Century Communities, Inc. (NYSE:CCS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jay McCanless: Okay. And then I guess kind of thinking ahead for 2024, if rates stay at these levels or even go up from here, I mean, should we expect gross margins to kind of settle in somewhere? If it’s going to be down sequentially from third quarter to fourth quarter, how much more with what you’re seeing in terms of these buydown costs, what type of impact might that have on fiscal 2024 gross margins, especially if you’re thinking you’re going to have to carry a full year of buying down an 8% or 9% par rate down to, I think you guys said on your website, it’s like five and seven eights for some of these. I guess how much more is that cost going to go up if you have to carry this for a full year versus may only call it three months where rates have been around 8%.

David Messenger: That’s really tough to forecast in terms of where that mortgage market is going to be in terms of buydowns. We do expect that the cost of buydowns will go up and accordingly, if you go ahead and move it to 9% or something above an eight, it’s going to get more costly. But we’ll really look at that next year and we’ll try to evaluate that so we can still post the best margins possible because we’ll look at how far do we want to buydown the rates? Are we buying them down across the board? Are we buying them down by community? And then what products we utilizing in terms of government loans versus conventional, and then what do we want to be offering to the consumer? And so we’ll look to stratify the offerings and try to minimize the impact, but we do expect that if rates are going to be at an elevated level for some time, it’s going to cost more.

Jay McCanless: Okay. And one more, and I’ll jump back in queue. I guess, what are you guys thinking in terms of the community openings that are coming on, where do you expect average pricing to go and are you expecting Century Complete to flex higher as a percentage of the community count and maybe pull that ASP down a little bit in 2024 versus 2023?

Robert Francescon: Jay, we’re looking from a community count growth, at the 252 where we ended Q3. That’s where we really think the base is going forward. So as we look forecast out, let’s just say over the next 12 months, we think our community count’s going to grow in that, but it’s going to grow similar to where we’ve been now with the same percentages of Century Complete versus the communities brand. But again, it’s off this higher base, which we feel really good about that and that’s why we’re anticipating to have higher deliveries in 2024 than we did in — are going to have in 2023.

Jay McCanless: Okay. Sounds great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator: The next question is from Alex Rygiel with B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Alex Rygiel: Thank you. And just following up on community account, will the contribution of new communities have a notable impact on your average selling price in 2024?

Dale Francescon: No. They’re very similar. We’ve continued to look at more entry-level offerings. So it will be very similar to the price points we’re at now. And again, that’s on a general statement. We have outlier communities that some are at higher price points, of course, for different markets and different niches and strategies within a particular market. But as a general statement, the new communities that we’re opening are very similar from a price point standpoint to where we are today.

Alex Rygiel: And then, looking at the communities again, Century Complete communities are down year-over-year. Most of the other regions are up. You’ve referenced a number of times the expectation to see some growth in Century Complete communities. Is it communities that are growing? Is it the average size of the community within Century Complete increasing, a little bit more color there would be helpful.