Greetings, and welcome to Pure Cycle Corporation's year-end 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions after the presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Mark Harding, President and CEO of Pure Cycle. Mark, over to you.
Thank you, Jenny. Good morning, and welcome. As we mentioned, this will be our fiscal year-end 2023 call. Excited to be able to highlight some of our activities, the financial results for the last fiscal year, and really kind of give you guys an idea of how the company is doing with each of its business segments. For logistics, there is a slide deck for this presentation. If you go over to our website, at purecyclecorp.com, there'll be a tab on the landing page that says, "Join the live presentation." You can click on that, and you'll see the slides for that. I've been asked to note for those that are gonna be listening to this after the call or listening to the rebroadcast, we'll have the audio presentation put up on the website.
So you can click on the audio, and then you'll have the, the slide deck as well. So you can click through the slides and kind of match the audio to the slides as well, if you're listening on a rebroadcast of it. So with that, I'm gonna start, and first thing we've got to do is talk about the forward-looking statements and the fact that statements are not necessarily historical facts and may be incorporated by reference in this presentation. I think most of you are familiar with the forward-looking statements, but we'll get the lawyers out of the room and kind of get on with talking a little bit about the year. Do it a little bit different this year.
I know, most of you are gonna be familiar with the company, and so for those of you that are gonna be new to the company, you can kind of see, run to our website. There's a ton of different resources on the website that will be a little bit more in depth about the company, what each of our business segments are, and sort of the portfolio that we have. What we're gonna do is talk a little bit about our strategies, talk a little bit about how we measure performance, a little bit about the asset trajectory, and then kind of the objectives and the capital plan, the company charts in.
One of the things that we do describe a lot of is kind of our highly valuable assets, and as many of you have heard me talk from time to time, what our most valuable asset really is, who we get to work with at our company, our people here. You've heard me talk about the growth of those assets and our leadership team continues to grow. So we continue to add human capital to the company to continue to execute all of our business segments. We have just a tremendous board of directors, very strong, you know, punch above our weight, necessarily for a small company with the caliber of the board of directors that we have.
And each of our business segments are really complementary, where we add value in one, we add value to all. And so you'll get a little bit of flavor for how we invest in each of our business segments, and then a little bit about how the investments and the assets are performing. So with that, I want to talk a little bit about our leadership team. I want to welcome Marc Spezialy to the team. This makes three Marks in leadership positions in the company, and I'm not sure if there's a correlation to the name and the smart fact. I'm just saying, we've got a lot of smart folks here, and a lot of them named Mark. But Mark joins us as our CFO.
We continue to rely on the wisdom and experience of Scott Lehman to direct our engineering, and then Dirk Lashnits, who handles our land development segment. So continued strong leadership team within the company. We operate as most of you know, we operate in three complementary business segments, the water and wastewater resource development segment, where we have a strong portfolio of water rights. We develop those water rights under a cradle-to-grave approach, where we own the water, we develop the infrastructure that diverts it, that pulls it to the surface, treats it, delivers it to our customers. We collect that back, and we process that water and reuse that water supply.
We have, in the last few years, really excelled at land development, and we're developing one of the more highly respected master planned communities in the Denver metropolitan area. And really succeeding, not only for developing the land, you know, in a smart and efficient way, but also making sure that we're developing that land in an affordable entry-level market segment, which is really benefiting us in kind of a diversity of market segments in the housing business. And then more recently, really adding single-family rentals to that, holding back some of those lots that we have that we're developing and delivering to our home builder customers and keeping those lots for ourselves to have homes for single-family rentals.
So each of these segments really do relate to the other one, and as we invest in each of them, all of them are benefiting. So you see a strong leverage effect on how these investments add to the entire portfolio to the company. Taking a look at the next slide, strong asset portfolio. What's important about our assets is not only how valuable they are in our business segments, but how we continue to grow each of them, and that we're still very early on in each of these segments. You hear me talk a lot about, you know, our highly appreciated assets that we've had, and some of these we've had for a very long time. You know, our water and wastewater assets we've had for more than 30 years.
If you take a look at just that segment alone, that's, you know, we continue to grow that segment. We got about $64 million in total assets in that particular segment, and at our current rates and charges, and we'll talk a little bit more about this later in the presentation, but it has the capacity to generate over $2 billion in revenue potential. Our land development segment, you know, we bought those, bought that land, right? We bought that, you know, at the height of the Great Recession in 2010. Very low basis in that, about $4.5 million.
