Pure Cycle Corporation (NASDAQ:PCYO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Harding: Thanks, Bill.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Bye.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from [Bill Miller of Will Mill Design] (ph). Bill, your line is live.

Unidentified Analyst: Mark, another great quarter, another great year. Congratulations. .

Mark Harding: Thanks, Bill.

Unidentified Analyst: And also on your repurchase of stock, my goodness gracious, that is dramatic. I love it. My question…

Mark Harding: He can be taught.

Unidentified Analyst: You can be taught? I really can’t hear that.

Mark Harding: He can be taught. Well, you might get a different opinion from my wife.

Unidentified Analyst: Well, we didn’t ask her this question. You almost always made reference to the acquisition pipeline. And here with interest rates higher, homebuilding seemingly, except in Denver, a [indiscernible] item on anybody’s agenda. What about some of the neighboring land at this point?

Mark Harding: So that’s a great question, and I do — it’s odd that I keep referencing it nothing happening. But what I can tell you is they also haven’t sold anybody else. And so it hasn’t hurt us not to have acquired those. And in fact, I think that overall raw land prices have weakened just because interest rates have gone up, and it makes it more difficult for as — for a typical master plan developer. And in our particular case, it’s really not that interest rate sensitive because of how we design our product and the price point that we try and compete in. So I would say all of the opportunities that we have been and are continuing to pursue, our continued — they’re still all on the table.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Great. What do you have to pay for your mortgage now? On your homes rent?

Mark Harding: I think we’re right — some of ours, we locked in, I think, four of the units we locked in at that nice attractive interest rate, like 3.5%, something like that. And then the additional 10, I think we’re right around 7.5%. So we don’t have a builder that wants to buy down our mortgage.

Unidentified Analyst: No, that’s great. Okay. Well, just keep going, sounds terrific. How are you going to get people to recognize your stock in your company and what you’re doing?

Mark Harding: Well, we’re going to — as you saw with this presentation, we’re trying to highlight some of the — what you all know and have done the work to find out, but really try and highlight the disconnect between legacy asset balance sheet value and earnings and gross margins and return on assets. So we’ll continue to do that. I’m out in the circuit doing presentations at some of the conferences and we’ll continue to put up good results and shout as loud as we can into the marketplace.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. Well, I wonder if you’re well done, and let’s talk soon I hope.

Mark Harding: Thanks.

Operator: Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Greg Malachowski from Benchmark. Greg, your line is live.

Greg Malachowski: Hey, Mark. How is it going?

Mark Harding: Great. How are you Greg.

Greg Malachowski: Good, good. I just have one quick question in relation to partially the commercial and then also the apartments that were previously discussed. By nature, these are assets that, I guess, in terms of development are difficult for a lot of people right now just because of rates and how expensive it is for you guys, particularly going out of the loan would obviously be very capital intensive. So where do you guys stand there? Have you given any thought to potentially just partnering with people who maybe want to do some of the development or specialize in building apartments and then kind of sharing the overall intensity of the nature of those projects. Obviously, if you partner the potential profit share is less, but if you can say, hey, we’ve got the land, which for a lot of developers is a pretty big issue right now because land is expensive and rates are high.

And they can say, okay, well, if you contribute the land, we can do something on our end and then together, you guys bring some of these products to market. Have you given that any thought versus what you’ve kind of been doing now where it’s mainly you guys carry the brunt of the work and then either get reimbursed through the community developed in the district or through payback from finished lots for builders. Is partnering anything you guys have given any thoughts?

Mark Harding: Absolutely. In fact, I will tell you that that’s likely to be the way we go about it, not only just on the multifamily but a lot of the commercial. We have so much equity in this project. And with a land basis as low as our land basis is and the fact that we can not only leverage less than $1,000 a lot land basis in it, but also leverage the utility side where we’ve already been able to bring all the utilities there. We have high margin in utilities. And so we bring a wet finish lot to the equation with very, very efficient means on it, right? Because we buy all the wholesale backbone infrastructure already invested. We’ve already gotten paid back some of those reimbursables from those historic investments. So carrying that through, yeah, you’re right.