Good morning. My name is Abby, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the PulteGroup, Inc. Q1 2022 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded, and all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one once again. Thank you. Jim Zeumer, you may begin your conference.
Great. Thank you, Abby. Good morning. Thanks everyone for participating in today's call to discuss PulteGroup's first quarter earnings for the period ended May 31, 2022. Q1 represents another quarter of strong financial results and has gotten the year off to a great start for us. I'm joined on today's call by Ryan Marshall, President and CEO, Bob O'Shaughnessy, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Jim Ossowski, Senior VP of Finance. A copy of our earnings release and this morning's presentation slides have been posted to our corporate website at pultegroup.com. We'll also post an audio replay of this call later today.
Please note that as part of this morning's call, we will review our prior year results as reported and as adjusted to exclude the impact of a $61 million pre-tax charge associated with a bond tender and a $10 million pre-tax insurance benefit recorded in the period. A reconciliation of prior year adjusted results and reported financial results is included in this morning's release and within today's webcast slides. We encourage you to review these tables to assist in your analysis of our business performance. I also want to alert everyone that today's presentation includes forward-looking statements about the company's expected future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those suggested by our comments made today. The most significant risk factors that could affect future results are summarized as part of today's earnings release and within the accompanying presentation slides.
These risk factors and other key information are detailed in our SEC filings, including our annual and quarterly reports. Now, let me turn the call over to Ryan Marshall. Ryan.
Thanks, Jim, and good morning. As Bob will detail shortly, PulteGroup delivered outstanding first quarter financial results with year-over-year growth of 18% home sale revenues and 43% in adjusted earnings per share. The significant increase in our Q1 earnings per share reflects gains in a number of areas, including higher selling prices, expanded gross margins, increased overhead leverage, and our active share repurchase program. PulteGroup's first quarter financial results are just the most recent in a string of strong quarters that have raised our return on equity to 29.4% for the trailing twelve months. There is a lot for investors to be excited about in terms of the company's operating and financial performance.
Taking a step back from the specifics of our Q1 financial results, I think it's fair to say that the supply-demand dynamics of the first quarter were consistent with the trends the industry has been experiencing for the past year or more. In short, demand was strong, available inventory was scarce, and the incoming supply is limited. Let me take a minute to expand on these thoughts. On the demand side, consumer interest in purchasing a new home remained high throughout the quarter. With few exceptions, demand was strong across all the price points, buyer groups, and markets that we serve. The U.S. housing market continues to benefit from favorable demographics, a strong economy, an outstanding job market, and a rising wage environment. New home sales are also benefiting from ongoing and significant increases in rental rates for single and multi-family dwellings.
According to John Burns Real Estate Consulting, their numbers indicate that rental prices for single-family homes increased by upwards of 5% in 2021, while multifamily lease rates were up by approximately 13% over the prior year. Forecasts point to further increases in 2022. Even with today's higher prices and rising rates, owning a home can still make clear economic sense for many consumers. Not only can home buyers get a comparable or even lower monthly payment, but that payment is more stable over time. Given this demand strength, in the first quarter, we were able to raise prices in effectively all of our communities with sequential price increases in the range of 1%-5% common across the country. In addition to the fundamental strength in homebuyer demand, home price appreciation is benefiting from a lack of available inventory in both new and resale.
Similar to buying a new car these days, people who are actively shopping for a home understand how competitive the market is. This brings me to the supply side of the equation. As demonstrated by our first quarter results, our teams did an outstanding job advancing our homes through the construction process and even surpassed the high end of our closing guidance. I want to recognize the efforts of our home building operations to manage through the constraints in the availability of people and materials that are impacting everything from land entitlement and development to home construction. Depending on the specific market, the availability of labor and materials has, at best, remained the same, but in certain areas, conditions have gotten a little worse and build cycles have gotten longer.
Given these challenging conditions, our production timeline is extended by about one week in the first quarter and now stand at 145-150 days in most of our divisions. With only a couple of days remaining in April, unless dynamics change dramatically in the next couple of weeks, which does not look likely, any improvement in the supply chain would provide a more meaningful benefit to 2023 production. Bob's comments will include us reaffirming our guide for expected 2022 deliveries of 31,000 homes. I would highlight that this guidance assumes that the availability of labor and materials does not change for better or worse. With our production cycles remaining extended, we continue to tightly control sales in most of our communities across the country.