As we'll highlight a little bit more, you know, that, that asset continues to generate very strong returns and has more than about $500 million of asset potential or revenue potential in its continued development. Then taking a look at our newest segment, where we continue to grow. We have about $5.4 million in 14 single-family rental homes currently to date. We have a unique ability to carry forward some of the equity value that we have in the land and the water side of that. And so what we have is a strong leverage opportunity and a tax advantage way of renting those out and having that asset, which has a fair market value of about $7.2 million, continue to grow.
We're looking at growing that segment up to more than $100 million with a couple hundred units in our Sky Ranch community, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. What I wanna do is jump straight into some of the financial results for the year and some of the key performance indicators, let you know a little bit about the key takeaways and kinda how we think about that. So, this year, we generated about $14.5 million and about $8 million in gross profit areas. Revenues are down just a bit, and it's largely due to timing of the starting of phase II-B .
You know, as interest rates started to get really wonky about this time last year, some of our home builder customers really wanted us to, you know, give them a 90-day breather to see how this was gonna stabilize out. And so that, on a percent complete basis on how we develop our lot revenues, really was the reason for a lot of the shift in some of these revenues. Also, they had some timing gaps in some of our fracking last summer, and it was really due to advancing technologies on now drilling and fracking even longer laterals. They started out at 1 mile, they were going to two miles, and in some wells, they're now at three-mile laterals, and so there's a little bit of a learning curve on fracking those three-mile horizontal wells on there.
They haven't really lost any of these revenues. We're sort of just pushing and adjusting the timing variances of these into Q1 and into fiscal 2024. Net income and earnings per share continue to generate strong net income and earnings under great margins and return on our assets, and I'll highlight a little bit of that in some of the details here. Okay. Taking a look at, we often talk about our highly appreciated assets and the healthy margins, and one of the things I thought I'd do is really try and highlight them for you. Taking a look at each of the three segments, our water segment, our land development segment, and our SFR segments, you know, gross margins in here are tremendous opportunities.
A lot of it is just because of the length of time and, you know, our disciplined approach to acquiring these assets and how we develop these assets in each of the segments. You know, our water assets, how we look at those, we look at those on, gross margins, excluding depreciation, so it's kind of a gross margin, EBITDA, approach to it. You know, we have, both tap fee margins in there as well as the usage revenue margins. In our land development segment, you know, our gross margins there are extraordinary. Those do include not only the opportunities that we generate when we sell lots to the builders, but also through the public improvement reimbursables that we get. We've talked a lot about that, through...
As we build the roads, curbs, and gutters, we turn those over to the governmental jurisdictions, and then we get paid back for those investments through various funding mechanisms and municipal bonds and those types of activities. And then recently, our SFRs, which continue to generate high margins for us, largely because of the equity role that we have in carrying forward the land and the water opportunity there. So gives you kind of a framework for not only, you know, how we're generating the revenues on that, but what the margins are on each of those business segments. Talk a little bit about where our revenues come from.
In our water and wastewater segment, as you can see through this illustration, really, three-quarters of our revenues come from sales to oil and gas, and then really taking a look at the water or the residential, wastewater treatment and commercial water that are allocated from taps, largely due to irrigation. Tap fees are largely generated through our land development segment at Sky Ranch, although we do have continued growth in some of our other business, acquisitions in the Wild Pointe sector, where that's an existing community, and we're building out. Most of the residential is completed there, but we continue to build out some of the commercial in there and some of those commercial water customers. And then what this continues to show is a tremendous, continued growth in our customers, year-over-year.
So we've got a 20% customer growth, and that's largely driven by the Sky Ranch project, but great organic growth in our customers. Land development, talk a little bit about, we delayed the start of that phase II-B , which we talked about. There was about a 90-day delay at the request of our home builders. And really, it was just because they wanted to kind of see how the market segmentation was going to shake out with the rising interest rates. And then all this really did was pushed a little bit of our percent completion in phase II-B into fiscal 2024. Market, I'd say, is fairly stabilized.
When you take a look at interest rates, they're more attuned to kind of a historical average at that 7%, rather than, you know, what was an anomaly at the low rates. But what we are seeing is the strength of our market segmentation. That entry-level market segmentation is really enhancing the Sky Ranch project. It's, it's really providing our home builder partners the opportunity to continue to build and be aggressive in the marketplace.
