Below is the transcript of the Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN)’s 4th Quarter 2014 Financial Results conference call held on Thursday, January 15th, 2015 at 11:00 a.m. EST.
Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN), founded in 1954, is one of the nation’s largest builders of quality homes for all generations. The company builds affordable, move-up and retirement homes primarily under the Lennar brand name. Lennar entities include Financial Services, Rialto Investments, Multifamily and Commercial segments.
Company Representatives:
Stuart Miller. Chief Executive Officer
David Collins, Controller
Jon Jaffe, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Bruce Gross, Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Rick Beckwitt, President
Carl Garraffo, Chief Human Resource Officer
Analyst:
Steven East, Evercore ISI.
Steven King, Barkley’s
Micheal Rehall, JP Morgan
Eli Ekel, GMS
Allan Rattingnerm, Selmon
Megan McGrath, MKM Partners
Michael Doll, CS
Peter Gallow, ML
Jade Remanie, KBW
Operator
Welcome to Lennar’s fourth quarter earning conference call. At this time all participants are on listen only mode after the presentation we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time you may press *1 on your touchstone phone to ask a question, please limit your question to 1 question and 1 follow up question. Today’s conference is being recorded if you have any objections you may just disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to David Collins for reading up the forward looking statement.
David Collins, Controller
Thank you and good morning every one. Today’s conference call may include forward looking statements. Including statements regarding Lennar’s business, financial condition, result of operations as closed, strategies and prospects. Forward looking statements represent only Lennar’s estimates on the date of this conference call and I am not intended to give any assurance as the actual future results. Because forward looking statements relate to manners that have not yet occurred. These statements are inherently subject to risk and uncertainties. Many factors could affect the results and may cause Lennar’s actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities or results anticipated in forward looking statements. These factors include thus described in this morning’s press release and our SCC filing including those under the caption of risk factors contains the Lennar’s annual report on 410K most recently filed with the SCC. Please note that Lennar Corporation [NYSE:LEN]assumes no obligation to update any forward looking statements.
Stuart Miller. Chief Executive Officer
Alright. Well let me just jump in and begin. This is the Stuart Miller and good morning every one thank you for joining us for forth quarter and year end update. This morning I am joined by Bruce Gross Chief Financial Officer and David Collin that you just heard from. Diane Bessette our Vice President in Treasure. Rick Beckwitt of President Jon Jaffe Chief Operating Officer here as well and Jeff Krasnoff Chief Executive Officer of Realtor. They are all going to join in for question and answer. As discussed Mariana conference call I am going to begin with some brief overview remarks on housing market and our operations and then Bruce is just going to jump in with greater detail.
As always we will open up the QNA and would like to request that during the QNA each person is limit themselves to 1 question and 1 follow up. So let me go ahead and begin and let me begin by saying that we are very pleased to report another very solid quarter of performance for Lennar Corporation [NYSE:LEN]with each of our major segments performing better then expected. Our fourth quarter and year end results demonstrate that our company is very well positioned to continue to perform extremely well in current market condition and to continue to execute our carefully crafted and balanced operating strategy.
Generally speaking we continue to believe that we are still in the early stages of a protracted slow growth housing recovery. The recovery continues to be driven forward by increased pumped up demand, derived from a now multiyear production deficit and the increasingly high cost, monthly cost of rentals. At the same time Volume growth has been can constrained by overly conservative lending standards a regulatory environment that discourages mortgage landing by banks and a negative bias overs hand against homeownership. Complicating matters the housing recovery has been somewhat erratic as macroeconomic factor have continued to both positively and negatively affect that recovery.
As I have said before this market has continued a slow and steady recovery but it is markedly different from past down cycle recoveries. I noted in our last conference call that history would suggest that more vertical recovery especially given the severity of economic decline. This recovery had a decidedly different trajectory as the slop of the recovery has been shallow and the recovery has been choppy and volatile. While the reflection of this market, of the market has been come founding to many, we had very clear understanding that has informed our company strategy.
