Okay. For those of you that are joining us online, I'd like to welcome you all. We're just wrapping up a short tour of Sky Ranch. We did a bit of a tour of the Lowry Range and kind of the proximity of growth and development along the Lowry Range. Got a few folks that actually joined us in person that actually wait for them to kind of-- they're taking a little bathroom, biological break, and we'll get started here in about two minutes. Grab, yeah, grab something to eat or however you want to do it. Deb. This is Deb Saya.
Hi, Deb.
She actually leads our single-family rental segment, but she also takes care of us in the office, so-
I'll try. Tomato basil. Oh, good, Mark.
So I guess what, what I'll do for all the folks that are online, you know, really, we just had a recent earnings call, as you guys were able to see, as you see the financial notes, as well as probably most of you have listened to the earnings call. But I guess the real punchline here is, how the company is really continuing to monetize its assets. You know, we've seen a strong growth, a strong acceleration to the land development activities here. We've seen our water segment correspondingly grow, 'cause as we're adding new lots, we add new customers to our water segment. That provides new connection fees, new tap fees, and then, you know, we've had a strong growth of oil and gas here. And you know what?
And some of the questions that the folks that joined in person as we were going out on the tour had a good question about, you know: How should we think about oil and gas? How should we think about continuing development? You know, you have a couple of operators here, and, you know, you can see a number of pad sites here. And I think, you know, the oil and gas story is, it's relatively de-risked. You see, a pretty steady approach to the field development, a pretty disciplined development of wells, well pad sites, you know, getting permits through the process. And so I like to think about that segment as, you know, it has grown significantly since we started.
You know, this will be a record year for us on that, but it'll continue to be pretty steady and continuing to generate significant opportunity for the company, if you just take that one segment all by itself. If you take a look at the land development segment, you know, as we had in our presentation, you saw kind of the picture of us having the second phase of the company, and we have four subphases there, and the first subphase is totally built out. We were able to kind of drive by some of our rental homes and how we've configured those homes.
We've got multiple product classifications in our rental home segment so that we can serve a bunch of different types of customers that are looking, whether it's gonna be, you know, a couple, whether it's gonna be, you know, a starter family, whether it's gonna be a retired couple, whether it's gonna be, you know, a single mom, single dad. Those are all product categories that I think we have varying price points for those. But our single-family rental side of the company's going very well. We're looking at starting another. We're looking at maybe another 17 units in Phase 2B, and then really ramping it up. I think we've got 40 units in 2C, and then another 26, 28 units in 2D.
So, you know, the real interesting, and you guys saw this necessarily, when you get, you get a stronger appreciation, you know, boots on the ground to see, you know, delivery of Phase 2C. And we'll get our, we'll get our final payment on 2B, by the end of our fiscal year. So we're, we're just working out the closing characteristics for that, those lots. And then you can see all the activity going on in 2C. So we've got we've had the first closing of 2C, which are closing of the lots, which is our first payment for our lot development structure. We've got the utility crew out there. They're actively putting in the water, sewer, and the storm system out there. That should be done September, October timeframe.
So we'll have our second closing of that, and then, you know, we're pressing our contractors heavy so that we can open up some of those lots, because I've got other new builders in 2C that aren't in 2B, and they want those lots so that they can overlap the development of 2C and 2B. And then we'll be going to the county later this summer, likely in August, to get approval for 2D, so our fourth subphase on that. And the interesting thing about it is, if you take a look at what we've done since we started Sky Ranch, we've built about 700 homes, and we're looking at delivering another 700 lots in the next 12 months.
And so pretty exciting for us to have that level of demand out there. Pretty exciting on all three fronts. You know, what we're looking for is doubling the number of homes that we have, that'll, you know, add another 700 customers to our water portfolio. That'll add another almost up to 90 single-family rentals in the single-family rental portfolio. So when you look at it, you know, each aspect of the company is really well-positioned, and we have been very studious about developing this infrastructure so that we have the ability to deliver these lots as the demand increases. And we've seen, you know, a strong appetite.
