Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Third Quarter F iscal Year 2023 Cavco Industries, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on listen- only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-a nd- answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star one one on your telephone. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference to your host, Mr. Mark Fusler, Corporate Controller and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good day, and thank you for joining us for Cavco Industries third quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call. During this call, you'll be hearing from Bill Boor, President and Chief Executive Officer, Allison Aden, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Bigbee, Chief Accounting Officer.
Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that the comments made during this conference call by management may contain forward-looking statements, including the statements of expectations or assumptions about Cavco's financial and operational performance, revenues, earnings per share, cash flow or use, cost savings, operational efficiencies, current or future volatility in the credit markets or future market conditions.
All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could affect Cavco's actual results and could cause its actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of Cavco.
I encourage you to review Cavco's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation the company's most recent forms Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, which identify specific factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.
This conference call also contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this live broadcast, Friday, February 3, 2023. Cavco undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call, except as required by law. I'd like to turn the call over to Bill Boor, President and Chief Executive Officer. Bill?
Welcome. Thank you for joining us today to review our results for the third quarter of fiscal 2023. This quarter, we achieved another significant year-over-year improvement in revenues and profit. Revenue was up 16%, and pre-tax profit was up 29%. Units sold were approximately flat. The improved financial results were driven primarily from year-over-year average selling price and gross margin improvement.
Operationally, while adjusting to the changing market, our plants continued their recent high levels of efficiency. We generally calculate capacity utilization using all available operating days. For the quarter, this yielded an approximate 65% utilization. However, we operated about 84% of the total available days due to holidays, weather-driven downtime, and market downtime. On a days operated basis, we ran at about 80% capacity utilization.
This indicates that our plants are doing the right thing by adjusting to the market conditions while remaining ready to go when orders improve. Cancellations continued during the quarter, only at about 60% of the previous quarter's rate. The bulk of the cancellations were in regions that had lagged the initial stages of the downturn. In a sense, the process has been moving through the regions, and for some of the earliest hit areas, cancellations are no longer a major factor.
As backlogs reduce to much lower levels, the cancellations naturally become less of a factor because the order to delivery time frame is so much closer to real time. Retailer inventories are still an issue that clouds the picture of underlying demand. This is because wholesale orders will naturally be slower than home buyer purchases until retailer inventories are reduced to their targets.
The inventory resolution will not be an abrupt change in the market. It's happening every day. Each retailer that individually gets to their target moves us closer to a one-to-one relationship between home buyer demand and manufacturing orders. Third quarter order rates were hit from all sides. The economy's effect on consumer activity, seasonality, and the industry-wide excess inventory have all resulted in declines in the backlog.
Our backlog is down 34% sequentially to $427 million, or approximately nine to 11 weeks at current production rates. Though we normally don't get into the post-quarter updates, in this market, I think it's important to share what we're seeing in the first month of the new year. We are seeing early indications of a seasonal pickup in traffic as well as quotes, which have increased considerably in January.
In fact, we view quotes as a leading indicator of future orders, over the past several weeks, quotes have been at or above the level we've seen in the last year and a half. These observations are positive indicators about underlying demand and that we might experience a seasonal pickup in order rates. There is reason for optimism that a pickup in demand might accelerate the inventory correction and result in increased wholesale orders.
It's very difficult to predict when the inventory issue will be behind us because we're still watching to see how orders develop going into the spring. However, my best guess is we have a few more months of feeling some level of the inventory drag. For the most part, price has held up well to this point, recognizing that there is a range of competitive pricing pressure from location to location.
This is and always will be a cyclical industry, and prices never stay stagnant for very long. Again, the question about near-term price movements will largely be answered when we see how orders develop in the coming months as well. Let me change course and touch on a few developments in our growth strategy. First, we've talked about this in the past, we successfully started up the new Hamlet, North Carolina plant this quarter. That plant is fully staffed with a strong management team and production employees that carried over from the prior owner's volumetric building operation.
