Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Stephen Kim: That’s great. Yes, it’s going to be interesting to watch. With respect to your income statement, your — you gave a 3Q order guide, which we appreciate. And it suggests an absorption rate, sales per community per month above what you achieved in the heyday of 2021 or post-pandemic period, it appears. And I’m curious, are absorption rates benefiting from a sort of mix shift of community types, such as maybe more communities with attached product or larger communities or something like that? And if so, if there is this kind of mix shift that’s happening behind the scenes, can you give us a sense for how much further this mix shift can go in a positive direction?

Stuart Miller: Rick, why don’t you take that? And then, Jon.

Rick Beckwitt: So I would tell you that the pace that we’re looking at going forward, particularly with regards to Q3, is really a reflection of the strategy that we all have implemented with regard to starts. And as we said, we are going to run a production machine. Jon, Stuart and I have really laid out work with our regional teams and division team to develop that community-by-community start base. We are benefiting a bit by some lower entry-level communities in a few markets. But over and above, what it really gets down to is a very disciplined, carefully managed stretch program. And that’s why we’re comfortable in giving you the visibility that we’ve given.

Jon Jaffe: Steve, I would add, as Rick is saying, it is really paying attention closely to matching sales to our start pace so we don’t build up inventory. And it’s not so much going to attach product. It’s going to markets that allow us to have a higher sales pace because we’re at a lower price point. Many of the Texas markets are a great example of that. We’re really able to go down the price curve, but we’re doing that in all of our markets, and that allows us to incrementally quarter-by-quarter to increase our sales pace.

Stephen Kim: And starts base, got you. Appreciate it.

Operator: And our next call comes from Truman Patterson from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Truman Patterson: Wanted to follow up on Steve’s question on the third quarter orders guide. That suggests orders, they typically increase sequentially when they normally decline. A few ways of looking at this, clearly, your starts pace, but underlying demand, is remaining healthy and atypically strengthening sequentially or that solid start space that you talked about, available spec inventory is taking market share from traditional build-to-order builders and/or private builder capabilities are more limited today from bank tightening. I’m just hoping — I’m hoping you all can help us think through this a little bit further.

Stuart Miller: I’m going to let Jon answer that, but before I do, I want to correct you, Truman. I’m in Dallas. So it is still morning here. So go ahead, Jon.

Jon Jaffe: Truman, so if you look at our strategy, we really accelerated our starts in Q2, recognizing the market opportunity where the industry was pulling back. And given that we didn’t have an inventory buildup because of our strategy, we felt there was an opportunity to be more aggressive with starts and take advantage of the lack of resale inventory as well as the lack of new sale inventory. So we feel comfortable that we’ll be able to sell at an accelerated pace because we’ll have the inventory when the marketplace in general is in providing that inventory with a backdrop of really healthy demand for housing. So that gives us confidence that we’ll be able to continue to accelerate our sales pace, managing that start pace.