And so one of the things that we've seen is a demand for not only what we're doing in Two B, but to start Two C and overlap the next 211 lots with the 200 that we delivered or that with the 211 in phase II-C, with about the 200 and 15 lots that we're doing in phase II-B. So you'll see a little bit of that overlap in coming quarters in fiscal 2024. Single-family rentals, one of the things that we're able to do with this delay in the start of the Two B project was expand our portfolio of single-family rentals in phase II.
We went from what we originally had reserved as 40 lots to 65 lots, and really was an opportunity for us to become the first customers in Phase 2B for our home builders. And that's great for us because we've got an efficient way of delivering those homes to the market. And then also, our home builder customers are really adding to their portfolio and how they're building these units and getting started with the rental homes that we actually hold in our portfolio. So we're very excited about this segment, how it continues to grow and the opportunities for us in renting these out and seeing continued strong demand.
As I've spoke from time to time, the thing that we are able to do is really rent these out as if they were a fair market value home at that $500,000 level. When in fact, you know, we've got incremental investment that we can finance with very affordable capital, you know, it's mortgage-based capital, and be able to leverage the continued expansion, not only to the balance sheet, but the income statement here. So we really like this segment, and we'll continue to grow it. We talk a lot about where our revenues come from and that we earn great margins, but that isn't the whole story.
It might be helpful for us to illustrate where we are in the cycle of development of these assets, i.e., you know, how much pedal we have left in each of these business segments with what's currently baked into the company, with what we own, with what we control. And so highlighting some of that's gonna be really giving you a flavor for how we look at it and, and the enthusiasm and excitement that we hold, not only for each of the business segments, but for how we grow this company. If you take a look at our water and our wastewater segments, you've heard me talk about this in the many, many times, where, you know, our water portfolio can provide service up to 60,000 connections. We're currently a little over 1,300 connections out of 60,000 connections.
So it gives you kind of an understanding of, you know, where we're extremely early on in the development of that utility segment. And, you know, our rates and charges, the tap fees, the cost of developing new water supplies and bringing them from farther and farther distances, really are the reflection of the cost of those tap fees continue to rise. We continue to mark and set our rates at a competitive rate to the market, but they continue to grow. And so we're very excited about that continued growth and the continued value of that asset. In the land development asset side, in Sky Ranch, as we highlighted in some of the previous slides, we're at about 700 out of 5,000 units. So we're still very early on in that.
We're about 14%, 14.5% of the total number of lots developing in that, and we continue to grow. You know, if you take a look at our balance sheet, we have a very, very strong balance sheet with a strong cash position and an even stronger liquidity position when you actually add in the receivable that we have for the municipalities that we build that infrastructure for. And then in our single-family rental segment, as we talked, we've got 14 completed units, and really, we're looking for 200, maybe even more, 200-300 units in that segment. So we'll continue to grow that segment, which really, again, illustrates how we're really early on in each of these segments. Water and wastewater customers and capacities, continued customer growth in utilities.
Really, what this is gonna illustrate, you know, we have 1,326, to be exact, and it really shows you where those are coming from. We got Wild Pointe, Sky Ranch, and our Lowry Range service area. And really one of the more hidden assets of the company is, you know, our service, our exclusive service area to over 24,000 acres of property that's in the right location in the Denver metropolitan area. As you take a look at some of the graphics on our website, it's that large pink area that really represents continued growth, and really, this kind of illustrates both the existing and new residential, as well as existing and new commercial growth in these segments.
Our largest customer in the water segment comes from oil and gas, and the outlook in oil and gas continues to look positive. Looking at it, you know, the field ownership has consolidated. It's changed hands several times over the last few years, but now is consolidated into kind of a couple of large local operators. The field is mostly de-risked, where you're seeing large pad site development, where they're now on each individual pad site. They've got all the takeaway infrastructure installed, the gas takeaway system, so they don't have to flare any of that gas. They take it away into the large distribution systems. And really, you know, developing it based on the backbone infrastructure they've got. So it's in that field development stage in the oil industry.
You know, we have something along the lines of one and a half rigs working this field on a continuous basis. A lot of that is gonna be drilled in and around our service area and in and around those Arapahoe County areas. So we're very optimistic about how this continues to add revenues to the company, and really for, you know, the foreseeable future. So look for continued growth and continued high performance in the oil and gas sector. Let me talk a little bit about some of our delivery capacities. We continue to, you know, when we take a look at a capital allocation, we continue to invest in wells and pipelines and storage, which add to the total availability of us to supply water.