We needed to execute a complex transition to ready the plant for HUD production, and that project was delivered on time and on budget. Really a great job by everyone involved in Hamlet. On January third, we closed on the previously announced Solitaire Homes acquisition.
We're excited about the opportunities this combination brings. Solitaire adds four production lines as well as 22 retail stores. We anticipate significant value-added opportunities that include filling out product lines across the combined retail network, bringing best practices to the Solitaire production facility, and accessing their retail network to enhance sales in our insurance company. I'd also like to take a minute to discuss our work in the area of digital marketing.
I might not talk enough about developments we are prospectively working on in the company, so it's important for me to make it a point to tell you when our major company efforts come to fruition. This is one of those situations because we've been working on this for some time now and have reached a big milestone. In January, we went live with cavcohomes.com, our new consumer-facing digital home marketplace.
Launching this new website makes it easier for home buyers to discover and research 1,500 manufactured, modular, and park model floor plans, and 2,700 stock models across our flagship brands. It also connects them to our 1,500 retailers and communities based on their geographic area. The home shopper can seamlessly research floor plans, photos, videos, virtual tours, and product availability using any smart device. This new site enhances the experience for our retailers as well.
They now have the ability to add their own pricing, photos, videos, and special offers to the dealer-specific microsites that we are providing for them. The site is integrated with our ERP system, giving retailers and customers easy access to dealer and product information as well as current availability.
Perhaps most importantly, our dealers benefit from the directed leads and phone calls generated by consumers using this digital marketplace. I know that's a mouthful, but this is really a major milestone. It opens up a new era for Cavco to build our brand nationally and to more effectively reach and serve our customers. Launching the site is the culmination of a tremendous collaboration between our technical and marketing teams.
Through this work, we've not only built the site, we've built a powerful organizational capability in the team. That digital marketing team, under the leadership of Colleen Rogers, our Senior VP of Marketing Communications, will continue to add to and improve upon the foundation they've created for the benefit of our home buyers and retail partners. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Allison to discuss the quarter's financial results in more detail.
Thank you, Bill. Net revenue for the period was $500.6 million, up 16% from $68.9 million, compared to $431.7 million during the prior year's third fiscal quarter. Within the factory-built housing segment, net revenue was $481.2 million, up 16.3%, or $67.6 million compared to $413.6 million in the prior year's third quarter. This increase was primarily due to a 15.9% increase in average revenue per home sold due to product pricing increases. Financial services segment net revenue was $19.4 million, up 7.1% for $1.3 million from $18.1 million. This year-over-year increase was due to a higher number of insurance policies in force.
Consolidated gross profit as a percentage of net revenue was 26.0%, consistent with the 26.7% in the same period last year. In the factory-built housing segment, the gross profit percentage increased to 25.5% in Q2 2023 versus 25.2% in Q3 2022, primarily due to product pricing. Gross margin as a percentage of revenue and financial services decreased to 46.6% in Q3 2023 from 61.2% in Q3 2022, due to the impact of weather-related events in Arizona and Texas. Selling, general, and administrative expenses, $58.9 million or 11.8% of net revenue, compared to $60.3 million or 14% of net revenue during the same quarter last year.
The SG&A dollar decrease is primarily due to lower cost of third-party consultants assisting with the energy tax credit project and were partially offset by greater incentives and commission wages on improved earnings. Net other income was $3.2 million compared to $4.3 million in the prior year quarter. The decrease is primarily driven by $2.4 million in lower unrealized gains on corporate equity securities, partially offset by higher interest income earned on commercial loans and cash balances. Pretax profit was $76.1 million, up 29.2% or $17.2 million compared to $58.9 million in the prior year period. The effective income tax rate was 21.7% compared to a benefit of 35.1% in the same period last year.
Our third quarter of fiscal 2022 income tax included a nonrecurring benefit of $34.4 million for tax credits related to the sale of energy-efficient homes. Excluding this item, our tax expense as a percentage of pretax income would have been 23.3% in that period. Net income attributed to Cavco shareholders was $59.5 million compared to net income of $79.6 million in the same period last year, as diluted earnings per share were $6.66 versus $8.57 per share.
