Landsea Homes Corporation (NASDAQ:LSEA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Forsum: Yes. Unfortunate downside about holding sales absorptions through incentives and buy downs is that the land sellers think everything is great. So from the standpoint of them witnessing any lack of pace or absorptions coming through us. It’s hard to prove that the cost of our sales are getting a little bit steeper and we’re trying to drive it through the land residual. So though I would say they’re not going totally crazy, but I would still say that they’re about a single-digit percentage increase as we go from opportunity to opportunity. And honestly, I’m not really sure if I see that really changing. So we’re factoring not only higher for longer in terms of baking in, what is taking us to move houses in our COGS, but also on our land basis going forward, it’s going to be a little bit tighter.

So it’s just going to — all these things are kind of compressing a little bit, and we’re going to have to continue to find every nickel, like I was saying earlier in the process and in our business to offset those costs that we can’t really control right now.

John Ho: I would add, Jay, this is John. With the acquisition of Antares Homes, Mike mentioned that we’re going to add about 2,100 lots to our [indiscernible] so that will put us just over 13,000. We’ve gotten control now of our destiny over the next several years now. So really, really focused on building a lot supply really for 2026 and beyond. It gives us a little bit of flexibility or ability to find good land opportunities and be able to take in some of the costs at Mike Forsum was talking about to think about sort of the future years — other years?

Operator: We have a follow-up from Carl Reichardt with BTIG.

Carl Reichardt: Just one question, John, on buybacks versus debt paydown. Obviously, I know you want to reduce the DTC back to sort of your norms in the mid-40s. Does that change your thought process on repurchases over the course of the next year or so despite where the stock is trading?

John Ho: Yes, Carl, the stock buybacks has been a useful tool. We’ve used it as you guys can tell in this past year but it’s never been at the expense of growing the business, scaling the business and leveraging our SG&A. So we’ve also demonstrated that we can continue to do that through this acquisition. Now that the debt will be slightly ticking up, we will be focused on reduction in reducing debt. And then thereafter also thinking about how we can continue to do shareholder distributions. But it’s never been the expensive growth. We’ve got to grow the business; we get to scale. And like we’ve done in the past with acquisitions, we’ve reduced debt first. And then we — as another tool in our toolbox to be able to use additional capital and cash flow that we generate for shareholder contributions.

Operator: There are no further questions. I would like to turn the floor over to John Ho for closing remarks.

John Ho: Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter.

Operator: This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.

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