Century Communities, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Century Communities, Inc. Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in 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 Wednesday, July 23, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Langton. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for Century Communities' earnings conference call for the second quarter of 2025. Before the call begins, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described or implied in the forward-looking statements. Certain of these risks and uncertainties can be found under the heading risk factors in the company's latest 10-K, as supplemented by our latest 10-Q and other SEC filings. We undertake no duty to update our forward-looking statements. Additionally, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. The company's presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Hosting the call today are Dale Francescan, Executive Chairman, Rob Francescan, Chief Executive Officer and President, and Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer. Following today's prepared remarks, we will open up the line for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dale.

Thank you, Tyler, and good afternoon, everyone. In the second quarter, we continued to execute well in a challenging environment, generating results that were in line with the expectations outlined during our first quarter conference call back in April. Similar to the trends from the first quarter, order activity for new homes has continued to be impacted by elevated mortgage rates, affordability constraints, economic uncertainty, and lower consumer confidence. While we saw improvement in our order activity as the second quarter progressed, buyers are still cautious and hesitant, and as expected, our incentives increased in the second quarter as we look to maintain an appropriate sales base. Despite the market headwinds, our deliveries of 2,587 homes increased 13% on a sequential basis and exceeded our guidance of 2,300 to 2,500 homes as customers responded to incentives, enabling us to sell and close a greater number of homes within the quarter. While the spring selling season was clearly muted compared to historical trends, we continue to believe that there is underlying demand for affordable new homes supported by solid demographic trends, and we were encouraged by several trends that we saw during the second quarter. Both our net orders and absorption rates increased on a sequential basis in May and June, while our cancellation rates remained in line with the levels we have seen over the past several years and well below our pre-COVID averages in the 20% to 25% range. Also, absorption rates for our Century Complete brand were roughly flat on a year-over-year basis. And we believe the business continues to benefit from its focus on markets where there is less direct competition from other large builders. However, despite these positive trends, our second quarter absorptions were below seasonal expectations. And given typical seasonality, so far in July, our absorption rate is trending below second quarter 2025 levels. Our Indian community count increased to 327 communities at the end of the second quarter, a record for the company. While we have remained disciplined on the land front and reassessed deals to make sure they pencil in the current environment, we also continue to expect our year-end 2025 community count to increase in the mid-single-digit percentage range on a year-over-year basis, which will provide a strong base to execute from over the next couple of years. As we have stated in the past, we are not focused on growth for the sake of growth alone, and we look to balance pace and price at the community level to optimize our returns. We are also taking a balanced approach towards capital allocation. We repurchased $48 million of our shares in the second quarter, or approximately 3% of shares outstanding at the beginning of the quarter, bringing our year-to-date total to $104 million, or 5% of our shares outstanding at the beginning of the year. Additionally, since the start of 2024, we have repurchased over 8% of our shares outstanding. Our book value per share increased by 10% on a year-over-year basis to $86.39 a company record. Before turning the call over to Rob, I wanted to highlight that Century was recently recognized as one of the best companies to work for by U.S. News and Work Report. It is our people that make Century Communities a great company, and I want to thank our team members for all they do to create a culture of excellence in support of our mission of providing our customers a home for every dream. I'll now turn the call over to Rob to discuss our operations and land position in more detail.