In addition, I note our next quarter will include the results of our recent acquisition of Solitaire Homes. Through that acquisition, we acquired finished home inventory at their retail sites. Purchase accounting requires us to record that inventory at fair value upon acquisition, which means we'll not recognize a profit upon sale of those homes.
As a result, we will see an impact to our margin of approximately 150 to 200 basis points the next couple of quarters as we sell through these homes. This is the same dynamic that happens on all acquisitions, and the cash we will receive for these homes is not affected by the accounting treatment. We're bringing this to your attention because of the amount of inventory we are purchasing, which is driven by the fact that we're purchasing several retail locations.
Before we discuss the balance sheet, I'd like to take a minute to highlight that we continue to execute on our capital allocation priorities with the recently closed acquisition of Solitaire Homes, the opening of our Glendale, Arizona, and Hamlet, North Carolina, manufacturing facilities, and our share repurchase of $34 million in the quarter.
The purchase of Solitaire Homes will utilize approximately $93 million in cash before closing adjustments, leaving us with just over $280 million in cash subsequent to the purchase. We will continue to appropriately deploy this capital, including share repurchases. I'll turn it over to Paul to discuss the balance sheet.
Thanks, Allison. Today, I'm going to walk through changes in the December 31, 2022 balance sheet compared to April 2, 2022. The cash balance was $376.1 million, up 54% or $131.9 million from the end of the prior fiscal year. The increase is primarily due to net income adjusted for non-cash items and changes in working capital, providing cash of approximately $230 million.
This amount was partially offset by common stock buybacks of $73 million and purchases of property, plant, and equipment, primarily at our new facilities in Hamlet, North Carolina, and Glendale, Arizona. Investments, including short term, decreased primarily due to the return of capital from one of our joint ventures and volatile home sales. Inventories decreased due to lower raw materials and a decline in inventory at the retail lots.
Prepaid and other assets were higher from greater prepaid income taxes, partially offset by lower assets recorded in regard to the repurchase option of delinquent loans that have been sold to Ginnie Mae. Property, plant, and equipment is up primarily due to the purchase of the facility in Hamlet, North Carolina, and continued development of the Glendale, Arizona, facility, as discussed previously.
Accrued expenses and other current liabilities increased from higher rebates payable, more setup, freight, foundation work, and warranty reserves, all on higher sales. Lastly, stockholders' equity was approximately $955.5 million, up 15.1% or $125 million from the end of the prior fiscal year. This completes the financial report, and I'll turn it back to you, Bill.
Thanks, Paul. As Allison and Paul explained, our balance sheet remains very healthy, which supports continuation of the consistent capital allocation path we've been delivering upon. While the industry's working through the abrupt order drop-off for the past several months and the resulting decrease in backlogs, we view these mini cycles as something to be well managed within the much bigger picture of the dire need for housing.
We view the return to a strong market where manufactured housing demand stretches available capacity as inevitable given the nationwide lack of affordable housing, and we feel very good about our continuing strategy. We'll continue to invest in operational improvements and growth, and we will continue using share repurchases to responsibly manage the balance sheet. With that, Valerie, please open the line for questions.
All right. Dan Moore, are you with us? I think I see you in the queue.
I am indeed. I did not hear the prompt there.
Great. Yeah.
I guess we haven't.
Yeah, go ahead, Dan.
Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Appreciate it.
Yeah.
Maybe start with Bill, just can you delineate at all between, you know, trends, in terms of traffic, inquiries, quotes across, you know, retail versus REITs and institutions as well as maybe community developers, just your different end markets. Are you seeing, you know, what are you seeing across them, and are you seeing more interest from customers, you know, trading down from traditional site built, even if it's not translating directly to orders because of the inventory issue?
Yeah, I can take a stab at that. First, I think we've been pretty consistent through this time period that communities have remained strong. The big impact we've seen recently of, you know, decreased retail activity has mostly been more the street retailer side. I'd say communities continue to be strong. A lot of our comments here, which I don't I wanna present a very balanced picture.