We appreciate that these restrictions can be frustrating for consumers, but it is the right strategic decisions given overall conditions. From both a customer experience and a business risk perspective, it doesn't make sense to extend our backlog out a year or more just to record another sign-up. Even with all of these challenges, I want to highlight that we started almost 9,000 homes in the first quarter and that we now have approximately 5,200 spec homes in production. The majority of these homes are in the initial start and framing stages that we would expect these houses to deliver in the back half of 2022. As we've noted on prior calls, our spec production is largely focused in our entry-level communities.
In sum, I think it's fair to say that housing demand remains strong, home prices continue to rise, and the supply of new construction homes coming to market is constrained. That being said, the Federal Reserve has been very clear in signaling that interest rates are going higher as they seek to control inflation that has hit 40-year highs. There are a lot of favorable market dynamics that can support ongoing buyer demand in the face of higher rates, but the Fed is intent on slowing down the economy, and this certainly has the potential to impact the housing industry. Given this dynamic, it makes sense for us to take actions to position our business for continued success. For now, this means focusing on our land acquisition practices.
Internally, we are committed to increasing our optioned lot position and have set a goal of having 65%-70% of our future land pipeline controlled under option. Our disciplined land investment process helped us to place some great land positions under control over the past several years and that we'll be closing on in 2022. Going forward, we will continue our thoughtful approach to investing in the business and will be prepared to make adjustments in response to changing market conditions. We certainly expect that our land teams can continue to identify tremendous land opportunities, but we want to make sure that only the best projects ultimately get approved. Now let me turn the call to Bob for additional comments on our first quarter. Bob?
Thanks, Ryan, and good morning. As Ryan highlighted, the year has gotten off to an excellent start as home sale revenues in the first quarter were up 18% over last year to $3.1 billion. Higher revenues for the quarter were driven by an 18% increase in average sales price to $508,000, while closings of 6,039 homes were consistent with last year. The higher ASP for the period was driven by double-digit gains in pricing within our first time, move-up, and active adult buyer groups. By buyer group, our mix of closings for the first quarter was also consistent with last year as we remain well balanced across the primary buyer groups. In the quarter, 35% of buyers were first time, 40% were move-up, and 25% were active adult.
In the comparable prior year period, the breakdown was 33% first time, 44% move-up, and 23% active adult. In the first quarter, we recorded net new orders of 7,971 homes, which is down 19% from last year. Lower orders for the quarter were primarily the result of a 7% decrease in community count, combined with the impact of aggressively controlling sales paces given ongoing disruptions in the supply chain. As has been the case for the past several quarters, we continue to restrict sales in many communities in order to align sales with current production paces.
Looking more closely at our order activity, orders to first-time buyers decreased 13% to 2,710 homes, while orders to move-up buyers were lower by 22% to 3,341 homes, and active adult orders declined 23% to 1,920 homes. The relative outperformance among first-time buyers is due to the availability of the spec production we started in the back half of 2021 that supported some incremental orders. Between delays in municipal approvals and extended land development timelines, it is taking longer for some communities to open for sale. As a result, in addition to being down from the prior year, our first quarter average community count of 777 was slightly below our previous guidance.
We expect the modest drag in community openings that we experienced in the first quarter to continue for the remainder of the year. As such, we now expect that our average community count in the second quarter will be 780, with growth to 800 in the third quarter and 830 in the fourth quarter. Reflective of the strong demand conditions we experienced in the quarter, our cancellation rate remained exceptionally low at 9%. In total, we ended the first quarter with a unit backlog of 19,935 homes, which is an increase of 5% over last year. The dollar value of our backlog increased 31% to $11.5 billion, which reflects the 5% unit growth combined with the significant year-over-year increase in our ASP and backlog.
As Ryan noted, our teams are doing a great job moving homes through the production cycle in light of the challenges the industry is facing and the availability of labor and materials. As a result, we ended the first quarter with 21,269 homes under construction, which is an increase of 44% over last year. This production number includes 5,181 spec homes that are currently in the pipeline, which is almost triple our spec units at this time last year. Quarter-end specs were 24% of units under production as we continue to make steady progress toward our goal of 25%-30%. Our overall production pipeline is still early in the construction process, as 28% of these homes are at the initial start stage, with 43% of the homes at the framing stage.
We ended the quarter with only 64 finished specs, which is consistent with our comments that homes made available for sale sell quickly. Based on the universe of homes in production, as well as their stage of construction, we currently expect to deliver between 7,200 and 7,600 homes in the second quarter. Again, assuming no significant improvement or erosion in the availability of laborers and/or materials, we still expect to deliver 31,000 homes for the year, which would be an increase of 7% over last year. On our prior earnings call, we noted that given supply constraints and limited opportunity to meaningfully increase construction pace, we would rely on price as the bigger lever to maximize return. Looking at the dollar value of our backlog and new orders, you can see that this is what has occurred.
