued strong job growth, and household formation. Both companies and families continue to migrate to cities and throughout the southeast, creating a need for new housing, and we plan on capitalizing on this trend for years to come. As we stated in the past, M&A will be a key driver of our expansion into new markets. We feel we have a competitive advantage over our peers given our southeastern roots and our willingness to retain the acquired company's personnel following the transaction. We've already executed a number of acquisitions, the most recent being Creekside Custom Homes, which closed in the first quarter and further expanded our presence in the coastal region of South Carolina. The integration of Creekside and the other acquired builders are progressing nicely, and we are excited to have them as part of our team. We are constantly evaluating possible deals in our markets and hope to add more builders to our platform this year, providing a good fit to our company from a financial and cultural perspective. We ended the first quarter with just over 11,000 lots owned and controlled, giving us a great runway for future growth. We remain committed to securing our land capital in a capital-efficient manner through the use of options agreements and land banking arrangements. We feel that offloading much of the cost associated with land development will allow us to focus on our core competency of building and selling homes. Our landline efforts got a real boost in the first quarter with our entry into a strategic partnership with a large land banking partner. In closing on our initial transaction with that partner, we also then entered into a definitive agreement for a newly created land fund just this week, which Keith will speak to in his commentary later. Overall, I'm pleased with our market positioning at the end of the first quarter and remain excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. We made further progress towards long-term goal of becoming a premier homeowner in the southeastern U.S. while maintaining a focus on new home affordability. We ended the quarter with a sold backlog of 262 homes, which represented a 39% increase over the first quarter of 2023, and which should lead to strong cash flow generation in coming quarters. We also maintained a strong balance sheet with over $28 million in cash and $63 million of undrawn revolver capacity under our credit facility. As a result, I believe United Homes Group is well-positioned to achieve our goals for 2024 and beyond. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Sheldon, who will provide some more detail on operations this quarter.

Thanks, Jack, and good morning to everyone. United Homes delivered 311 homes in the first quarter of 2024, generating home sales revenue of $101 million. Our Midlands division was the biggest contributor to our delivery total, followed by our upstate and coastal divisions. Construction cycle times have returned to pre-pandemic levels, as we saw a real improvement in the availability of labor and materials as compared to last year. We believe this year-over-year improvement in cycle time, along with our 39% unit backlog increase to end the quarter, will lead to strong cash flow generation in the coming quarters, as Jack mentioned. We sold 384 homes during the quarter on a sales base of 2.6 per active community per month. Following the close of the first quarter, we generated 118 new net orders in April, which was fairly consistent with March, a signal that demand trends are staying positive as we move through the spring selling season. Financing incentives remain an important selling tool at our communities as they help buyers secure a monthly payment that fits within their budget. We begin the year at elevated incentive levels, but were successful in dialing the back as the first quarter progressed. We are optimistic this downward trend in incentive levels will continue, though much of it will depend on the trajectory of interest rates from here. We continue to see motivated, engaged, and engaged buyers in our markets, thanks to the lack of available supply and the steady flow of new jobs and people into the region. Our cancellation rate during the quarter was 10%, a level that implies that prospective buyers who move forward with their purchase remain committed and confident in their decision through the home buying process overall we saw solid demand and traffic trends at our communities throughout the first quarter and this carried into april we continue to strike a balance between price and pace to achieve our desired return goals and deliver homes in a timely manner we have a healthy pipeline of lots which will allow us to fulfill our delivery goal for 2004 and beyond and an affordable product focus that meets the needs of most entry-level buyers in our markets in terms of quality and value. While we still have a lot of work to do to become the large-scale southeastern builder that we want to be, I believe we are on the right track to achieve that goal. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Keith, who will provide more detail on our financial results this quarter.