So when you take a look at that, this is really an illustration of our supply and a diversified sources of supply, where we generate infrastructure in our surface water system, which is in the Boxelder Creek system, our groundwater system out at the Lowry Ranch, some of our groundwater assets out at Sky Ranch, and our existing customers on Lowry at the DHS facility, and then also our WISE infrastructure and water supply, which you hear me talk a little bit about, and you'll hear discussions in the 10-K about, which is our regional water supply. And when you take a look at the total capacity and what we're how we're using that water, we're really only using a collective 15% of our capacity.
So we'd still have lots of opportunity for adding more supply, and that's largely gonna come from oil and gas as that continues to grow. But as we continue to add more connections on Sky Ranch and more residential customers, really you'll see that that capacity ratio between our residential and our commercial customers kind of readjusts. So it gives you a framework where, you know, we still have lots of ability to generate additional revenues as we continue to see that demand for water grow in our service area and amongst our areas that we serve in unincorporated Arapahoe County. And then there's also, you know, kind of how we generate tap fee revenue from that.
So we have the ability, at current rates, actually, I think that $88 million really illustrates what we were looking to develop at, at the tap fee revenue of the same source of supply that we've got developed. And with the, the fee increases that we had, I think that exceeds more than $90 million now. So great capacity in our developed water system, which is why we continue to pay attention and make good investments there, because there's great capacity for us to grow. This illustrates kind of where we're at in our water portfolio. And so, as you've heard me talk about, we've got about 30,000 acre-feet of water, and that can serve about 60,000 connections.
When you really look at what we're using on that, and we're developing that largely through Sky Ranch, the existing number of connections at Sky Ranch, the total allocated supply is about 1,100 units, which is roughly only 2% of that supply. When you take a look at what we've got developed capacities for, we can supply another 2,500 taps of that water supply from what we had on the previous slide. So that's another $90-$95 million worth of tap fee revenue. And so, you know, we're really still just starting out on the water allocation in our portfolio. We have one of the largest unallocated portfolios in the metropolitan area.
Really, because of the growth of the Denver area out to our service area, this continues to be, you know, one where we have growth opportunities, not only in the water side, the tap fee connection charges, but also in the usage charges. Then a little bit about the land side. When you take a look at the land capacity, you know, we, we've been developing that over the most recent four years and taking a look at delivering lots to our home builder customers. You know, currently, we've got about a little over 720 lots that have been either delivered homes on or homes under construction on. And so that's about 14% of the total capacity at Sky Ranch.
When you take a look at adding everything into phase II, which is gonna be how we deliver phase II, A, B. A is 100% complete. You saw that illustration earlier. B is about 30%. C is just getting started at around 9%, and then D. So you look at that with all of phase II, you know, that would roughly add about 25%-27%, so about a quarter of the total capacity at Sky Ranch. And when you translate what we're making there to the balance of the residential and the commercial portfolios, that's where you get that, you know, roughly looking at about $580 million at current rates today. So a lot of pedal left on Sky Ranch, and we continue to be aggressive on continuing to deliver those on a just-in-time basis.
So our home builder partners really continue to enhance their margins on that without taking these large inventories. So it gives you a bit of feel for how our land side is, and then where we look to be and where we're going on our single-family rentals. If you take a look at that and, you know, we'll peg a market at 200 units, and right now, we've got just 14 units, so we're about 7% into those. And that 200 units is, you know, still less than 10% of the overall capacity of the residential units at Sky Ranch. And so we think that's a very conservative number to add to the portfolio.
There's room for us to be expanding beyond the 200 units, but this gives you kind of an illustration of where that looks to be with phases I and II-A, and then really all of II-B, C, and D with that other 55 units. So that would again carry us up to about 27% of the overall portfolio and then still have plenty of pedal left on that to generate, you know, annual revenues, you know, in excess of $6 million, somewhere close to $7 million. And then, you know, it's gonna be about a $100 million portfolio when you take a look at a couple hundred units on an average sale price at that $500,000.