We've diversified our builders to bring on not just 3 builders, but you know, 6, 7 builders that are building in multiple phases so that they all have, you know, unique product categories without inventorying too many lots. So that, that relationship of us partnering with our builders in each of these phases is really starting to bear fruit for us. You know, really didn't have any prepared presentation on this. Being so recent on our earnings calls, you've seen the numbers. We've put up great numbers at great margins. I really wanted to use this as an opportunity to engage with you all. And so, you know, the format for this Q&A would be that you could raise your hand, and we'll click on you. We'll make you live. All of you are currently muted, and make you live.
You can kinda, you know, lob your question out there, and I'll see if I can do my best to kinda color the presentation or anything like that. So with that, you know, if you have a question, go ahead and hit your raise hand button on Teams. For those of you that are familiar with Teams, that'd be the way to do it. I do wanna introduce Dan Kozlowski. He's with us today. He's one of our board members. He also happens to be our largest shareholder, so we thank you for your confidence in your invested capital. But, you know, chime in if you all have a question.
Mark, I'll start. This is Dan Kozlowski. We've been invested in Pure Cycle for many years. You know, I first sat down with Mark, and he explained to me the land he had bought off I-70, which is now Sky Ranch today, and then the portfolio of water rights that were purchased 25 or 30 years ago. And being a Denver resident and just seeing the development and the development pushing east over time, it just seemed like an extraordinary asset base. So this was probably over 10 years ago, and we've got to know each other. And Mark, I guess what I would ask you and to frame off for us is, you know, if I can say 2018 or so, we had plans for...
You had plans for Sky Ranch, and it was a little further east than some of the other developments, but it was right in our sweet spot of, you know, obviously what we owned and our ability to develop water and deliver that water. And, you know, over the last 4 years, you know, from my perspective, watching it on the ground, Sky Ranch has been absolutely successful. You know, it went from concept to, you know, negotiating with the builders for the first 500 lots, and those are completely done, and the whole development has been proven out. Now we're in Phase 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, you referenced, and there's a school on the property, and the whole Denver metropolitan area has developed, and as we really thought it would, continues to push east.
So that's been very successful, and it will, you have, you know, these different phases to work through. There'll be a Phase 3 eventually. There'll be other opportunities, such as commercial, which again, are all tracking. We all want it faster, but it, but it is tracking. And, and again, according to everyone in the Denver market, this has been a real, super success for, compared to what, other people's expectations might have been four years ago, and I think that's a testament to, to your operating ability. So the second piece of the investment is, you know, are the water rights, the ability to tap 60,000, 70,000, maybe with conservation efforts, you know, it could be more than that over time.
Can you talk a little bit about, as we work through Sky Ranch, what are the other opportunities to, you know, find places for those taps? And kinda how you're thinking about it, game planning, as we look at the next five years. Now, during that, during that period of time, you know, the cash flows in these projects are always back and loaded, so, you know, commercial, things of that nature will be coming through. So it's gonna be pretty well lined up three or four years. But after that, Mark, where, where does this go next?
You know, thanks. It is a testament to our team, and we really have built a great team here of folks that are very competent in the land development side. You know, we have a team and equipment, construction equipment to allow us to self-perform on some of the in-between things, you know. And the biggest challenge I've learned in this land development business is it constantly surprises you. You know, there's things that you just come up against that wasn't in your bid, you know, when you went out to bid for this.
And so a lot of times when something like that comes up, we fix it ourselves, you know, as opposed to, you know, the contractors, when they come into this game, they give you a very attractive bid, knowing that they're gonna get change orders, and their change orders are gonna be a whole lot less attractive than their unit costs under their initial bid. And so, you know, they help us a lot on managing our costs and managing our margins on that. ...And, and, you know, we had to establish ourselves in the market, right? We were a new player. We were unknown, untapped, both in terms of building and operating a water utility, as well as being a developer, you know. Can you execute? It's not an easy thing.