Thank you, Jack and Sean, and good morning. For the first quarter of 2024, net income was $24.9 million, which included a change in fair value of $26.4 million, primarily related to the accounting for potential earn out, which will fluctuate on our financial statements each quarter based on our ending stock price. This earn out will be paid only in common shares upon reaching certain stock price hurdles and can never result in a cash expense for the company. Revenue for the first quarter of 2024 was $100.8 million compared to $94.8 million for the first quarter of 2023. Home closings during the first quarter of 2024 were 311 homes compared to 328 homes in the first quarter of 2023. Average sales price during the first quarter of 2024 was $335,000 for 286 production-built homes. This compared to an average sales price of $314,000 during the first quarter of 2023 for 294 production-built homes. As Shelton mentioned, our net new orders during the first quarter of 2024 were 384 homes compared to 389 homes in the first quarter of 2023. Our backlog at the end of the first quarter was 262 homes with a value of approximately $78.7 million. Gross profit and gross profit margin for the first quarter of 2024 was $16.1 million and 16%, which decreased from $16.8 million and 17.7% for the first quarter of 2023. This decrease was driven by a few items. Purchase accounting adjustments related to the sold inventory that we acquired from Rosewood and Creekside and increased interest expense on finished inventory. Excluding these items, adjusted gross profit and adjusted gross profit margin were $20.6 million and 20.4%, compared to $19.2 million and 20.2% in the first quarter of 2023. SG&A expense in the first quarter of 2024 was $17.1 million. Adjusted for one-time transaction fees and non-cash stock-based compensation expense, adjusted G&A was approximately $14.3 million, or 14.2% of revenue for the first quarter. As Jack mentioned, we made significant progress this quarter on our landline initiatives by moving approximately $17 million of finished lots to a large land banking partner. This strategy will allow us to continue to be efficient with our balance sheet capital and take down lots as we are starting new homes. Additionally, we entered into a definitive agreement for a newly created land fund for a total amount of up to $150 million, which will provide capital for future land development into finished lots in our core markets. As of today, we have 63 active communities up from 52 as of Q1, 2023. As of March 31st, 2024, we had approximately 11,000 lots under control from our land development affiliate, as well as from third parties. We had $29 million in cash and $63 million of availability on our credit facility as of March 31st, 2024, resulting in total liquidity of 92 million. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open up the line for questions.

And at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by pressing star 2. Once again, to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your telephone keypad.

We'll pause a moment to allow questions to queue. We'll take our first question from Carl Brancard with BTIG.

Please go ahead.

Thanks. Hey, guys. Hope you're doing well. Thank you for all the color. Apologies for the background noise here. First, Keith, can you, excluding the purchase accounting impact and the higher interest rate impact on gross margin, can you talk about the travel from last year, the improvement in gross margin, and what drove those items?

Yeah. Hi, Carl. Yeah. So, so if you look at the adjusted gross profit, it was, you know, it was marginally higher and it was really, we have incentives this year as we did last year, but the lumber costs really has calmed down from, uh, from this year to, you know, from last year to this year. Right. So remember last year, at the beginning of last year, we had high lumber costs in our, in our inventory and we burned through that. Um, so that, that gave us a little bit of an uplift in adjusted gross margin. And then we have incentives, which are similar to last year, but probably trending up a little bit.

Okay, thank you. And then, Jack, you've been there for, I think, three quarters now, if I've got it right. Can you talk about the acquisition environment as you look at it today versus, say, what it was nine months ago? And how does potential forward deal flow look, given that, obviously, a lot of other builders are looking, but at the same time, you guys have a a value proposition for potential targets that might be very different. So maybe just sort of flesh that out. I'd appreciate it. Thanks a lot, fellas.

Sure, Carl. Thanks for the question. A couple of things. To most of the industry observers, it's no secret that M&A activity has picked up. There have been, I don't know, Carl, on my count, four or five deals in both public companies in the last six or nine months. There's a deal in Texas, at least one in Tennessee, Indiana, a couple others. So the velocity is picking up. We, as you'd expect, took a look at many of those. We look at most of the transactions that are in the marketplace. The broker community certainly understands that we're our strategy and we're one of the calls. We've got to look at a couple other things that we've got to look at. the market, the geography, the footprint, the size, the consideration. We'd like to use our equity as much as we can to stretch our cash and our capital because we have to keep the M&A or the organic engine going just as much as the M&A side. Definitely more activity. Valuations, we don't get a ton of color on them. You can back into it when some of our peers file the transactions and evaluations, not surprisingly, have increased. And then the last thing for us that's really important is we always need to go into these with a solution for the land ahead of time. We are, you know, the land light strategy for us is non-negotiable. So if it's a traditional builder with a lot of lots in the balance sheet, um, you know, we need to have a soul for that. And I want to go back to some of the prepared comments, having that strategic partner now in place on the land bank side. Um, and beyond that multiple conversations with a number of providers, you know, I think positions as well at the point of sale to address that early and efficient, more efficiently, uh, going forward, but more deals, valuations are up. Um, and I don't, I don't see that really slowing down, um, We were out at the Builder 100 conference this week, and you may have seen we were fortunate to win the Builder of the Year award this year. We were out accepting that, and a lot of discussion around M&A at that conference, and so I think the color there suggests we're going to see more of the same for the foreseeable future.

Great, and I meant to say congrats on Builder of the Year, too. I really appreciate the color, guys. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Carl.

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Pause for a moment to allow any further questions to queue. And once again, that is star and one. And it appears that we have no further questions at this time.

I will turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everybody, for calling in this morning. Appreciate your interest in Made Homes Group and look forward to updating everyone as we continue to progress and grow our company. Thank you.

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