And it, and it continues to grow, and appreciate it, you know, 4.5%-5% a year in these housing markets. So a very good, opportunity for us to continue to grow within that segment. This is some of the highlights of just the single-family rental. You've, you've seen me illustrate this before, but it shows our existing units, you know, the average, home per year, the projection into phase II, and then on through the balance of the project. So, it gives you a bit more metrics on that. So some of the, the key takeaways here. You know, we're looking at some very attractive gross margins. Not only gross margins, but return on assets and, and, and making sure that, you know, we continue to invest in those assets.
That's a part of our capital allocation plan, continued asset growth, and really gives you kind of the strength of our ability to take advantage of the investment opportunities here. And really a clear path to continue to maximize returns with this large asset portfolio and our historically low-cost basis. Each segment allows us to generate above-market returns and substantial organic growth within those things that we can control. Next slide. What's important is, not only for us to understand how you all measure our success, but also probably a little bit helpful for you to understand how we measure our success. And, you know, these objectives that we go through, as you've seen in this presentation, are very discrete, measurable objectives, you know, they have synergistic effects with these complementary business segments.
We look to allocate capital through expansion of these assets and continue to realize these great margin returns, and also look for acquisition opportunities which will complement our existing segments. You've heard me talk about the fact that we've got our nets out, and, and these asset values have been very, very high, historically. And then, you know, with the kind of a softening of the housing market, mostly in market segments other than the entry-level, I think the entry level is still highly sought after just because of a lack of inventory. And we've talked from time to time about, you know, the, just the, the anemic level of affordability in the Denver market. And I know that other major metropolitan markets struggle from that affordability factor as well.
But, it continues to give us opportunities to be in front of land, owners that, may have an interest in selling, continues to be in the front of water owners, as we can continue to expand our water portfolio, and then invest in our own assets so that we can continue to generate margins in each of our segments. We want to highlight, also that we are investing in ourselves. As you all note that we did authorize a share buyback program, and, you know, typical to the company's, profile, we're, doing that in a measured and consistent allocation, continuing to invest in buying back shares, quarter over quarter. So you'll continue to see us do that.
You know, we're not, we're not in it to support a particular share price, but by the same token, to illustrate to you, regardless of the share price, that we continue to think that we're extremely undervalued for what the company is doing, what our company opportunities are, and if the market doesn't continue to understand that, then we will continue to make that investment in ourselves. Finally, kind of a listing of our board and our management. We continue to benefit from the terrific expertise and guidance, and experience of a very diversified, very significant board of directors. So with that, I'm gonna turn it back to Jenny. We can see if we can open it up to some Q&A and really highlight any specifics that you all want to focus on.
Thank you very much, Mark. At this time, we will be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone keypad now. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. If you would like to remove your question from the queue, you may press star two. For any participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before you press the keys.... Please pause a moment while we poll for questions. Thank you. Your first question is coming from John Rosenberg of Laughlin Water Partners. John, your line is live.
Thank you. Good morning, Mark. Nice to-
Good morning, John.
Nice to meet you. One comment and one question. First, I'll get to the question. And by the way, nice to see the progress that you guys are making. What you didn't update, and I'm very curious about, is how is the school going? The charter school.
I hate it when they do that. You know, it's one of the true successes. One of the things that, I think it was one of my very first meetings that we did when we sort of made the decision that we were going to do the land development ourselves, was really to center this community on two key principles. One. Well, three key principles. One would be location. Being right off the interstate, we have just great transportation location. I mean, we are literally, our residents are literally on the interstate within a minute, and can go wherever they want to go. The second one was affordability, making sure that we affordability. I use that term loosely in the Denver market because nothing's affordable in the Denver market.
But when you look at entry-level, we wanted to make sure that our home builder customers would be competitive at that entry-level product. But the third one was education. And so when I sat down with our land planners, what we wanted to do was really center the community around. It is on our website, you'll see a lot of the pictures of the school site. But in terms of the land plan, the school was at the center point of the community, such that every child would have a local community, a local school within the community that they could walk to.
We went out and kissed a lot of frogs on the charter school opportunity, ended up partnering with a what was a true prince. You know, the National Heritage Academies is a group of charter schools that are headquartered out of Michigan, and they have over 100 schools in nine states, 60,000 students. We set a fairly ambitious goal of making sure that we could open and open early, and make sure that that was a selling point for all of our home builders, and we were able to achieve that this year. So we did open up those grades. I was privileged to be able to cut the ribbon on that, and open up grades K through seven.