Thank you, Dale, and good afternoon, everyone. Our second quarter net new contracts totaled 2,546 homes, with both our orders and absorption rates increasing sequentially in May and June. Our ending community count increased to 327 communities at the end of the second quarter, a record for the company. I would like to point out that all of the net growth in our community count this quarter came in June, and especially in the back half of June, with our April and May community counts below our first quarter ending community count of 318. As a result, our orders in the second quarter did not see a significant benefit from the growth in our quarter end community count. We currently expect our year end 2025 community count to increase in the mid single digit percentage range, which coupled with our 28% year over year growth for the full year 2024 will provide a strong base for future growth in the years ahead. We had continued success in controlling our costs in the second quarter. Our direct construction costs on the homes we delivered declined by 3% on a year over year basis, and 2% sequentially. As housing starts have slowed, our negotiating power has increased, and we expect to see further cost reductions in the quarters ahead. On the land side, our finished lot costs on the homes we delivered in the second quarter were flat on a quarter-over-quarter basis, similar to the trend that we saw last quarter. Going forward, we would expect to see some land inflation flow through on our deliveries that will be partially offset by direct cost reductions. As expected, given the competitive pressures in the new home market, our incentives on closed homes increased to approximately 1,050 basis points in the second quarter 2025, up from roughly 900 basis points in the first quarter. Looking forward, we continue to expect incentive levels to be the largest driver of changes to our gross margins in the near term, given our success in managing our costs. We currently expect incentives to increase by up to another 100 basis points in our third quarter closings. During the second quarter, our cycle times continue to improve on a sequential basis and currently sit at approximately four months, and we have not seen any impacts from immigration reform on our labor base so far. In the second quarter, we started 2,485 homes, and similar to the past several quarters, have continued our focus on maintaining an appropriate level of spec home inventory by generally matching our starts with our sales. Turning to land, we ended the second quarter with nearly 70,000 owned and controlled lots. Our own lot count has remained relatively steady since the third quarter of last year, and we have remained disciplined on the land front and contained underwrite deals to current market assumptions. During the quarter, we were also able to renegotiate a portion of our existing contracts for controlled lots, securing better terms for the most part and lower prices in some cases. Given our discipline, our controlled lot count decreased by 12,000 lots sequentially as we exited deals that no longer met our criteria, which resulted in approximately $2.6 million of charges. As we have said in the past, we believe that our low-risk, land-light business strategy that is primarily based on more traditional option agreements with individual land owners and third-party land developers allows us greater flexibility to renegotiate terms versus what could be achieved through an option strategy based on land banking agreements. While the industry as a whole is currently facing headwinds, we remain focused on growing our community count, maintaining a solid balance sheet, being opportunistic with our allocation of capital, and building value for our shareholders. I'll now turn the call over to Scott to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Rob. In the second quarter, pre-tax income was $47 million and net income was $35 million or $1.14 per diluted share. Adjusted net income was $42 million or $1.37 per diluted share. EBITDA for the quarter was $66 million and adjusted EBITDA was $76 million. Home sales revenues for the second quarter were $976 million, up 10% sequentially on higher deliveries. Our deliveries of 2,587 homes in the second quarter was essentially flat on a year-over-year basis, with elevated mortgage rates and economic uncertainty weighing on order activity. Our second quarter average sales price of $378,000 decreased by 3% on a year-over-year basis, primarily due to higher levels of incentives. For the third quarter 2025, we expect our deliveries to range from 2,300 to 2,500 homes. This estimate is based on our backlog heading into the quarter and anticipated seasonal absorptions. As a reminder, we usually see a sequential decrease in our absorption rates in the third quarter, with July and August typically representing some of the slower months of the year. At quarter end, our backlog of sold homes was 1,217, valued at $466 million, with an average sales price of $383,000. In the second quarter, adjusted home building growth margin was 20%, compared to 21.6% in the first quarter of this year, and home building growth margin excluding inventory impairment was 18.4% versus 19.9% in the first quarter. The quarter-over-quarter differential was driven almost entirely by increased incentive levels. Consistent with the first quarter, purchase price accounting associated with our two acquisitions in 2024 reduced our second quarter 2025 gross margin by 20 basis points. We would expect purchase price accounting to have a similar impact on our home building gross margin in the third and fourth quarters of 2025. We also took an inventory impairment charge of $7 million in the second quarter related to five communities that were in their closeout phase and located primarily in Florida. For the third quarter 2025, we expect our home building gross margin to ease on a sequential basis by up to 100 basis points compared to our second quarter, primarily due to higher levels of incentives. SGMA as a percentage of home sales revenue was 13.2% in the second quarter. Assuming the midpoint of our full year home sales revenue guidance We expect our SG&A as a percent of home sales revenue to be roughly 13% for the full year 2025, with SG&A's appearance of home sales revenue of 14% for the third quarter. Revenues from financial services were $23.8 million in the second quarter, and the business generated pre-tax income of $6.2 million. Our financial services results benefited from the sale of mortgage servicing rights on loans with $3 billion of unpaid principal for approximately $47.3 million. This transaction resulted in a gain of $4 million. This gain is partially offset by market-to-market adjustments related to our mortgage loans held for investments. We currently anticipate that the contribution margin from financial services in the back half of the year will more closely resemble our first quarter results. Our tax rate was 26% in the second quarter 2025. We continue to expect our full year tax rate for 2025 to be in the range of 25% to 26%. With the increase over a full year 2024 tax rate of 24.1%, primarily driven by a reduced number of homes expected to qualify for 45 L credits. Our second quarter 2025 net home building debt to net capital ratio equaled 31% and compared the first quarter 2025 levels of 30.1%. Our home building debt to capital ratio equaled 33.3% in the second quarter and compared the first quarter 2025 levels of 32.4%. During the quarter, we maintained our quarterly cash dividend of 29 cents per share and also repurchased 884,000 shares of our common stock for $48 million at an average share price of $54.35, or a 37% discount to our book value per share of $86.39 at the end of the second quarter. Through the first six months of the year, we have repurchased 1.6 million shares for 5% of our shares outstanding at the beginning of the year. We ended the quarter with $2.6 billion in stockholders' equity and $858 million in liquidity. We also have no senior debt maturities until June of 2027, providing us ample flexibility with our leverage management. Turning to guidance, due to current market conditions, we are revising our full year 2025 home delivery guidance to be in the range of 10,000 to 10,500 homes, and home sales revenues to be in the range of $3.8 to $4 billion. In closing, we are taking the necessary steps to address the headwinds facing the market, including reducing our costs, remaining disciplined on the land front, and maintaining an appropriate level of spec home inventory by matching our starts with our sales. Given where our shares have been trading, we have been opportunistic with share repurchases while still positioning the company well for future growth that is supported by our lot pipeline, community count, and strong balance sheet. With that, I'll open the lines for questions. Operator?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Alex Rigel of Texas Capital. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening, gentlemen. First question, how are you thinking about your land investment in the second half of the year versus the first half?

