Meritage Homes Corporation

Greetings. Welcome to the Meritage Homes third quarter 2025 analyst call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Emily Dodano, VP of Investor Relations and External Communications. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to our analyst call to discuss our third quarter 2025 results. We issued the press release yesterday after the market closed. You can find it along with the slides we'll refer to during this call on our website at investors.meritagehomes.com or by selecting the investors relations link at the bottom of our homepage. Please refer to slide two cautioning you that our statements during this call as well as in the earnings release and accompanying slides, contain forward-looking statements. Those and any other projections represent the current opinions of management, which are subject to change at any time, and we assume no obligation to update them. Any forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Our actual results may be materially different than our expectations due to a wide variety of risk factors, which we have identified and listed on this slide, as well as in our earnings release, and most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically our 2024 annual report on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q for subsequent quarters. We've also provided a reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our earnings release as compared to their closest related GAAP measures. Share and per share amounts have been retroactively restated to reflect our January 2, 2025 stock split for all prior periods. With us today to discuss our results are Steve Hilton, Executive Chairman, Philippe Lord, CEO, and Gilas Ferruza, Executive Vice President and CFO of Meritage Homes. We expect today's call to last about an hour. A replay will be available on our website later today. I'll now turn it over to Mr. Hilton. Steve?

Thank you, Emily. Welcome to everyone listening in on our call. Today I'll start by highlighting our third quarter results and current market trends. Philippe will cover how our will cover how our strategy is creating a differentiation for us in the context of the evolving market conditions. We'll also cover our quarterly performance. KELO will provide a financial overview of the quarter and forward-looking guidance. Market conditions were softer than initially expected in Q3 as consumer confidence continued to decline amid a tough economic backdrop and ongoing affordability concerns. Even with these headwinds, We grew our orders 4% year-over-year to 3,636 units on a greater community count and achieved an average absorption pace of 3.8. We leaned in our strategy focused on affordable move-in ready homes and a 60-day closing ready guarantee to provide homebuyers certainty in the changing environment. Our quick sale to close process contributed to another quarter with exceptional backlog conversions with more than 60 percent of our orders in Q3 closing this quarter, generating a 211 percent backlog conversion rate this quarter on 3,685 home deliveries and home closing revenue of $1.4 billion. Excluding $14.5 million in combined real estate inventory impairments and terminated land deal charges, our adjusted gross margin and adjusted diluted EPS in the third quarter were in line with our guidance at 20.1 percent and $1.55, respectively. We also increased our book value per share 8 percent year-over-year. Q3 was the fifth consecutive quarter where we achieved year-over-year community count growth. We are starting to see the benefit of the high volume of land acquisition development spend over the last few years, ending the quarter with 334 communities, which was a 20 percent increase year-over-year. We continue to focus on balancing volume, profitability, and a solid balance sheet, and we are satisfied with our results this quarter, considering the current economic environment. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Philippe. Thank you, Steve.