We have something like 400 students there, with a weighted percentage of those students walking to school from our community, but we're drawing from all over, and so we get, we're getting students coming in from all aspects of the Denver area, and really liking the model that we have with that school. So, continuing with that, you know, what our objectives here is, we have a full K-12 campus, and we're the first K-12 campus for NHA in their national platform. They're very excited about it. They've got other K-12 campuses that they've got planned and are working towards, but we were their first K-12 campus, and we'll start work...
Not to rest on our laurels on opening the first phase of that school, but really, we'll start working on the high school portion of that with the planned opening of the high school in August of 2025, such that our seventh graders will be able to go to eighth grade at the existing school and then transition directly into high school for nine through 12 grades. But we're very excited about that opening of the high school—or I mean, the school.
That's great, and good to hear that you guys are making progress in that area. I'm sorry, one more question came to mind, something you've talked about in the past, just for an update. What about a big box store locating in proximity? You probably have some retail by now in Sky Ranch-
Surprisingly-
Or maybe you don't, but I know-
Yeah, surprisingly-
Kroger and-
Yeah. We have big box, you know, Kroger and big box retailers, whether that's a Lowe's or Home Depot or Walmart, any number of those. And, you know, surprisingly, they, the, you know, they're looking... I, I'm trying to work on incentivizing some of those folks to come, and they're sort of saying: Listen, you know, there's really not much you can do to incentivize us. We're looking at rooftops, we're looking at pull within the region, we're looking at infrastructure and all those sorts of things. And so, you know, we do have a good land plan for that commercial. Our residents are dying to get a grocery and a fuel station there, but we're probably still, you know, 18 months, two years out from getting some of that stuff into a groundbreaking form.
But there is a lot of interest and, you know, a lot of folks. We—it isn't that we're not talking to them. We are. They're putting pins in it. They really want to be here, but they need a little bit more rooftops to be able to get their flag in the ground on those.
In other words, everybody wants to be first to be second.
That's exactly... That's a great way to phrase it.
Okay. And just lastly, just a comment. Glad to see you guys started on the share repurchase, and I think that's a great, you know, validation of your model and cash flow capabilities.
Thank you.
So, I'll pass it on. Thanks. Good to hear from you.
Good to hear you.
...Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Bill Cunningham, who's a private investor. Bill, your line is live.
Hi, Mark. Thank you as usual for taking my calls. I greatly appreciate it.
You bet.
Actually, my first question was gonna be about commercial, which you just mostly answered. But I do remember, during your Investor Day, I think you made some general comments about the southern section of that commercial being possibly some sort of apartment development, which I think was a fairly significant number, possibly. And wondered if you might be able to say anything about that.
Yeah. We do have a placeholder for that and can go somewhere between 400-600 multifamily units there. And it's a good spot for it because not only does it add density, and that helps us in terms of assessed value and mill levies and taxes that help us with the reimbursables, but it's also a great spot for it on the transitioning between commercial and detached residential. So it'll be right along that southern border of that, and you're right. You know, I get lots of interest from folks on that, and really, we wanna be a little bit more mature before we put that product up, you know, because we wanna be...
We're looking at kind of that, being another one of the affordability factors in there. We wanna make sure that, that, that's an opportunity for folks that can transition from, and as we look at it, transition from a multifamily to a single family, multifamily rental to a single family rental to a single-family house, and really doing that all within the same, community and the same opportunity. And so, good that, good that you continue to highlight that, and, and I apologize for not being more specific about that in some of my commercial detail.
No, that's fine. I just thought, I know you're, you're still working out details, and so that's why I would kinda ask the question the way I did, because I know sometimes, you, you know, your plans constantly, you have to shift things as markets change and what your current thought is and what kind of feedback you're getting. So that's why I kinda asked the open-ended question that I did. So this was very helpful. And also the school—I mean, the apartment location would be directly adjacent to the school site also, right?
It would. It's not gonna, it may be, some of the units may be directly across the street, but some of them are gonna be on kind of the eastern portion of that area, really south part of the commercial, north part of the residential.
Okay, which is what? Like a five-minute walk to school from there?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So I think, I mean, I guess my point is just it's a very good close location for dense population to where the school is, so that looks interesting. You would also-
And really the-
Oh, go ahead.
I was just gonna highlight the location of the school is a five-minute walk for everybody.
Mm-hmm.
But it's gotta be a five-minute walk uphill for everybody.
