Toll Brothers, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Toll Brothers first quarter earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please say no to a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypad. To answer all your questions, you may press star and two. Please note today's event is also being recorded. And at this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Douglas Yearley, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jamie. Welcome and thank you for joining us. I hope you, your families, and your colleagues are doing well. With me today are Marty Conner, Chief Financial Officer, Fred Cooper, Senior VP of Finance and Investor Relations, Wendy Marlette, Chief Marketing Officer, and Greg Ziegler, Senior VP and Treasurer. Before I start, I ask you to read the statement on forward-looking information in our earnings release of last night and on our website. I caution you that many statements on this call are forward-looking based on assumptions about the economy, world events, housing and financial markets, the impact of the pandemic, and many other factors beyond our control that could significantly affect future results. I hope you have had a chance to read our earnings release from last night. We are very pleased with our first quarter results. We achieved record first quarter order growth and exceeded our guidance on nearly every metric as we continue to benefit from a market that is playing to our strengths. Our business is performing at a very high level. Pre-tax income rose 93% and earnings per share rose 85% in the quarter compared to one year ago. We are increasing gross margin leveraging SG&A with higher revenues and greater cost controls and improving our return on equity. We are raising full fiscal year guidance across nearly all of our key metrics and expect to deliver the most homes in our history in fiscal 2021. Demand for new homes remains incredibly strong and we are enjoying pricing power in nearly all of our markets. In our first quarter, Net signed contracts rose 68% in dollars and 59% in units against a tough comparison in fiscal year 2020's first quarter when orders grew 31% over Q1 of fiscal 2019. Three weeks into our second quarter, our non-binding reservation deposits are up approximately 34% overall and 38% same store over another difficult comp to last year, and despite the cold and snowy weather impacting about one-third of our markets over the past few weeks. Our backlog, which is up 37 percent in dollars and 38 percent in units, provides visibility into the significant gross margin expansion we project this year, especially in our third and fourth quarters, as we deliver homes sold after last May. As a reminder, most of our homes take nine to 12 months to deliver. Based on this backlog and the current market dynamics, where we continue to experience strong pricing power, we expect further gross margin expansion into fiscal year 2022. Our results reflect a robust housing market that continues to benefit from favorable demographic trends, a very tight supply of for sale homes, stemming from a decade of underproduction, low mortgage rates, and a renewed appreciation for the importance of home. Home supply remains tight. According to data released by the National Association of Realtors last week, there is just 1.9-month supply of homes on the market, a record low. According to Redfin, nearly half of all resale homes on the market are placed under contract in less than two weeks, with one-third of all resales selling above asking price. Low mortgage rates continue to support the housing market and are driving affordability for more upscale homes and more upgrades. Interest rates have remained low for an extended period of time. The new administration and the Fed are both signaling a continuation of accommodative policy. These trends clearly favor us for the following reasons. Approximately three-quarters of our buyers have a home to sell. Rising home prices and limited supply means our buyers can sell their existing homes quickly and at appreciated values. The limited supply of existing homes is also pushing buyers frustrated with the unpredictability and frantic pace of the resale market to the more systematic process of new home sales. In addition, at Toll Brothers, our build-to-order model offers buyers the opportunity to design their homes from the ground up, allowing them to customize their homes to match their evolving lifestyles. This is the number one Toll Brothers advantage, choice, and it has never been more important to our homebuyers. Our customers increasingly want the ability to personalize their homes, and they have the means to do it. They tend to enjoy greater job stability, have more flexibility to work from home, and have wealth accumulated from rising home prices and the stock market. This quarter, our buyers added on average $170,000 or approximately 26% of the base price in lot premiums, options, and upgrades. This is up from about 22% in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 and our long-time average of 21%. Our customers are spending more as they customize their homes, which is generally accretive to our gross margin. We are also seeing a positive impact from demographic and migration trends. Over the past several years, we have expanded our geographic footprint and home offerings. We now