We've got a few data points here in January. We thought it was important to talk about January because I know the high level of interest in trying to figure out where we're going here. It's just a few data points, but they're encouraging data points. Most of that reflects, what I would characterize as a generally, you know, optimistic mood on the street retailer side coming back up.
You know, communities have been consistent. Street retailers slowed down. The inventory is still there, but there looks to be some reason for some optimism with the data points we have in January. As far as the trade down, I think that's been consistently happening, and I'm always a little bit frustrated because we haven't figured out a great way to give people a sense of the magnitude of that dynamic, but we know it goes on, right?
We, we know it because we've got retail that's having, you know, that's talking to folks that might come in and say, "You know, I didn't expect that I'd buy a manufactured house, but given the way things are going, I want to see what you've got," and they end up buying something they're happy with. I think we also hear it from our independent retailers.
I can't really just give you any sense of how big that trend is, but I know that it certainly is something that this industry has taken some ground on over the last, you know, couple years, actually, with the run-up in pricing. Does that cover it, Dan? Did you have other aspects I missed?
No, that's very helpful. Kind of switching gears, I guess, a little bit. Backlog about 9-11 weeks. You know, how should we think about production over the next, say, one to two quarters? Do you expect to curtail production given the decline in backlogs? Are you comfortable continuing to produce, you know, over 4,000 homes before we, obviously, before we add layering on Solitaire, you know, given the order rates that you're seeing? Just trying to think about how you're kind of managing that backlog versus when you would need to see a more significant uptick in orders.
Yeah, it's probably a really important question to talk about for a minute because, you know, the last couple of years, we reported backlog numbers, and it was just across the board, right? I mean, everything was going up, it didn't. There wasn't much differentiation region to region, and it didn't really matter because the numbers were big, right, Dan?
T o expand on your question a little bit and give you a little bit more flavor, when we do that kind of estimate of weeks, that's very much an average now in a situation like this. Excuse me. The situation does vary from plant to plant, region to region, meaning we do have plants that have considerably less backlog, and we've got some that have very strong backlogs.
I told you in the scripted part of the call that, you know, we did have some market downtime this past quarter, and that takes different forms, extended holiday outages that we took advantage of where backlogs were lower. Some of our plants, a good number of our plants, actually, have adjusted to four-day work weeks. That was what was going on that kind of lowered our running time of available days to about 84%.
We'll continue in that mode until those individual plants that see even lower-end backlog in weeks, they start to see that stabilize and come up. A very long-winded kind of conceptual answer to you, but I do expect that we'll still not operate all available days.
As we see cancellations abate and get closer to a one-to-one flow through of homebuyer orders, which I think is happening every day, if we get kind of the seasonal order pickup that we're starting to see signs of, you know, that's all good news for reducing that market downtime. You know, just I'll throw this in.
Again, we're always a little bit hesitant to get into the mode of giving up to the minute updates in these calls. We like to focus on the quarter we're reporting on. I did comment on quotes being pretty significantly up. Also to kind of tell you that we've looked at orders written, right, not net of cancellations. Last few weeks, they've been honestly comparable to about late summer, early fall of last year.
I'm gonna keep qualifying my statement that a couple data points doesn't mean we're out of the woods by any means, but they're good data points.
No, that's really helpful, Bill. I guess, you know, and I know you don't want to get into the, you know, exact guidance in terms of production number of units, but it sounds like Q4, you know, the last quarter was a reasonable proxy for where we will be, give or take, in the short term versus a big leg down or anything of that nature.
Yes. Yes.
Lastly, maybe one or two more ASPs, just expectations. We as raw materials come down, we expect those to continue to tick modestly lower.
Yeah. I'm kind of always maybe a little bit of an outlier on this question because I relate it a little bit less to materials and being a direct relationship and a little bit more to how backlogs are going and how competitive it gets for manufacturing orders.
Mm-hmm.
There again, I apologize that I can't give you a generalized answer, but it really is playing out in local markets. We have seen some markets where backlogs dropped quickly and to lower levels, where there's been some backsliding on price. We've seen others where it just doesn't make sense to reduce price because either the backlogs still remain or the issue of dealer inventories is really what's restricting orders, not a reduction in price.