Oh, okay. But, you know, and going home, it's not, though, right?
No, no, it is. It's uphill both ways.
5-minute walk in both directions, uphill in both directions?
It's echelon.
Okay. So, the other item that you had pointed out right next to your offices, at the Investor Day, was that large pad site that you thought, I think, work would start there in November, was your estimate in July, and I think it was something like maybe 16 wells or something would be drilled there.
Yeah.
I'm wondering what the things might look like with that at the moment.
It is currently fracking.
Good. Great.
Yep. We are delivering water to that one, and then we've got... I mean, we've had, literally our water system on for the entire, since really fiscal year-end, all of September. We had a bit of a, just because of the technology on that three-mile lateral, you know, they were on a pad site that was in the City of Aurora that we don't provide, because that's a City of Aurora issue.
But then they had another-- and, and then they were rolling off that one to one that was in our service area, and that was the, the gap, because they were having some technical difficulties on it. But you're gonna see some pretty, pretty healthy, pretty healthy revenues on the Q1 call in January, on the frack.
Good. That's great. Okay. Which is always your slow period on the, you know, on the home sales and, and things.
That's great.
So that's great to have that, so, so good. And then, let's see, there was... I think that's it, Mark. So thank you very much.
Thanks, Bill.
Okay, bye.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Bill Miller of Bill Miller Design. Bill, your line is live.
Mark, another great quarter and another great year. Congratulations.
Thanks, Bill.
Also, on your repurchase of stock, my goodness gracious, that is dramatic! I love it. My question however-
You can be taught.
You can be taught? I really-
You can be taught.
-hear that.
Well, you might get a different opinion from my wife.
Well, we didn't ask her this question. You almost always made reference to the acquisition pipeline. And here with interest rates higher, home building seemingly, except in Denver, a forgotten item on anybody's agenda.
What about the, some of the neighboring land, at this point?
So that's a great question, you know, and I do. You know, it's odd that I keep referencing it and nothing happening. But what I can tell you is, they also haven't sold anybody else. And so you know, it hasn't hurt us not to have acquired those. And in fact, you know, I think that overall raw land prices have weakened just because interest rates have gone up, and it makes it more difficult for a typical master plan developer. And in our particular case, you know, 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, you know, all of the opportunities that we have been and are continuing to pursue, are continued—they're still all on the table.
Okay, great. What do you have to pay for your mortgage, now on your homes, for rent?
I think, I think we're right or wrong. Some of ours, we locked in. I think four of the units, we locked in at, you know, that nice, attractive interest rate, at 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.
No, and that's great. Okay, well, just keep going. Sounds terrific.
Yeah.
How are you gonna get people to recognize your stock and your company and what you're doing?
Well, we're gonna, you know, 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 earning, and gross margins, and return on assets. So we'll continue to do that. You know, I'm out in the circuit doing presentations at some of the conferences, and we'll continue to put up good results and, you know, shout as loud as we can into the marketplace.
Great. Well, wonderfully well done, and we'll talk soon, I hope.
Thanks.
Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Greg Malachowski from Benchmark. Greg, your line is live.
Hey, Mark, how's it going?
Great. How are you, Greg?
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 at it alone, would obviously be very capital intensive. So where do you guys stand? Or have you given any thought to potentially just partnering with people who maybe wanna 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, you know, 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 development district or through, you know, payback from finished lots or builders? Is partnering anything you guys have given any thought?
Oh, 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. You know, we have so much equity in this project and, you know, with a land basis, as low as our land basis is, and the fact that we can not only leverage, you know, 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 the utilities, and so we bring a wet finished lot to the equation with very, very efficient means on it, right? Because we've added 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, we can bring that to a developer, not only on the multifamily, but commercial, where they come in. And it, and it doesn't matter. I mean, we've got a lot of interest on light industrial, where we can get a distribution center out there, and the thinking in on that is, you know, we probably need and are going to invest in upgrading the interchange, and so we're in the middle of that right now with CDOT on expanding it, and it, you know, it has a government acronym, but, you know, we've got a 1601 study underway, that which will give us a permit for developing the interchange, and we wanna be early on that. We have mill levies specifically set aside for that, so that doesn't have to come off our balance sheet.