Based on the average price and backlog and the mix of homes we expect to deliver, we expect our second quarter closings to have an ASP in the range of $525,000-$535,000. Inclusive of the $508,000 average sales price realized in Q1 and the first-time spec homes we expect to deliver in the back half of the year, we now expect our average sales price for the full year to also be in the range of $525,000-$535,000. As we always highlight, the final mix of deliveries can influence the average sales price we realize in any given quarter. Given the ongoing strong demand conditions, we have been able to increase sales prices sufficiently to offset rising costs and to further expand our gross margin.
In the first quarter, home building gross margin was 29%, which is an increase of 350 basis points over the first quarter of last year and is up 220 basis points sequentially. In addition to the strong demand and pricing environment, our Q1 deliveries also benefited from the flow-through of lower cost lumber as prices for wood products rolled over in the back half of last year. Until a recent pullback, lumber prices had moved significantly higher since the beginning of the year, which will impact our closings in the back half of this year. Beyond lumber, we are continuing to see meaningful inflation in most materials and labor costs. As such, even with the recent pullback in lumber, we expect house cost inflation, exclusive of land costs, to be in the range of 10%-12% for the full year.
Based on the strength of recent selling conditions and despite the volatility in the materials and labor market, we now expect our gross margin to be in the range of 29.5%-30% for each of the remaining three quarters of the year. Given the timing and impact of lumber and other input costs, we expect to be towards the higher end of this range in Q2, but likely toward the lower end of the range in the third and fourth quarters. As always, there are a lot of moving pieces, so we'll update you on our gross margin guidance if needed as we move through the year. Our SG&A expense in the first quarter was $329 million, or 10.7% of home sale revenues, which is in line with our earlier guidance.
In the comparable prior year period, our reported SG&A expense of $272 million, or 10.5% of home sale revenues, included a pre-tax insurance benefit of $10 million. Exclusive of that benefit, our adjusted SG&A expense was $282 million, or 10.9% of home sale revenues. Given expected home building revenues for the coming quarters, we currently expect SG&A expense in the second quarter to be in the range of 9.4%-9.6%, which would be a 30 basis point improvement over the prior year at the midpoint. For the full year, we now expect SG&A expense to be in the range of 9.2%-9.5% of home sale revenues.
First quarter pre-tax income for our financial services operations was $41 million, compared with prior year pre-tax income of $66 million. Lower pre-tax income for the current period is reflective of a much more competitive market condition, which negatively impacted our capture rate and overall profitability per loan. Mortgage capture rate for the quarter was 81%, down from 88% last year. Our reported tax expense for the first quarter was $145 million, for an effective tax rate of 24.2%. Our effective tax rate in the period was lower than our recent guide as we recorded benefits related to equity compensation in the quarter. Looking ahead, we estimate our tax rate to be approximately 25% in each quarter over the balance of the year.
Our reported net income for the first quarter was $454 million, or $1.83 per share. In the comparable prior year period, our reported net income was $304 million, or $1.13 per share, while adjusted net income was $343 million, or $1.28 per share. In the first quarter, the company repurchased 10.3 million common shares, or approximately 4% of the shares outstanding at the end of 2021 at an average price of $48.59. Relative to the first quarter of last year, our share count is down by almost 10%. In addition to allocating $500 million to share repurchases in the first quarter, we invested $1.1 billion in land acquisition and development.
This keeps us on track to achieve our prior guidance of $4.5 billion-$5 billion of land spend for the full year, with more than 50% of that spend being for development of existing land assets. Inclusive of our first quarter spend, we ended the quarter with approximately 235,000 lots under control, of which 52% were held under option. Our strong land pipeline provides us with the lots needed to grow our business while allowing us to focus future investment on projects that meet our underwriting standards. Even after allocating approximately $1.6 billion to investment in the business and share repurchases, we ended the quarter with $1.2 billion of cash and a gross debt to capital ratio of 21.5%.
It's worth mentioning here that as highlighted in this morning's earnings release, Moody's Investors Service recently noted the strength of our operations and overall financial position when they upgraded PulteGroup's senior unsecured ratings from Baa3 to Baa2. As Ryan discussed, given the Federal Reserve comments that we were in for a period of rising rates, we are acutely focused on ways to mitigate land-related risks. In recent years, we have established a land pipeline that can support the ongoing growth of our operations but provides optionality should demand conditions change in the future. Going forward, we will continue to emphasize the use of lot options or comparable structures to control rather than own positions, and we are actively working to increase our percentage of option lots with our land portfolio. Now let me turn the call back to Ryan.