operate in over 50 markets in 24 states, and have communities in both high growth and a high barrier to entry markets where a tremendous brand and wide range of price points enables us to serve a broad spectrum of buyers. As the 72 million millennials transition to home ownership, our growing affordable luxury product lines are designed to appeal to these buyers. This quarter, approximately 25% of our customers were first-time buyers. While we are eagerly looking forward to the end of this pandemic, we believe it has cemented the value of homeownership in the minds of a large portion of the U.S. population. The pandemic has made the consumer appreciate the home more and has made work from home a more widespread and permanent option, especially among our consumer base. These trends combined with the significant undersupply of homes for sale, support long-term sustained growth in the new home market. And we are well positioned for this growth. Our deep land position provides the foundation to grow our business. At the end of our first fiscal year, we owned or controlled approximately 67,700 lots and were selling from 309 communities. Even though we are selling out of communities faster than anticipated, we expect to grow community count to approximately 320 at the end of Q2 and 340 by fiscal year end, which is an 8% full year increase from the end of fiscal year 2020. Based on the land we already own or control, we are confident that we can continue to grow community count at a similar pace in fiscal year 2022. We continue to pursue profitable and sustainable growth while remaining laser-focused on improving capital efficiency and return on equity. Over the past year, we have completely revamped our land underwriting standards and are beginning to reap the benefits of this focus on capital-efficient returns. We are structuring land acquisitions much more efficiently, laying out less cash up front by negotiating deferred payment terms with sellers and using more third-party land banking, joint venture, and option arrangements. In short, we are controlling more land with fewer dollars, which we expect to lead to higher returns. Our increased focus on more affordable luxury homes should also result in shortened building cycle times, improved inventory turns, lower building costs, and higher margins over time. Our expansion into geographies and price points with lower upfront land costs should also benefit return on equity long term. We believe the combination of these positive market conditions and our relentless focus on return on equity and internal operational efficiencies will pay off in the short and long term with sustainable improved results. In summary, we expect fiscal year 2021 to be a tremendous year for Toll Brothers, and we are laying the foundation for an even better 2022. Now let me turn it over to Marty.

Thanks, Doug. Our business is really firing on all cylinders. Sales are strong and margins are expanding. SG&A is well controlled and being leveraged. We are generating significant cash flow. And this quarter, we bought back stock, paid down debt, and grew our land holdings. And we are improving our return on equity. It is our number one priority. We expect to grow our return on beginning equity by approximately 425 basis points in fiscal year 2021, and we see further improvement in fiscal year 2022. To improve our ROE, we are buying land more efficiently, expanding our affordable luxury offerings, controlling costs, and driving towards higher gross margins. We have streamlined and optimized much of our product offerings. which should allow us to reduce costs and cycle times without sacrificing the high-quality customization process that distinguishes our home buying experience. Our efforts in this area continue as we seek to further refine and streamline our products and processes. In addition to these operational initiatives to improve our capital efficiency, we are taking steps to improve our balance sheet and reduce interest expense. In fiscal year 2020, we generated over $1 billion in net cash from operating activities, a record. In fiscal 2021, we are forecasting approximately $750 million of operating cash flow. Our strong cash generation in fiscal 2020 enabled us to balance land and builder acquisitions with returning cash to our stockholders while prudently managing our debt. That will continue in fiscal year 2021. In our first quarter of fiscal year 2021, we repurchased $179.4 million of our stock, or roughly 3% of outstanding shares, at an average price of approximately $44.54 per share. Since fiscal 2016, we have bought back nearly a third of our outstanding shares. This quarter, we also repaid approximately $190 million of debt by paying down $150 million of our floating rate bank term loan and reducing purchase money mortgages on some of our own land by about $30 million, among some other things. We also just announced the redemption of the $250 million of 5.58% notes that were due in 2024. These notes will be retired in early March, and we expect to incur a charge for the early extinguishment of debt of approximately $33 million in our second fiscal quarter. Please remember this charge as you model our second quarter. As a result, we expect to have retired approximately $440 million of outstanding debt in our first two quarters of fiscal year 2021. And for our net