And, I'm flattered by the market's reactions and the comments that we get back, because the biggest comment I get from our home builder customers is: "Oh, my God! Get more land. Do this in other markets. You guys are really good at this." And, you know, I do think we are good at it, but I think the overall experience of delivering utilities together with the land development is so much more friendly for the home builders, right? They're not dealing with the utility department, which, you know, they call in for an inspection, and three days later, somebody comes out and takes a look at it and says, "Yeah, you did it wrong. Do this." And they're down for that amount of time. We're on site, you know? When we get there to a point of a utility inspection, our guys are there.
They're there, they're there the same day, and, you know, they, they don't have any downtime. They're contractors that, you know, they're framers, all that stuff. When they get all this stuff going, you know, when the water inspections on this are so much smoother for them. And so having that combined within the same entity has been very helpful. And we are interested in doing this at other places. I mean, we are out there. You know, we drove by a lot of landholders and, you know, I know who the landowners are, and, you know, I meet with them. I would love for them to be a little bit more decisive on selling their land, joint venturing their land, developing their land, and us doing water utilities, any and all of the above.
So, you know, the most attractive thing, and this is something that I think we focused on this year, is the true delineation between the Denver metropolitan area's growth to the Lowry Range, you know, our service area. And you all can see on our website, we've got lots of maps and illustrations of our service area, you know, one's right behind me, you probably can't see it. But you know, our service area is 24,000 acres of contiguous property at the Lowry Range, which is, you know, part of unincorporated Arapahoe County. And you guys can give your impression of where development sits compared to what is really a 5-mile line of development barrier, you know, bounded by that property. And you know, this is a unique piece of property.
The State of Colorado owns it. It's owned in trust for generating income for K-12 public education here. So State of Colorado and all western states, frankly, when at statehood, formed these land trust entities, and the federal government gave these states land to manage for funding public education. And in Colorado, you know, they got every Section 16 and every Section 36 and every township range throughout the State of Colorado. So it was this gigantic checkerboard at the original statehood. And over the last 150 years, they've traded, they've sold, they've acquired, and consolidated a lot of these holdings. They currently have about 2.5 million acres of surface land throughout the state. Lowry is a large portfolio. It's not their largest, but it is their most valuable.
I mean, the twenty-seven thousand acres that they have out there is their single most valuable asset in their portfolio. And so they look at that, you know, as to say: How are we gonna develop this? What-- This is a special piece of property, and it can be a lot of things, right? It doesn't have to be a hundred thousand homes. You know, it can be... It can have opportunities for recreation. It can have opportunities for education. It can have opportunities for, you know, affordable housing. It can have, as, as you guys saw, it can have opportunities for beautiful housing. I mean, there's million-dollar homes right bordering the State Land Board's Lowry Ranch. And so you look at it, and it has a spectrum of opportunities. That's the good news. Oh, my God!
Look at all these opportunities that we can do here. Bad news is: Oh, my God! Look at all these opportunities. What the heck do I do? And so, you know, they're thoughtful. They, they're looking at it. They've looked at it. I've participated... in the last 35 years I've been here, I've participated to 6 design charrettes, you know, bringing in experts that are either from, you know, either, like, the CU Real Estate School or, you know, Urban Land Institute, any of the, you know, big, heavy thinkers in real estate as to, how do you, how do you look at a big piece of property like this? And so, you know, maybe some of those efforts were early because the metro area was farther away from Lowry, but it's not today. I mean, as you guys saw, it's not at all.
It's, it's right there. And so that's a key opportunity for us. It's a question of when.
Just to, just to follow up on that or just a comment. So it, it seems over time in, in the lease, you know, Pure Cycle pays a royalty on water that we, that we develop, to the State Land Board. Is that, is that a good way to think of it?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
How has that changed over time, just in the last, you know, 24 months or 3 years? Is that royalty growing? Is the-
Yeah, strong acceleration.