Thanks, Bob. We realized continued strong buyer demand in the first quarter, and buyer interest has remained high through April. That being said, a 200 basis point increase in mortgage rates since the start of the year is likely to have an impact on consumers. Even with the potential for changes in demand, I think the limited supply of available homes means prices can remain high and puts the construction industry in an advantageous position to weather future demand volatility. As we sit here today, the bigger challenge by far isn't getting houses sold, but rather getting them built. That said, it is important that we take actions now to put PulteGroup in the best possible position for continued success. Based on recent field visits and walking numerous job sites, I can personally tell you that our teams are doing an amazing job getting our homes constructed.
I want to thank our entire organization for their efforts, but I have to highlight the work of our corporate and field-based procurement teams. Sourcing even the most basic materials can change from week to week, but this group has learned to adapt and find creative solutions to the most challenging situations. Before opening the call to questions, I would also like to highlight that PulteGroup was again ranked among the 100 best companies to work for by Great Place to Work and Fortune Magazine. We didn't just rank again this year, but jumped up 32 positions to number 43 on the list. Being ranked is certainly a nice acknowledgment, but much more important is actually having an amazing and supportive culture that makes PulteGroup a place where people want to be. This is an important competitive advantage when working to attract and retain the most talented individuals.
Now let me turn the call back to Jim.
Great. Thanks, Ryan. We're now prepared to open the call for questions. So we can get to as many questions as possible during the remaining time of this call, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Abby, if you'll explain the process, we will get started.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. We'll pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. We will take our first question from Matthew Bouley with Barclays.
Hey, this is Ashley Kim on for Matt today. Thanks for all the color. Just my first question, understanding that you kind of saw order strength across the business, but just wondering if there's any reason to think that, you know, those communities are specifically thinking, you know, entry-level buyers may begin to see greater challenges given where rates are going.
Well, Ashley, I think it's a fair question. As we highlighted in our prepared remarks, the demand that we saw in the first quarter was exceptionally strong, and that's continued into April. To your point, you know, if there is a buyer group that will be more impacted by rising rates, it's certainly the first-time buyer. You know, it's for that reason, among others, that we've maintained the importance of our diversified and balanced consumer strategy. We have about 35% of our business that's specifically targeted to entry-level. We do tend to play at the higher price points within the entry-level consumer group. I think it gives us some room to move around.
You know, the other piece that we've done here to help with the kind of buying process is most of those homes we're starting as specs, and we're not releasing them for sale until they're closer to the delivery window, which I think shortens the amount of time that a buyer, you know, will be waiting to take delivery of their home in our backlog.
Thanks for that. Have you done any recent stress tests on your backlog to kind of see what the potential risk there is as your buyers kind of sit in backlog for a while as they lock in rates?
We have. Ashley, Bob will give you a little color on that.
Yeah. I think, you know, we're always obviously in close contact with our backlog. You know, we have seen people taking a longer rate lock position. You know, we've highlighted that an increase in rates is a single digit. You know, a 100 basis point rate increase is a single digit, perhaps impact on our backlog. You know, it's interesting. Most of the folks that are there have significant equity built up in their house, and so they've expressed that they want to close. We have lots of different ways that we can help people get there, whether it's to source additional income if they have some additional down payment, different programs. The backlog is pretty solid.
Obviously, you know, if people have changes in their circumstances, we work with them as best we can to try and get them to the closing table.
Thanks for that, and good luck on the quarter.
We will take our next question from Alan Ratner with Zelman & Associates.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.
Good morning.
Nice quarter.
Thank you.
I guess a lot we could drill on. Maybe first just to kind of talk a little bit about the land portfolio. You know, obviously you guys are making an effort there to push the option share higher. If I look at your lot count today, you know, about 235,000 lots, you know, that's up about 50-60 thousand from the end of 2020, and I guess you've delivered, you know, probably 30-35 thousand lots over that timeframe or homes over that timeframe as well.
Is the right way to think about it that, you know, agnostic to the optioned and owned split that, you know, roughly 90-100,000, so maybe 40% of your portfolio has been kind of contracted or tied up for over the last 15-18 months? Or I know there's a lot of moving pieces there, so I'm trying to figure out maybe if you can provide some color on the vintage of your portfolio of land and how much actually has been tied up of late.
Yeah. Alan. I think a way to think about it is, you know, pre- and post-pandemic, just to be simple. You know, we would tell you-
Right
that half of it is pre and half of it's post. You know, obviously we put things under control, oftentimes a fair amount of time in advance of when we actually take the lots down. Own versus option plays into that. You know, on balance, it's usually taken us 12-24 months to get from contract to getting communities open. I don't know if that gets you there, but, you know, roughly 50% is.