So we're going to reduce, Alex, first off, great to hear from you, but we're going to reduce our land investment going forward. And as we pointed out, we dropped about 12,000 lots in the second quarter. As we're getting more disciplined on our writing to bring everything to market now, that was the bulk of things, we believe. But things are being pushed out because, candidly, we don't need a lot of the lots right now. So we're changing the terms to push things out into 26. And that's kind of our focus right now. But the big... kind of purge, if you will, was in Q2.

And Alex, this is Scott. If I could just add, I think one of the benefits that we're seeing of our maybe more traditional land light strategy is just our ability to have flexibility within our runway on the lot side. We were able to really move a significant number of lots either out or obtain better pricing with really, really small impact from a feasibility cost perspective.

Sure. Understood. And then can you talk a little bit about the mortgage products your buyers are using? And are you seeing any buyers use any arms?

Yeah. Great question and very topical at the moment. So we're running about 70% on governmentals, 30% on conventionals, just generally speaking. We've really been leaning into the arms, a really firm kind of a late Q1 into Q2, and we're certainly seeing the buyer acceptance of that continue to pick up sequentially as the quarter and the year has gone on.

Very helpful. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you.

Your second question comes from Rohit Seth of BeRiley. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just on the 2025 deliveries guidance, maybe just talk to, you know, the drivers behind lowering it, what you're seeing in July, you know, was it traffic, affordability, just any color you can add there. And my follow-up would be on, just discuss kind of what you're seeing across your footprint.

Sure, absolutely. And this is Scott Roche. So from a guide perspective, you know, we really step back and look at it and look where, you know, look where our backlog is at the moment going into the quarter, you know, knowing that the third quarter from a demand perspective is generally one of the slowest periods of the year, especially at the beginning of the quarter from July and August. That was really a large driver of the revision that we did. We're just looking at the third quarter. From a market perspective, I can hit a handful of things here. I think as you run through our various regions, West, for the most part, I think it's held up as strong as any of our markets. Certainly we've seen a little bit of recent slowing maybe in California, but West in general continues to be very strong. Mountain is a little bit of the tail of various different markets. We see Vegas started out the year very, very strong and has slowed slightly, but it's still a very strong market for us, with maybe Colorado at the moment working through some affordability issues. Moving on to Texas, we have a very small footprint in Dallas. I think Dallas generally has been very challenged But Houston and San Antonio, which are slightly larger positions from us, are certainly working through some affordability items and some inventory supply. But we continue to move product, and our margins continue to be rather consistent within Texas. And I think our strongest market overall really has been southeast. Atlanta is a large driver of our position in the southeast, as well as Charlotte and Nashville. And generally speaking, I would say that those have held up the best of any of our markets. And then the last piece, an interesting dynamic that we're really excited to see is our brand, our Century Complete brand, which really attracts even a more affordable buyer type and really attracts and doesn't compete necessarily directly with some of the larger publics in certain markets. that has really held up quite well. The Carolinas as well as the Midwest, first century complete, are ones that I would call out as being quite strong.