Is the land board happy with-
Yeah, they're finally, they're finally seeing the benefits of this.
Right.
We've spent millions, you know, we've probably invested $50 million-$60 million into water and wastewater, and distribution, and wells, and reservoirs out there, and they're starting to see, you know, significant revenue. We're, you know, within the next 3-4 years, we'll become the largest non-oil and gas lessee royalty earner for them.
That seems like it's evolving into, you know, good partnerships.
Yeah.
And so you've put yourself out as a valuable resource for them to work with them in a constructive way, too, I assume.
So, you know, it's just, it is owned by a governmental entity, and sometimes they don't move exactly the pace that, you know, private enterprise would move, but, you know, they're also, you know, pretty steady Eddie as they start that. Once that ball gets rolling, you know, it stays rolling.
Mm-hmm.
I just like to give it a little nudge every now and then, and so we spent, I know Adam spent a lot of time, you know, "Well, did you think about this?" And there's no day to make you - in case you were all wondering, there's no day I wake up, I don't think about it. There's no day my head hits the pillow that I don't think about it, you know? So that's a... That certainly is top of mind. It is a terrific opportunity, you know, whether we're the developer or not. I think we can add value as the developer, but we don't have to be. You know, I'm just happy to be, you know, having that 24,000 acres as our, as our service area.
There's—That's a place that will develop a lot of our water assets. And that was the intent, right? So that they could generate royalties and that they could benefit from the increased land value of water and wastewater on the land. And we see that all the time. You know, I see opportunities, you know, I bought Sky Ranch cheap. We add water and wastewater, and it becomes very valuable. You know, there's lots of raw land that I'm trying to buy at, you know, $18,000-$20,000 an acre, and when I put my water on it, you know, it could be worth $60,000-$70,000 an acre just by that.
you know, they have that enhanced value of having water available to it, but then further, the $50 million-$60 million that we put into facilities there increases the attractiveness of that opportunity because it's already there, ready to go.
While the State Land Board hasn't developed yet, it seems like a great opportunity for Governor Polis, who's done a nice job on, you know, as governor of the state, you know, to sort of, you know, potentially pursue some of his goals for lower-income housing, entry-level housing. It just seems like such a perfect way for a public-private partnership. So well, thank you for that explanation.
Yeah. You know, sometimes I wonder, I'm a water geek, and I find myself in, you know, the school board, or I find myself into politics and, you know, but, but those are... It's super interesting. You know, it's fascinating to see some of those drivers and how we can help achieve, you know, very broad thinking, perspectives on the value that we're bringing to the community.
Are you thinking 3 years, 5 years, 10 years? Like, if you are-
Yes!
Ten years.
All of those.
A little closer in talking about infrastructure, Mark. It's really impressive to see the development and the acceleration of the development in Sky Ranch. To that end, there still is, you know, no commercial services and retail in the area. That likely will be coming next, but I think you've mentioned in the past, a key piece to that development is going to be the rebuilding of the interchange-
Yeah.
off of I-70. Can you just remind us what that takes? Maybe a potential timeline that would really help accelerate and then continue the growth that we're seeing now.
Right. So, you know, well, you all online won't be able to see this, but to give you a perspective, you know, our existing interchange is right here, and we've got the full design of the new interchange.
Great.
And so we, we went through a planning study with with CDOT and Arapahoe County 18 months ago that got us the full design of the interchange. What's it gonna look like? You know, and we looked at all the options. Was it gonna be a, a redo of this interchange or a new interchange that's located a little bit over here? And ultimately, they wanted to move it over, so it lines up with the section you had commented on. Hey, this is a major transportation boulevard, you know?
Right.