Pre-pandemic or pre-COVID.
Two years ago. Yeah.
Got it. Okay. No, that's helpful, and that was, I guess, pretty close to the numbers I was getting to there. You know, I guess when you think about the land market today and you know, the move towards off-balance sheet and what's going on, you know, in the industry in general, have you seen any letup over the last few months in the competitiveness of the land market? What's the inflation rate running at, you know, across your portfolio right now? What's the outlook going forward?
I mean, do you think that, you know, some of these deals might get re-traded if things do soften a little bit, or is there just so much embedded, you know, kind of margin profit in them right now that kind of what's spoken for is likely gonna move forward?
Yeah, Alan, it's Ryan. I would tell you the land market remains competitive. You know, certainly we have other new home builders that are vying for the prime parcels and there's other, you know, other options as well. Might it be, you know, apartments or other types of uses for the land. You know, I think if you've got a well-located parcel of land, it's competitive. Always has been, I think always likely will be. You know, in terms of kinda what we've seen with more recent optionality, you know, we've pushed from 2 years ago or 3 years ago where we were kind of in the 30s, 30% range in terms of net amount of options. To today, we sit at 52%.
You know, as you've heard, we're gonna push that, you know, higher. We've kind of set a goal and a target for ourselves to be in the 65%-70% range. In terms of your question about, you know, is there potential for things to be re-traded, you know, for the things that we're purchasing this year, Alan, I would tell you there's likely no need for that. To your point, there's a lot of embedded value. These are parcels that were put under contract or under control 18-24 months ago. They're great deals, and we're gonna close on them. We're gonna be really thoughtful and judicious around what we're underwriting, what we're putting under control now that will be closings in 2023 and 2024.
You know, those are the parcels that, you know, I think are more susceptible to being tighter in terms of economics that meet our standards. It's part of the reason that we think it's so important that you've got optionality in your land portfolio because it gives you the flexibility to maneuver.
That's great. I appreciate the color there. If I could sneak in one just housekeeping question. Do you have the share of your orders this quarter that would be considered kinda non-primary buyers, so thinking, you know, single-family rental, investors/second homeowners? I'm not sure if you track that, but any disclosure you can give there and the trend would be great.
Yeah. It's pretty consistent with history at about 3%-5%, Alan.
Great. All right. That includes the SFR business that you've been involved with?
We don't have much of that at this point. You know, those closings are coming next year.
Okay, perfect. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Yep.
We will take our next question from Mike Dahl with RBC Capital Markets.
Morning. Thanks for taking my questions, Ryan, and thanks for the balanced commentary. You know, I wanted to press on the strategy of restricting sales a little bit because I think we're all sympathetic to the supply chain issues and obviously, you know, recent quarters have been very clear that that's the right thing to do. This is a pretty dynamic and rapidly evolving market, especially with rates. You seem to be acknowledging, you know, being a little bit more guarded around what may or may not happen with demand, at least in the near term.
Why is it still the strategy to be so restrictive on sales versus, say, you know, get the buyers signed up, get them into backlog, and then be able to work with them on extended rate locks or things like that to give a little bit more certainty and visibility?
Yeah. Mike, it's a great question. I think the biggest reason is inflation. You know, we're in a hyperinflationary environment right now for all things in the world. As we mentioned in some of our prepared remarks, to go out and put another buyer in backlog that's not gonna be able to close on their home for another year, I don't think it's a great experience for anybody. The consumer doesn't wanna wait that long. They're susceptible to all kinds of, you know, potential fluctuations in interest rates, which they may or may not be able to handle. You know, we've locked in our economics in terms of what we're charging the consumer at the point that we sign the contract.
Then we're exposed to, you know, a year plus of potential moves in commodity inflation, and we just don't think that makes sense for our customer and their experience, and it certainly doesn't make sense for our economics. We really like the way the production environment is moving. We started almost 9,000 homes in the quarter, which I think demonstrates that we're getting units in the ground. We were able to close homes that were at the high end of our guide, which I think also demonstrates the fact that we've got a pretty good control and predictability around what's in production. We're actively moving through bringing our backlog down to a level where we can start to release more things for sale.
You know, we're certainly looking forward to that.
Got it. Just as a follow-up to the last one, you know, as you make that progress, I mean, how do you envision the year playing out in terms of the restrictions and your ability to lift those? You know, that was kind of a follow-on to the first one. If I could add a second different question, just anything you're seeing around upgrades, options, things that might be more leading edge in terms of highlighting some new buyer sensitivities.