Okay, thank you. And if I could squeeze one more in on the gross margin, you kind of hit about a 20% on the adjusted side, raising incentives a little bit here. Are there any offsets that we should think about? And you talked about lower costs, lower direct costs, labor costs coming in, savings coming in, but yet some higher lands. Just trying to get a sense of, you know, have we touched the bottom here for margins, or you still got a little bit more pressure here?

Yeah, Rohit, obviously a little bit difficult to specifically tell. I would say on the cost side, we have been very successful in getting direct costs out of our homes, and we believe there's continued opportunity to do that. We see that flowing through from a deliveries perspective, certainly in the back half of the year. However, to some degree, that is offset from really some normal inflation on the land side. So apples to apples, rather consistent on the cost side, and we continue to think that incentives as they move through the P&L will be really the largest driver on the margin side.

Understood. Thank you.

Absolutely.

Your third question comes from Alan Ratner of Delman Associates. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for all the detail and all the helpful guidance. It's appreciated. First question, you alluded to this in a prior response to a question, but you walked away from, I think, 12,000 or so lots, but you did allude to renegotiations that are ongoing and even some price concessions from land sellers. Alan Sorcher- And i'm curious, you know what type of magnitude, are you seeing there, are you seeing real capitulation yet in the land market, and if so, is there any ability to actually lower land costs on actively selling communities, or are these more kind of go forward projects that are earlier in the.

Alan Sorcher- model for yeah it's more go forward and we're not seeing. really huge changes in pricing, more on structure of deals, pushing out takes for a more just-in-time basis. But in terms of pricing, you know, there is some of that in select markets, but I would not say that's an overreaching item through all the markets. We have not seen that across the board.

Got it. Okay. Second question, you know, if I look at your margin guidance for third quarter, take, you know, roughly the... the down 100 basis points on gross margin and the 14% on SG&A. I'm getting to a pre-tax margin in the low single digit range overall, which would definitely be the lowest level we've seen in quite a while. And that's traditionally a level I would imagine where if that's a company average, there's a decent number of projects that are closer to break even. Do you have any disclosure you give in terms of I know some builders give like an impairment watch list, you know what percentage of communities are on on that watch list that have indicators of potential impairment.

Yeah, Alan, all of our required disclosures, including how we evaluate it, which is consistent with the industry, will be in our TINQ, which is filed later today. One important item to note is the gross margin item that we called out is really X, the impairment. The $7 million impairment, from our perspective, is really directly related to a handful of communities that were in closeout They really decided to get aggressive on pricing. I think we would need to see the market deteriorate rather significantly from here for there to be significant additional impairments.

Okay. Yeah, I was just referring to more, you know, you did, I think, 20% this quarter X impairments and capitalized interest. Interest is running about a point and a half, so that's more like 18 and a half, less the 14% SG&A. That's just how I was getting there.

Yeah, correct. And one little note just on the specific gap requirement of impairment, you ignore the SG&A. It's just direct cost in and out. So it's really much more akin to your gross margin than your pre-tax. Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate that. Thanks, guys.

Yep.

Thank you.

Your fourth question comes from Michael Rehat of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. This is Andrew Ozdeon for Michael Rayhawk. I appreciate you taking my questions. Just wanted to kind of appreciate all the color you've given so far. Would love to drill down, if possible, on, you know, I think we talked about July a bit. Would love to get a sense of what happened April, May, to June, and given the volatility with rates, what you were seeing in terms of your sales pace versus your expectations month to month.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, pretty consistent with some of the items that we outlined in the prepared remarks. We saw, you know, we saw sequential improvement from a sales perspective throughout the month. So May was significantly better than April and June was significantly better than May. I think consistent with maybe some of the commentary that you may have heard from others, the end of June was certainly very strong. taking advantage of some of the dips and rates. And then we've paused at the beginning of July, and it's been a little bit choppy so far within July. And so that's from Cadence's perspective, really where we've been at from a sales perspective.

Got it. And then in terms of potential incremental Canadian tariffs on lumber, can you provide maybe your exposure to Canadian lumber versus U.S. sources? And what's an impact you'd expect?

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously difficult to tell the exact impact at the moment. We'll need to wait to see until, you know, until those additional tariffs are potentially finalized here. Um, we generally source, uh, between 20 and 30% of our lumber from, from Canada. Um, you know, it's market dependent, but from a general rule that that would be our exposure. Um, and certainly we're not seeing that currently, um, running through any costs, but we'll just have to see where, where that lands going forward.

Got it. Much appreciated. I'll pass it on. Thank you.

Absolutely.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star zero. For your next question, Ken Zenner of Seaport Research Partners. Please go ahead.