It really is that way so that you've got through traffic all the way up to the airport, and so that's an important component of it. We're in the permit process right now with the same entities, with CDOT, with Arapahoe County. We should get that permit for the interchange, maybe January, February. It's called 1601 permit, and so we should get that. You know, we do all the work on environmental rights-of-way, you know, timeline for construction, funding for construction. You know, that's an important component of that, and so we've been working with Arapahoe County. Arapahoe County is gonna impose what they call an impact fee.
So it'll be a fee that you pay at your building permit that will provide a portion of the revenue on that, and then we've set aside mills to help fund that so that we've got all the funding mechanisms so that it's not us funding that, right? We'll bond that interchange separately from the bondings that we do to get us our reimbursables back. But we're the entity that helps control that funding, right? CDOT. You know, they don't build the interchanges because growth creates that interchange, and so they want growth to help do that. And then, you know, the mechanism for doing that is a fee on the building permits, and the consultants go through this calculation of, you know, what's the geographic area around the interchange that is gonna benefit from that?
And those are the fees that come in to pay for that interchange. So it does several things for us. I mean, one, it's a very attractive infrastructure to the community. But then secondly, it also opens up a lot of the current restrictions that some of the big commercial wants, right? Because it, you've got to have those big trucks, and the big trucks can get on and off here, but it's just not as convenient. It's easy to get on, it's harder to get off, and so they want that. You know, that's a big advantage for them. And so that'll open up a lot of that. We're looking at a time frame of finishing, you know, if we get that permit in 2025, you know, maybe we go to bond on that late 2025.
We'll get the contractors lined up, so by the end of maybe 2026 or early 2027, we have that interchange. So it's a couple of years out, but it's still a component of that process. And then, you know, concurrently with that, once we've got that permit, a lot of these guys, it takes them that much time to get out here, get it built, you know, whether it's a big box store, whether it's a big grocer, whether it's, you know, we've got some flex space, we've got a, you know, a big space that we can set aside for, as you were referring to earlier, you've got a lot of distribution centers, you know, light industrial, that's a big user out here. Provides a lot of AV.
You hear me talk a lot about assessed value and why that's important to us, because that is the translation that gives us a quicker timeline to get our reimbursables back. And so, you know, all that stuff is looking to time itself out in the next 2 years, which, you know, is also corresponding to the number of rooftops that these guys want to see, right? We have 700 rooftops now. We're doubling that, as you've heard us talk about three phases of Sky Ranch, the next three phases, each of them having about 230 lots, coming online in the next 12 months. And so that puts us at about 1,500 units, which is kind of that number, you know?
And then around Sky Ranch, you know, like you were saying, boy, not only does not Sky Ranch not have it, neither does anything else around Sky Ranch have it. And so all those can kind of traffic into that same area, and it becomes a, an important opportunity for grocer, for fuel, for, you know, big box. You know, I'd love to see a Home Depot. I go to Home Depot even when I don't even need anything. Of course, I grew up with a family, a house of women. Home Depot was a good option for me some days.
So Harmony has how many homes, roughly? What's their-
So that's a big development. I'd say that's a little bit bigger than we are. If you take a look at that, they don't have the commercial for Harmony. So the advantage that commercial does is it allows us that we make 4 times the tax revenue from commercial than you do from the residential. And so if Harmony doesn't have that commercial, then what they have to do is they have to recover that through their lot prices. And so their lot prices are a lot higher than ours. And the homebuilders are building the exact same product. You know, they're building the exact same home on, you know, Harmony, and it's—they're gonna charge them $600 and something for it, where they're gonna charge our guys $400 and something for it.
And their roof counts will help our commercial-
It will.
because they're right next door.
Yeah.
So.
And we'll... You know, by then, we should get some of the interconnecting roadwork. You know, this, you can see here. So this road, our responsibility was to bring... Is that right? No, this way. Our responsibility was to bring the road here, which we have, and then Harmony builds it the rest of the way here. And so that's a little bit later in their phases, but they're looking at this segment of the project as well. And that's just a thoroughfare, right? All those guys are gonna come right through us to go to the interstate, and so then you pass right by the commercial.