But, you know, a distribution center there, where we've got higher capacity and more flexibility on truck access. They go vertical on that. We bring the pad site together with the utilities. They take the vertical investment on the infrastructure, they get it fully leased out on major long-term leases, and then we exit together with them on something like that. So we've had some of those conversations. That's kind of the detail of it. That's kind of our thinking on it, where, you know, it's not that heavy of a lift from our standpoint because of what we've already done on the site. And to your point, you know, we do benefit from the increased value. So again, it's another way for us to vertically integrate without having significant investment in there and investing in ourselves through, you know, partnerships with that.
We don't know that business, may not be something we wanna take the hits and bruises on learning that business, but there are those that do understand that business and are very good at it.
Okay, awesome. Well, that's great to hear. Thanks.
Thank you very much. Just as a reminder, if anyone has any remaining questions, please press star one on your phone keypad now. Okay, we have our next question coming from Elliot Wright. Sorry, apologies, Elliot Knight of Knight Advisors. Elliott, your line is live.
Thank you. Hi, Mark,
Elliot, good to hear your voice.
Well, 88 years old and still going. That's encouraging.
Would we all be so lucky?
Yeah, yeah, true. I'd like to make an observation. You've done an excellent job on this call of illustrating how early in the development stage the various segments of the business are. You have built a company. This company is extraordinarily well managed. You've built a company that has great financial strength. I really think it's time to get into the early stage of paying a dividend. You and I have talked about this before. It could be an annual dividend, but I think it would substantially broaden your potential stockholder base if you—it didn't have to... PCYO didn't have the, to have a star after it, saying, "Non-dividend paying company." You know, I wish you'd share that thought with the board and have them do something about it. It's great that you're buying back.
You bring up a good point. And again, that's another way that we continue to invest in ourselves and our ownership interests of those that own with us. And we do look at that very, very seriously every year, you know, and, and as you've seen, you know, our capital allocation strategy is pretty conservative, but, you know, we are continuing to build a very liquid balance sheet. When you take a look at the cash and the receivables, you know, having a $50 million liquidity position is pretty healthy. You know, we have a disciplined approach, and, you know, one of those metrics is to make sure that your recurring revenue exceeds your G&A, and we're very close to that, Elliot.
And so, you know, it's easy for us to waver beyond, you know, established and historic metrics, like, you can declare a dividend once your recurring revenue exceeds your G&A. And when that visual is there, you know, maybe that becomes something of heightened consideration. But I do agree with you that, you know, we will be declaring dividends, and we will be paying them, and we'll have a new access to people who invest in companies that are dividend-pay companies. So it will broaden our shareholder group, and it may help resolve some of the things that, you know, Greg and Bill and others were talking about on, you know, getting the market to appreciate and understand, you know, the awareness of the company. And so those are all key ways to do that.
Well, that's what we all want, and my comments included the comment of the financial strength to which you are now alluding.
Yep.
That's the reason why I think the company is in a position to pay a small dividend. That's all.
Yep. No, good work.
At eighty-eight-
Good work.
I love income. All right.
Well, at 60, I do, too.
Good. You're just a young whippersnapper.
That's right. I'm just getting started.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you very much. Well, that appears to be all the questions that we have in queue at the moment. I'm gonna hand back over to Mark for any closing comments.
Thank you, Jenny. So, again, terrific quarter. As you guys can see from the presentation, really, we do have a lot of pedal in, in, in our assets, and, and we're starting to, we're starting to use that. We're starting to press a little of those. We'll have some overlapping, segments of the land development side. We continue to press on, expanding our portfolio of the SFRs, so we're continuing to invest in that, on that side of it, and then continuing to invest on delivering more water to our industrial customers to make sure that we can continue to capitalize on that demand for oil and gas on the-- as they continue to build out that field.
So all three of those areas, we are expanding and continuing to invest in and really continuing to appreciate and respect the health of the liquidity and the strength of the balance sheet. So with that, we'll look to leverage that in some acquisitions and really continue to add to the pipeline of opportunities for the company. For those that are missing our early morning presentation and picking up on this and have a question as a result of the call or the slides, don't hesitate to give me a holler. And you know, we will look forward to several major market visits.
You know, I'll be back in New York, probably after the first of the year and see if we can't do another kind of Q&A session at the NASDAQ for some of that, for our New York family, and then, you know, other major metropolitan markets across the country. So with that, I wish you all and your families a terrific holidays, and we look forward to continued success in 2024. Thanks very much.
Thank you very much, everyone. That does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.