You there, Ken?

Hey, Ken, we can't hear you if you're on.

Dan, we heard you. Oh, you did hear me?

Yeah, we got you now.

Thank you for the time. So orders down a community count more attributable to quarter end inventory, excuse me, community growth. So I understand that. But the orders were still down like in the West quite a bit, and the mountains specifically. Could you kind of provide details around, you know, what that driver was versus, you know, the baseline that you guys were, I don't know, like, you know, something less bad than you guys printed, I guess is what I'm asking? Like what was the driver of that?

Sure. I mean, there's a handful of factors obviously that's playing itself into it. From an overall perspective, the way the quarter really played itself out from the consumer demand perspective was the sequential growth from May to April and then obviously June to April. It was something that we experienced, but April certainly was off from March. That was part of the driver from an absorption standpoint. The other item that we called out really in our prepared remarks is really the significant amount of the community count did come online in the back half of the year, or excuse me, at the quarter, with most of it really coming online in June. And so that's some of the dynamics that you're seeing flow themselves through

um mountain in particular so the 51 i assume quarter end community count verse 47 which is up right you're suggesting of the or not suggesting i'm not trying to pin you down here but with orders down uh contracts down 39 is that fair to think that over half of that was attributable to an average community count being below the quarter end community count, is what you're suggesting?

Yeah, without quantifying that specifically, and potentially we can walk through some of the details, the majority of the community count growth coming in Mountain occurred in June and therefore wasn't open throughout the entire period.

So it's not to be, that's where it was most expressed is what you're saying, the late or the community, average community count. That's not necessarily a mountain century communities issue. It's just that community count not being available there. Okay. Do appreciate that. Do you guys have any comment on what you think, if I wasn't mistaken, did I hear you correctly saying your units under construct, well, with your starts at 2485, is that correct?

That's right.

Do you expect kind of the starts to reflect the orders growth as it has been, more or less, into the back end?

Yeah, more or less. Yes, more or less.

And then more or less, do you guys expect your unicenter construction, right, so wherever you are now that you don't disclose, but like starts closing so we can kind of get there, what's the magnitude that you expect that to be down into fourth quarter year over year?

You know, Ken, I think in all honesty, it's really, yeah, I think to some degree it's dependent on where the market is in terms of our ability to continue to drive starts. So we began the year with obviously a little bit of a higher level of units either under construction and or finished. And we really focused on working those down to levels that we feel, quite frankly, very confident in. in putting more units out into the market for the back half of the year to the extent that we believe that the market continues to support that level of starts. So it'll be market dependent and demand dependent on an individual market basis.

Excellent. And the last question which I've been asking builders is the census data has inventory you know, for sale, three categories, complete, under construction, not started. But do you guys respond to Census Bureau requests for, you know, inventory or sales or any of that type of information? Do you provide them data is what I'm asking you?

Ken, I don't believe we provide them specific inventory data from a Census on a regular basis.

Thank you very much. It's interesting. I don't know what builder is, so it's getting to be interesting. Thank you very much, Jonathan.

Absolutely.

Your next question comes from Alex Barron of Housing Research Center. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. I think I heard you say that the build times currently are around four months, That's correct. I was wondering, is there any room for improvement from that level? Do you feel that's about as efficient as a business gets? And if there is, is there any other initiatives you guys are potentially trying, such as vertical integration or acquiring certain trades or anything like that?

So as far as acquiring certain trades, Alex, we have not been looking at that. But in terms of improving cycle times, You know, sequentially each quarter they've gotten better. Candidly, month by month they've gotten better. You know, that four months is a consolidated average. We have homes, some that are being built in the low 70-day range, certainly a lot in the 80 and 90. And we have other homes. product-specific and basement markets where the timeframe may be a little bit longer than that four-month period. But on average, that's what we're doing. We do see that potentially even getting better over time. But that has been a bright spot that we're continuing to reduce that down.

Got it. And as far as incentives, especially as it pertains to finished inventory, are you guys primarily just doing rate buy-downs or are you also having to do price cuts?

It's a mixture of both. Certainly our most aggressive opportunities on the mortgage side are generally geared towards our slow and moving communities, aged inventory, and our consumer profiles that need that assistance. It generally is a mix of both, however.

Got it. Well, best of luck, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Alex.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Dale. Please continue.

To everyone on the call, thank you for your time today and interest in Century Communities. To our team members, thank you for your hard work. dedication to century, and commitment to our valued homebuyers.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.