How many homes are left in Harmony?
They've got a lot. I would say they're probably... If, if we have 3,200 homes, 5,000, when you add the, the commercial SFDs, they've probably got 4,500, so another 1,000 homes than us.
What's the overlap between builders, the same builders and Harmony guys do?
Mostly.
Yeah.
Different price point.
So I, I'll just remind everybody on the call, if you have a question and you want us to call on you and unmute you, you can raise your hand or message me in the chat group. Seems like one person, Mark Mandel, typed in a question, wanted to know about our strategy for buying back shares, if we have any plans to increase that or-
Yeah.
Use of cash for that.
You know, fair question. We, you know, we were buying shares. Well, we buy shares every week, every month, you know, so we're in the market buying shares on a continuous basis. And, you know, when the stock was weakening, we accelerated that. Maybe some people would like us to accelerate it more. Some people would say, "Get out of the market because I don't want you competing with me buying shares at that price." And so, you know, we will continue to deploy what we believe and what we are comfortable with, on a go-forward strategy, acquiring shares on a monthly basis. We're not gonna set a market price on it. We're not gonna sweep the market on it, but we are gonna keep buying in the marketplace and make sure that not only are we-...
You know, non-dilutive, but we're actually, you know, reducing that denominator.
Mark, in years past, we've taken a tour of the water treatment facility. Early years, rather challenging to run it with so little-
Yeah.
flow in there, but now-
Feedstock. We call that feedstock.
Feedstock. But now you've got 700 roofs. You're going to expand that significantly. What's the existing capacity in place right now and plans to expand it and grow in line? And how do you think about that from a capital standpoint?
It's a good question. You know, so the plant, you know, we're, we're currently serving 700 connections. The plant could serve close to 3,000 connections, and then we can make some, probably some minor, minor CapEx. If the plant cost us $12 million upfront, we can probably invest another $3 million-$4 million to get to build time. You know, so the hard part was coming out of the ground. And, and you're right, the hard part was you come out of the ground with a plant that can do 3,000 units, and you've got three. It doesn't work very well. And so we were, we were batching it back then. We are no longer batching. We're continuous, continuous, processing now.
And then we've got, you know, basins that aren't being used that are sort of this extra basin that we're experimenting with, doing some, you know, sexy things with, cleaning up water to a higher standard and that sort of stuff, that we can bring online as we continue to grow with that, and then another pretreatment process that'll get us to the full build-out. But, you know, the nice thing about it is that's, you know, we've grown into that. We've paid for that with our own equity, and, and it increases our margins for the taps that come in, you know? So as, as we continue to add those taps, they really do amortize... They were really intended to be the leverage for that, but the company was, you know, successful enough that we had the equity. We had the equity.
We had the capital to be able to build that at the most efficient size we could, and now we have high margins, and we're realizing that every tap we get.
How does that work in the Lowry Range? We're responsible for building out-
Yes.
-the infrastructure?
Yeah.
Much bigger facility for-
It would be. We'll have a bigger footprint. We already have it, actually. We have the land for it. So the Sky Ranch footprint, Sky Ranch Reclamation Plant footprint is about 10 acres. We already have 35 acres at Lowry that we acquired, and so it's actually right here. And so we have a small plant there that we will decommission, but it was serving the Department of Human Services when they had that Ridgeview Campus there. And then we've got a small reservoir here, so a lot of the components of that, plumbing-wise, as well as the footprint, as well as some of the grading for our full build-out plant. And that 35 acre campus will handle, you know, 100,000 homes.
Now, we don't think that there's gonna be 100,000 homes on Lowry, or if there is, it's, you know, beyond our 60,000 capable portfolio, but we would, we would love that, you know, 'cause we'll get more water. We're good at that, you know, as you see, and I know some people are like, "Well, you got enough water. Don't buy any more," you know, but we buy it when it's very convenient. It's gotta be right where we want it. It's gotta be right next to where we want it, in the market that we want it, the type of water that we want, and patience is prudent in the water game. It's glacial sometimes to draw upon. Why don't you make the...