Yeah. Mike, we don't, I think as you're aware, we don't guide to new orders, so we'll stop short of doing that on this call. You know, we are seeing some minor wins in the supply chain, and we're having pretty good luck getting homes in the ground. You know, the first quarter is still a quarter where you deal with a fair amount of weather. To get 9,000 new starts, I think demonstrates that our production pipeline is moving. You know, I think it's fair to assume, if we can continue at that rate, that you'll start to see some restrictions lifted on the way we're releasing lots and releasing homes for potential sale, you know, over the balance of the year.
We did reaffirm our guide of 31,000 closings for the year. That assumes that the supply chain environment stays about like it is right now. Yeah. To your question on option and lot premium spend, you know, it was almost $100,000 a unit in this print. That's up 23%, which I think reflects the strength of the market. You can see from the average sales prices being up, you know, we're not seeing much change on that at all. We don't provide that level of detail on the orders we've taken.
All right. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks, Bob.
Yep.
We will take our next question from Michael Rehaut with JPMorgan.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. First, I apologize if I missed this earlier. I wanted to dial in a little bit in terms of intra-quarter trends. I know sometimes you're reticent to get into month to month. You know, as you've seen, obviously a tremendous move in rates during the quarter. I was curious if you witnessed any change in terms of either cancellation rates month to month, or any change in the marketplace, let's say not just you, but with regards to incentives or discounts or even rate of price increases that have occurred.
Hey, Mike. Good morning. This is Ryan. Good question. The sales pace throughout the quarter was incredibly consistent because we were controlling it. We set a rate that we were willing to sell at, and so you saw a very similar performance January to February to March. Ordinarily, you'd actually, I think in a given it's the spring selling season, you would see sales orders build through the quarter, and we just didn't let that happen this year. Discounts are nonexistent. We were less than 1% in the quarter, which is down from where it was in the same quarter last year. Price increases remained on a fairly consistent, predictable cadence with what we've been seeing over the past, you know, six to nine months.
You know, I think the short answer is, the market is still healthy, demand is still strong. There are more buyers out there than we're able to build homes for right now.
Great. Great. Thanks for that. You know, secondly, you know, just question on the planned increase to lot optioning. I was wondering whether or not that's gonna be driven by predominantly just by simply an increase in option lots going forward and perhaps keeping the own lots flat. You did see your own lots go up, you know, looks like about, I wanna say, roughly 15% or so over the last few quarters. You know, wondering if that might reverse even. You know, with significantly higher level of lot optioning, if the, you know, with the cash flow generation or reduced cash requirements of running a business like that, how that might change your approach to share repurchase or other uses of capital.
Yeah, Mike, you know, I wouldn't wanna speculate on actual owned lots at any one point in time. I think, you know, we're trying to grow the business. To do that, you have to have lots on the ground. You have to develop them. You know, some of it will depend on whether we're buying raw that we're self-developing or if we have arrangements that provide us finished lots. There's a lot of things that will influence that. In terms of what that does ultimately to our capital allocation, I think you've seen us as we've driven that option percentage higher, we've been generating a significant amount of cash, and we've been using that cash to continue to invest in the business and to buy back stock. You saw that we obviously bought back a lot of stock this quarter.
Our lens on that doesn't change, right? If we have excess capital and if that's being generated by a more efficient balance sheet, we'll evaluate the needs for that capital, and one of those is gonna be share repurchases. I think at the end of the day, it does a couple of things for us. One, it provides us some flexibility and protection from market risk. It yields higher returns, and it yields higher free cash that we would use, again, consistently with the way we've done over the past 10 years.
Great. Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Mike.
We will take our next question from Rafe Jadrosich from Bank of America.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First, I just wanted to ask, you know, compared to prior periods of rising mortgage rates, how quickly would you have seen an impact? How does that compare to how homebuyers have responded with this most recent spike in rates?
Well, I think it's difficult to compare periods of rising rates because the factors that are driving those rising rates are so different. You know, we happen to be in an inflationary environment with an economy that is continuing to run pretty hot. You know, we're seeing real wage growth. We're seeing a low unemployment environment and there's a real shortage of supply. You know, the other thing that I think is worth highlighting in this rate environment is the impact of the pandemic. I think trying to compare it to rising rate environments, you know, while I'm sure you could do it, I think the conclusions you'll draw will likely not be terribly informative.