You know, again, hard to generalize. We are in a more competitive environment in some geographies, and if backlogs stabilize, I think, you know, we'll be able to kind of get through this with not a lot of price leakage.
Very helpful. Lastly from me, I'll jump out. Allison, I apologize. There was some disturbance, and I missed what you said about SG&A. It was lower in the quarter sequentially. What were the factors and just how do we think about what the good run rate-
Yeah.
Maybe including Solitaire?
Thank you. Apologies for the background noise. It lowered sequentially due to reduction in third-party expenses. Third quarter last year, we were right in the middle of our Energy Tax Credit efficient project, so we had a large outflow for support on that by third parties. Highly offset, though, then, commissions and variable compensation that, you know, we have been flow with based on earnings. Basically, SG&A still being the component of, you know, about 40% that's variable now we can leverage as we expand and contract.
Okay. I'll jump back with any follow-ups. Thank you.
Thanks, Dan.
Thank you. Our next question will come from Danny Eggerichs from Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.
Yeah. On for Greg Palm today. Thanks for taking the questions. Was hoping to just hit on that last one real quick on SG&A. I mean, it still was, you know, quite a bit lower than The Street was modeling here. I guess before layering on Solitaire, is that, say, $59 million number, a more reasonable baseline to go off of?
Yeah. I think the current quarter that we just left kind of represents more of a steady state, if you will. Now, we did absorb, you know, a year ago an amount that was significant as we talked about because we were going and working with very expertise on the third party side for their tax credits. What you're seeing now is a more relatively related, consistent level.
It'll always have some fluctuations on SG&A, which helps our model because 40% of it is variable compensation and commission structure, as is the industry that will ebb and flow with the revenues. If you modeled at a level of percentage of SG&A as revenues now, it's probably a realistic picture.
Okay. That's, that's helpful. I guess just kind of in terms of the overall demand backdrop, maybe for that current quarter, what kind of cadence you saw throughout the months? Appreciate the color on January. It sounds like starting to see things pick up. Maybe just more broadly, I guess realistic scenarios for industry shipments for this calendar year 2023.
Yeah. That's the million-dollar question, that last one. Danny, what's the question on the cadence in the last quarter? Can you help me out with that?
Just for this fiscal quarter three, how, I guess, more of a monthly cadence, how you saw that play out throughout the quarter?
Okay. I mean, it's interesting because think of those months, there's a lot of holidays in there. There's seasonal slowing too. It's a little bit messy to interpret the month-to-month within that quarter. I guess, you know, one of the things that we commented on is that cancellations were, for the entire quarter, were about 60% of what they were the previous quarter, which I think is a good sign as well. You know, I would say cancellations were improving throughout the quarter, kind of they're still present. They're going down. Order rates just typically slow down more in December than they do in the other months. A lot of things going on there.
Okay. I'll leave it there for now. Thanks.
Thanks, Danny.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one. Again, that's star one. Our next question will come from Jay McCanless from Wedbush. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon. My first question, with Solitaire, any kind of guidance you could give us around what you think run rate annual revenues would be? Also maybe what, collectively, c alendar year 2022 shipments were from the combined entities?
I mean, from, for Solitaire, kind of what we've said is overarchingly, that the deal will add about 10% overall. Also similar ASPs and gross margin as we work through the rest of the fiscal year. We did touch upon that for the next two quarters, because of purchase accounting, the margin will be down a bit. That's for reasons that we know about and expect. Basically, and if we can think about it, as we've chatted about in prior quarters, which is about a 10% increase, to our overall capacity.
10% manufacturing capacity.
The manufacturing capacity.
Yeah. Jay, I think you had asked revenue, and I want people to tack that on to company-level revenue.
Understood. Just trying to make sure, get a sense of how we need to model this out. I guess the second question, Do you feel like this might be a quarter where you're seeing an inflection point in the backlog with cancellations starting to come down, or does it feel like the inventory in the channel is still a little too heavy to make that call?