Mute, unmute the mics, and if, as opposed to raising your hand, if you're having technology challenge, you know, we'll unmute everybody, and we'll see how noisy it gets. But if you have a question, go ahead and shout it out. Somebody... David Maley, are you online? Can you hear us? Let me see if our system is working. Give us a shout-out. Bob?
Yeah, it's David.
Bob Sloss?
David. It's David. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Great. Okay, we can hear you. I was just making sure if we had a techno-
Well, why don't I ask a question? So you talked some about what you do with cash flows. What will it take to actually start paying a dividend? What's the hurdle that gets you to do it?
Good question. Good question. You know, I think our philosophy is that we wanna make sure our recurring revenue is in excess of our budget, our annual overhead, you know, and we're pretty close. I'd say our recurring revenue is in that $4 million range, and our annual budget's right around that $5 million range. So, you know, putting up another phase of Sky Ranch will put us over the top, and I think, you know, a lot of folks look at water utility companies for that very dividend, right? And I agree with those that have said it opens up a whole new shareholder group. I agree with that.
and we want, we want access to that shareholder group, and we wanna be prudent about doing it, and we wanna be able to do it and then be able to keep it, and not only keep it, but increase it, right? You wanna see that. That's the... It's not, it's, you all do the work, right? You all do the analytics on it, but, you know, the more and more of money management is being done by AI, and AI is gonna wanna have these metrics where if you declare it... You got to keep it. If you keep it, you got to raise it. If you raise it, you got to keep it, raising it every year. And so we want to, as we go out with that, that's the philosophy. We don't want to just do it because that's what we're supposed to do.
We want to do it, and we want to do it in a way that it can be maintained and increased and continue to generate that interest. But good question.
Mark, this is Dan Lewis. Can you hear me?
I can, Dan.
Thanks for the presentation and answering the questions. Could you give us some clarity on understanding the competitive dynamic in water? So you have your base of operations is water, I guess, it centers around Lowry Range. How should we think about your cost to deliver water when you extend beyond Lowry Range, you know, in the direction towards Sky Ranch? Who are the competitors in water? Where is their source of supply, and how to what extent do you have a cost advantage relative to those other providers? Just trying to get a sense of, you know, what makes you a low-cost provider in what areas.
Good question. You know, one of the things that genuinely gives us a competitive advantage is that our water really originates where we're going to use it. You know. And you know, this illustrates our system, and you can see that by virtue of the yellow lines are transmission lines. And you know, not only does that give us existing water and wastewater on Lowry, but you know, we made that investment in the water line that takes it all the way up to Sky Ranch and oversized that line. So that line needed to be 12 inches to be able to supply Sky Ranch. We wanted to be competitive. We knew that there were gonna be, you know, opportunities for us to provide service next to Sky Ranch, and so that line's actually 24 inches.
We've got not double, but four times the capacity. I mean, this is the rule of the circumference of a pipeline, but, you know, going from a 12-inch line to a 24-inch line, you get four times the transmission capacity of throughput on that. So we do have excess capacity, do have that line in place, and really have the ability to extend service to all the properties around Sky Ranch. And, you know, we're, that's why we're aggressively pursuing those types of options. A good question.
So, but what about—who are the competitors? Talk about their supply, where, where they're located, and why do you have a cost advantage?
So, so really, the only competitor for us is gonna be the City of Aurora, right? I mean, they're large. They're the second-largest city in Colorado. And, you know, they're right next to where we are. They surround us. You know, they have their own independent water portfolio, and, you know, they are aggressive. They want to come out, and they want to get... They've got a lot of land that's annexed. I mean, if you take a look at this illustration, everything in green and everything in orange is annexed to the City of Aurora. So they've got three times the amount of annexed, undeveloped annexed land than they do developed land, and their portfolio is at the limit to meet what they currently have built. So they've got to triple their portfolio.