That makes sense. Can you just give a little more color on the sort of initiatives to shift more towards lot options? Do you have sort of a timeline for the shift to 65%-70%? Can you just talk about the willingness and ability to work with land developers and bankers to shift more towards option contracts?
Yeah. So it'll take some time. You know, it'll be, you know, over probably the next, you know, two-plus years that you'll see us progressively move there. You know, history is a guide. I think when we've laid targets like this out, for our operating team and frankly, we've shared it with the investment community, we've executed against it. We certainly think that we'll do that here as well, which, you know, is the reason that gives us that we've got the confidence to kind of put that target out there. We think it's very doable. You know, there are a number of ways in which we'll effectuate moving from where we sit today to, you know, a higher level of optionality.
Some of that will be done with, you know, directly with the land seller. We think that's arguably the best way to do it. Sometimes we'll work with development partners that are actually putting finished lots on the ground for us. There are, you know, some other alternative arrangements that you can use to get optionality in the land book as well. I think you should expect us to probably use a mix of all of those things as, you know, we move to more optionality. You know, we think it's got a lot of benefits in terms of managing risk. It's certainly very capital efficient.
It helps to drive, you know, returns to a better place, and you know, we'll use that incremental cash flow for some of the things that Bob highlighted a minute ago, including share repurchases.
Okay, great. Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Truman Patterson with Wolfe Research.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Just wanted to follow up on that prior question with you all, you know, targeting more option land over the next couple years. I'm just hoping, if you look at today maybe versus six months ago, you know, regarding land bankers or landowners, developers that you're optioning from, have you seen any change in terms of the deals, you know, deposits, interest costs, et cetera, or even any sort of change in their appetite to, you know, continue doing deals?
Yeah, Truman, not really, right? I mean, you know, the market I think is pretty efficient. We have not seen a reduction in desire, you know. If we're talking to folks, there is money available. The question for us has always been, can we make the economics make sense? You've seen things tighten a little bit, which is good. For us, you know, again, the goal is to try and create a transaction that yields us an acceptable return, and gives us some flexibility. I don't think that the market has changed appreciably. You know, we're trying to broaden relationships. We're talking to different folks. You know, we still probably start at, if it's a land seller, trying to work out a deal with them first.
What we're really doing now is saying, "Okay, if they're not willing to do some sort of option, does it make sense to put a third party between us and the dirt before we close?" You know, more to come on that. To Ryan's point, it'll take some time, but we are working through it.
Thanks for that. Bob, I believe earlier you mentioned that there's been some increase in buyer interest and, you know, extended rate locks. I'm just hoping to understand, have you all proactively gone to the buyers in your backlog and encouraged them to lock? Are you introducing, you know, rate lock programs? In a similar light, are you all increasing either deposit, escrow requirements, you know, given the current market strengths, you know, in the face of rising rates?
Yeah. To the latter one, you know, we always seek a fair deposit, you know, and we're continuing to do that today. In terms of working with our consumers, you know, we still enjoy a very robust capture rate. We do offer, we think, attractive rate lock programs. We have seen people go out a little bit longer. They're locking a little bit earlier. You know, we're encouraging them to do that because the rate environment is gonna move, it seems, and has moved against them. You know, we've seen, you know, in particular the 60-day rate lock environment, which is when people are getting closing dates typically. We've seen a lot of people participating in that.
Okay. Gotcha. Not too much longer than 60 days?
Yeah. That goes to the individual, candidly. You know, we offer it. You know, we've got long rate locks, but it gets expensive, Truman, so you know, there it's.
Okay
... trade for the consumer.
All right. Thank you, and good luck in the upcoming year.
Thanks, Truman.
We'll take our next question from John Lovallo with UBS.
Good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one, you know, it sounds like with your community count expectations over the next few quarters and your current spec production, that we could see a nice re-acceleration in orders in the back half. Just curious your thoughts on that. Then, you know, along the same lines, the outlook doesn't seem to include or incorporate any improvement in labor or materials. If we take a step back, just curious what your view is on that. I mean, how do you assess the probability that we could see some improvement in those areas in the back half and, you know, if we could see some potential ramp in production?
Yeah. John, good morning. Thanks for the question. On the community count side, we're dragging a little bit from where we would optimally have liked to have been, and it's mostly around entitlement delays with municipalities. You know, it's always been hard, and it's taken a long time to get through the entitlement process. I would tell you know, cities and city councils and planning and zoning boards, while I think most are back and working, it's just simply taking longer. You know, really nothing there that I would highlight other than, you know, it's taken us a few months longer than ideal.