Yeah, that's where I wanna be really balanced. I mean, we're trying to give you guys as much of an up-to-date view of what we're sensing in the market as we can. You know, it doesn't mean we have a clear view of how things are gonna unfold here in the next couple months. I would say, you know, when we turned the corner on the calendar year, I was really focused on, are we gonna see a seasonal uptick, right?
Because the doomsday scenario would have been that when buyer activity and traffic deposits, ultimately orders, if we had turned the corner and the economy was kinda winning the game and we didn't see the indications of that seasonal pickup, that would have been a negative sign.
Just to explain, the good news is, you know, over a period of a few weeks here, right, you get beyond the first week or so of January and you finally start seeing some data, really kind of encouraging data around traffic, quotes as I talked in the earlier discussion. I think I said here in one of the answers that even orders were back up to levels that were from pretty healthy times. The early indications are good. We're gonna keep our eye on it. There's a lot going on in the economy. There's still uncertainty out there, and I think all that stuff's gonna have to unfold for us to really know how things are gonna shape up for the year.
You know, I think for the industry, the industry shipments, I'm talking calendar years now, started off with an unbelievably strong first half to pushing three-quarters of the year, we finished up overall in shipments as an industry, but that was with a tailoff there in the last couple months. I think Mark might have the data.
I think November, the seasonally adjusted rate of November industry shipments was down in the mid 90,000 range. There was a bit of a tailoff there. You know, we're probably gonna start off a little slow in this calendar year, if things go well, it'll be a reverse of last year. You know, that's what we're kinda hoping for.
Gotcha. The, we've seen mortgage rates come down really since October. Are you seeing the same type of decline in mortgage rates for chattel?
No, chattel has a tendency to be real sticky. We haven't seen chattel move really at all over the last couple months. You know, it tends to be independent of land home rates. Nothing to note as far as improvement there. Net chattel rates, again, I'm looking around because I don't have all the data. I think chattel rates are running in the high 8s to about 9% right now.
That's good to know. Thank you.
They've been there, they've been there for about half a year.
Gotcha. I apologize if somebody touched on this earlier, but just what are you hearing from the park operators these days? How are they thinking about 2023? What should we expect to hear from them?
Yeah, I mean, they've been a bit of a rock in the whole thing. They've just been steady and, you know, I'm generalizing, but I think it's a good generalization that community operators, you know, it's particularly large REITs that we deal with quite a bit. They've been pretty steady with significant growth plans, a lot of capital to put to work, and they've got lots that they can't get paid for if they don't get a house on them. I've talked in the past that there's.
I use the term buffer a little bit, or maybe too often talking about this industry, but one of the buffers I think we have in downturns really is within the communities where, you know, their model may be to have a person own the home and come put it on one of their lots so they can get the land lease payments. They also are doing a lot of buying homes and renting them. They kind of become a solution for that homebuyer that can't afford right now to own. I think that gives some resiliency to those community operators when you look at it from a demand perspective. They've been very consistent. I don't think there's been much at all of waning in their demand through this whole period.
That's great to hear. What, I mean, what do you think now is the mix of community operators versus retail dealers, and maybe versus what it was last year?
I don't think I'd note a huge shift. I mean, over time, that's been about 30%. Community operators are about 30% of the industry. I get your question. I mean, it stands to reason if they're going like crazy and street retail sellers take a pause, that's gonna shift a little bit. I don't think it's shifted that dramatically that I'd focus on it personally.
Okay, great. Thanks for taking all my questions.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you. I am showing no further questions from our phone lines. I'd now like to turn the conference back over to Bill Boor for any closing remarks.
Okay, thank you. Again, it's been great to report on another quarter of strong results. I think the financial results just continue to highlight the ability of this organization. You know, across manufacturing, retail, lending, and our insurance operations, our leaders are working really closely together, and they're flexibly responding to the market dynamics, and they're staying focused on the through-the-cycle opportunities, which I think is really important. I wanna thank everyone, as always, for your interest in Cavco, and we look forward to keeping you updated.
Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.