debt to capital ratio, to be in the mid-30% range at the end of the second quarter. At fiscal year-end, we expect this ratio to be in the mid-to-high 20% range. Coupled with the planned retirement of our $410 million of 5-7% notes scheduled to mature in February 2022, we expect to reduce our capitalized interest incurred by approximately $40 million annually. This should result in lower interest expense released to our income statement over time. These adjustments and spend on our balance sheet have not impacted our ability to acquire land. In fact, we took these steps while simultaneously expanding our land position from approximately 63,200 lots at fiscal year end 2020 to approximately 67,700 at the end of our first quarter. We are acquiring land through more capital-efficient structures. As part of this focus, we have continued to shift more of our land buys to optioned versus owned. Optioned land was up to 46% of the total land at the end of our first quarter versus 43% at fiscal year end and 40% one year ago. Although this ratio may fluctuate from quarter to quarter, we are targeting a ratio of 50-50 in the near term. It is important to note that approximately 11,000 of our 36,400 owned lots as of January 31st were already contracted for and in our backlog or have model or unsold spec homes on them. Taking this into account, our option land moves from 46% to 56% of total, and our supply of owned land moves from 3.6 down to 2.6 years. As Doug mentioned, most of our homes take 9 to 12 months to deliver, so we have strong visibility into the first half of fiscal year 2022. The pricing power we have experienced over the past six months is continuing. Our backlog now stands at its highest ever in both units and dollars. This adds to our confidence that we can significantly expand margins in the back half of fiscal year 2021 and into the first half of fiscal year 2022. And that backlog is solid. Our cancellation rate in the first quarter was 1.4% of backlog and 3.7% of this quarter's contracts. The units in backlog are supported by an average non-refundable deposit of approximately $66,000. As Doug mentioned, we are also increasing our guidance on nearly all of our key metrics for the full fiscal year. We now expect full-year deliveries of between 10,000 and 10,400 units, our highest total ever, with approximately 2,175 in the second quarter. Delivery guidance for the second quarter reflects the slower COVID-impacted sales environment of mid-March through May 2020. This second quarter delivery guidance is consistent with guidance on our fourth quarter earnings call in December, where we guided to 40% of deliveries in the first half of fiscal year 21 and 60% in the second half. Our average delivered price for the full year is estimated to be between $790,000 and $810,000 per home. Average delivered price for the second quarter is expected to be between $785,000 and $805,000. We have increased our projected adjusted gross margin for the full fiscal year by 20 basis points to 24.3%. We expect adjusted gross margin to be approximately 23.4 percent in the second quarter. This implies a 25 percent gross margin in the second half of fiscal year 2021. And we expect even higher gross margin in the first half of fiscal year 2022. We expect full-year interest and cost of sales to be approximately 2.4 percent. This is also what we expect in the second quarter versus 2.5 percent in fiscal 2020. As a result of the debt reductions I discussed earlier, we expect this interest expense to continue to decline in fiscal 2022 and beyond. We have improved our SG&A guidance as a percentage of revenue for the full year by 30 basis points to approximately 11.9%. Our estimate for the second fiscal quarter is 13%. We continue to look for ways to optimize our cost structure to achieve permanent cost savings, including more effective marketing spend while increasing buyer engagement. We've also reviewed our broker commission structure across all our markets and lowered overall costs. In total, we are projecting our full-year operating margin before impairments to improve by 60 basis points compared to prior guidance, with further improvement in We expect community accounts to be 320 at the end of our second quarter and 340 at fiscal year end, with similar growth in fiscal year 2022. Turning to other sources of income and cash flow, during the first quarter, we were able to close sales of a parking garage and two sets of retail shops associated with our Hoboken New Jersey condo projects sooner than originally expected. which generated cash of $79 million and a pre-tax gain of approximately $38 million. Our guidance a quarter ago anticipated one of these sales to close in Q1 and the others later in the year. In addition, during the quarter, we generated $75 million of cash by selling land we owned into two newly formed Toll Brothers Apartment Living joint ventures. partnerships in which we retain 25% of the equity. We have now seen the market for stabilized apartments strengthen, and we expect we will be able to complete additional asset sales this year. As a result, our full-year guidance for other income, income from unconsolidated entities, and land sales moves up $15 million to approximately $80 million for the full year, with approximately $7 million projected for the second quarter. Now let me turn the call back to Doug.