Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Diane Bessette: Well, can I just jump in? So in the fourth quarter, about 48% of our deliveries were on in some sites that we purchased from third parties. I don’t know what it was at the beginning of the year, but I’m sure it turns it up every quarter, and I think that we should expect to see that trending up in 2024 as we continue to become even more land lighter, reducing land on our balance sheet and having more control.

Stuart Miller: There was a second part to…

Kenneth Zener: Right. The margin impact versus the asset efficiency.

Diane Bessette: Yeah. So I think if you look big picture, it’s a growing number, but I would say that it’s probably 20 or 30 basis points is probably a good [indiscernible] and that will probably grow as we increase that percentage. But [indiscernible] about 20 or 30 basis points.

Kenneth Zener: Excellent. And then I think the second item, and I think this is more about messaging, and we’ve spoken about this in the past, but investors are seeking clarity on net income to cash flow and buybacks. I realize your company is evolving as you reduce your land exposure, but just generally as a heuristic, could you kind of inform the statement, I think, Diane, you might have said this, actually, that the balance of cash flow will go to share repurchases absent debt payments. Is that a simple rule of thumb that is guiding your company? And Stuart, I think you were highlighting that you’re not looking for large land deals. So I think with the simple heuristic people would have more confidence in that application of your cash flow. Thank you.

Stuart Miller: Yeah, I think that’s a good characterization for right now. But what I’m trying to articulate is that we are evolving our thinking in this regard. I want to say emphatically that we’re not looking for and holding back for large land deals. We’re not looking for and holding back for M&A transactions. So let’s say that that’s not the direction that we’re going right now. And that the cash flow generated [Technical Difficulty] conservatively right now, allocation between debt retirement as debt comes due and the remainder for stock buyback.

Diane Bessette: And I think, Ken, I would also just add as it relates to that, you might be referring to the fact that in prior quarters and prior years, we did a fair amount of early redemption on our future senior notes. And obviously, because we really want to — I’ve always said that while the debt to total capital ratio is important, I think what’s perhaps more important in my mind, there’s a little been nominal dollars on your balance sheet. And so we really wanted to take down the nominal dollars [indiscernible] And now we’re at $2.5 billion. It feels like there isn’t quite a need to keep pulling debt forward. We can just kind of pay it down in an orderly fashion as it becomes due. So that’s what I was thinking about it at the moment.

Kenneth Zener: Thank you very much.

Stuart Miller: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Next, we’ll go to the line of Michael Rehaut from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Michael Rehaut: Thanks. Good morning, everyone, or I guess, almost good afternoon. Thanks for all the comments so far. And also, congrats on the fast turnaround after year-end. That is very impressive. So I would agree with Diane’s comments earlier. I wanted to first zero in a little bit on SG&A and corporate G&A for the first quarter. It looks like you’re having revenue growth expectations alongside the — predominantly driven by the higher closings. But negative leverage, I guess, on both metrics by a pretty decent margin given the double-digit revenue growth outlook. So I just want to understand the drivers of that. I know you said on the corporate G&A, there’s more investments. So maybe just talking a little bit more on SG&A. If there’s higher commissions or other factors that we should be aware of? And on a full year basis, should we expect SG&A and corporate G&A leverage outside of just this first quarter dynamic?

Diane Bessette: Yeah. So I think, Mike, as we’ve been articulating, we have been seeing a little bit more broker participation as sales have been a little challenging at certain times, we’ve been utilizing brokers judiciously, certainly using tiered programs and the like to ensure that we are capturing sales, but spending dollars judiciously. Additionally, as you heard us talk about, the machine, a very big part of that is the lead generation on the digital side, how do you get more leads into the funnel so that we have higher conversion rates. And so we’ve been, again, judiciously spending dollars on that spend because we believe that in the end, that will really produce a higher net margin for us because it’s less costly than brokers or other things. So I think those are the two areas that have really been impacting our SG&A in the last few quarters.

Stuart Miller: Yeah. Well, that was that was a great articulation of the operational side, but that’s good, Diane. But the fact is that as we’ve gone through this, the ups and downs of the past year with interest rates, the use of our digital platform has really been a learning curve and has challenged us to get better and better and better. And while we have great affection for and engagement with our realtor community, we certainly don’t want to incur costs that we don’t have to incur. And so we have been working carefully to make sure we’re managing the balance between the necessary engagement with realtors and what we can actually accomplish organically through our digital platform, and that is rippling through our SG&A. We’ve seen the realtor spend and some of the marketing spend tick up as we have driven to maintain sales pace. So we’re seeing some of that. It’s going to be a story of evolution as we go through 2024. Anything you want to add to that, Jon?