Man, I'm in the market against those guys, and, you know, buying 100 acre-feet is hard, you know, because it's fractionated like that. You know, they've got to go out and buy thousands, tens of thousands of acre-feet of water and develop it, and they're gonna do it, right? They're gonna be aggressive. They're gonna go get it. But the interesting thing about doing that is they can, but they have to go farther and farther away. You know, they have to go 50, 80 miles to get water. And what does that mean? It means it costs them a ton of money to bring it back to the city. What does that translate into? Tap fees. They have to continue to raise their tap fees to cover the cost of getting the water 50, 70 miles away and bringing it back to the city.
Well, that's gonna put a competitive advantage on us, right? Our water's right where we're using it. You know, we're gonna keep our tap fees slightly less than Aurora, but if that continues to go that way, you can see the trajectory of where that price of water is gonna be, because the cost of getting it farther and farther away. So I think that's an opportunity, and really, we'll just detail why it's a competitive advantage for us. It's only gonna be better as it continues to grow, and as the cost of getting that incremental acre-foot of water is farther out.
The tap fees in and of themselves are likely to increase at the rate of inflation or faster than the rate of inflation, not because Pure Cycle's costs are going up more, but because the alternative-
That's right.
is gonna go up a lot faster.
That's right. All the, all the low-hanging fruit's gone, right? I mean, we developed the close-in water 60, 70 years ago.
... Okay. Just to be clear, how does, you're adding, you've got the capacity for 60,000 taps currently today?
Mm-hmm.
You got 700+?
Call it 1,800.
Or 1,800. But you're adding maybe over the next year, yeah, 700.
Yes.
How do you—what's the opportunity set, realistically, for the company to accelerate that piece there? And it's gonna be in step function, right? I mean, that's—it's not gonna be, hey, we're gonna develop-
Yeah.
on Sky Ranch. We're just gonna do it a little faster. It's gotta be done in step function.
And that's likely, you know, it's not linear.
Right.
The world would love life to be linear and predictable. And so, yes, we are gonna accelerate the development of Sky Ranch, and that'll help, you know. But as we discussed, you know, when we got into this business, and I remember, you know, taking the first investments in the water out here, and the market just looked at me and said, "You know, you're crazy." And they were right. I was. You know, my wife tells me that every day. But, you know, it was. It took 30 years for the metropolitan area to grow out to where we are. Now, it is there. And so the interesting thing is, it's not— Yes, Sky Ranch lots will accelerate, but also, everything going on in the Denver area is going on in our sandbox. It's all around us.
And so whether it's our neighboring property or the property that's gonna be along the pipeline or Lowry, all of those are gonna be in play over the next five years. And so what you're gonna see is you're gonna see a layering of projects, and, you know, each project will be, have its own segment, it'll have its own competitive advantages, it'll have its own attractiveness, but it's just more and more projects now that all of Denver is out here. I mean, there isn't, we can't go west, so it's all east. It's pretty developed out south. It's reaching up towards Fort Collins on the north, and the I-70 corridor's been the ugly stepchild because it wasn't sexy. There is nothing pretty out there. The land looks that way for the next 1,000 miles, all the way to Minneapolis.
the local market here, the supply and demand is very well in balance, and there's-
No, I, you know, I would say, you know, there's still more demand than there is supply, you know, for particularly at the entry level. There's just no, no projects out there. And, and then the delivery of it, you know, you might see a sign that said, oh, you know, houses for $400, you know, but most people want a roof on their house, so.
Good.
Well, again, you know, thank you guys for coming out, for those that are listening online, you know, thank you for your continued confidence in your investment dollars. And, you know, if something comes up that you wanna drill down on, you know, don't hesitate to give me a call. And, you know, while I think we posted a great Q3, we're looking forward to a great year-end, so stay tuned.
Thank you, Mark.
You're welcome.
Thank you, Mark.