In terms of kind of the supply environment, we're operating under the assumption that things are gonna continue to remain hard for the balance of 2022, which means, you know, that's why we've reaffirmed the guide that we gave. I'll take you back to the commentary that we gave at the end of Q4. Our assumption was that 2022 was going to remain a very difficult supply chain year, and we're still there. As I highlighted in my prepared remarks, John, if we are to see some improvement, and I'd like, optimistically, I think, we've got to start turning the corner soon. That's mostly gonna benefit our 2023 production. You know, we're clearly not there yet in terms of kind of giving guidance.
you know, finally, in terms of kind of new orders and, you know, more communities and less sales restrictions, you know, I think that all, you know, can be interpreted as a positive for the future. We don't, you know, we don't give forward guidance in terms of orders. you know, we'll. While we're optimistic, we'll report the news when we get there.
Okay. That, that's helpful, Ryan. Then just lastly on the sequential price increases of 1%-5%, can you just remind us, you know, how does that compare to the last couple of quarters?
It's very similar. Not a lot of change. You know, it was a strong quarter and, you know, pretty similar to what we saw in Q3 and Q4 of last year.
Great. Thank you, guys.
We will take our next question from Stephen Kim with Evercore ISI.
Yeah. Thanks a lot, guys. My observation is that investors are just really struggling to understand how, in the face of such higher rates, you know, the demand is still holding up. Ryan, I thought you did a good job of clarifying that it's really just that the supply is so constrained, that the demand can come down, but it'll still be greater demand than supply. Just to push on that a little bit more and to clarify, when you talk about rate locks, you know, which is something that we've, you know, been hearing builders talk a lot more about in recent days. I just wanna confirm that the orders that you're taking and that you've taken, let's say, over the last month, forgetting about the closings, but the orders, those buyers are qual...
Like, today's buyers are qualifying at today's rate, and if they are locking, they are locking basically at today's rate. There's nothing about the orders today that reflects an obsolete rate environment. I just wanted to have you confirm that for us.
Yeah, Stephen, that's exactly right. Buyers that are purchasing today or purchased in the first quarter, you know, we qualified them at the rate when they applied for a mortgage. It's part of the reason, you know, that Bob touched on, you know, the comment that we made about stress testing our backlog. Those buyers would've qualified at whatever rate was there in a prior period. You know, largely, those buyers are still able to qualify and for the ones that are maybe a little tighter, we've got programs and things that we can do to help get them over the hump. You know, to your question, Stephen, and I think the most important thing is, yeah, the buyers that are signing up today, they are qualifying in today's rate environment.
The reason that they're locking or doing longer rate locks is because, you know, they're making the trade between the cost of that forward longer term rate lock against the volatility that they think might, you know, play out in the interest rate environment.
Yeah. No, I totally get that, and I think that's super important 'cause we've been getting some people who, some conversations where I think people have gotten a little confused about that. Thanks for clarifying. The second question relates also on the rate situation in incentives. One of the things that I've been wondering about is that as you've seen the rates move up and you've seen cycle times extended, in many cases, you might have a situation over the next, let's say, couple of quarters, where you have buyers who, whose rate lock expired or they didn't rate lock, and the home is closing later than it ordinarily would've, exposing them to a higher rate when they close. I'm wondering, does your...
It sounds like today, rate locks and things like that are being borne by the buyer. When it comes to the closing table, does your gross margin guidance assume that there may be some increase in sort of last minute incentives, you know, like maybe a rate buydown or something due to this sort of unusual circumstance? Or is that something you envision? Just trying to get a sense for how that might be factored or might be an issue as we go forward and to what degree it's been contemplated in your gross margin guidance.
Yeah, Stephen, there are certainly kind of one-off scenarios where, you know, we have to work through some kind of a challenging situation with the consumer. You know, we pride ourselves on outstanding customer experience and doing the right thing for the consumer, which, by and large, I think we do always. You know, the buyers that are in backlog have got tremendous backlog or tremendous equity built up based on when they purchased.
Mm-hmm.
They're excited to close. There's not really a need for, you know, a lot of negotiation at the closing table. They wanna be in their homes. They've got tremendous value built up. They're closing. You know, the gross margin guide that we've given incorporates all of the information that we have and kind of what we'd expect to play out over the coming quarters and the balance of the year. You know, it's a healthy gross margin, as I think you can probably appreciate.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Well, great. Thanks for all the help. Just one observation. Your comment when you said about half your land is pre-pandemic. I'm just making sure that that's half of your controlled land, which means that basically all of your own lots, the effective equivalent of all of your own lots are pre-pandemic. It's 'cause about, you know, you have about half of your lots controlled, but they're also owned, right? Actually a little less than half, right?
Yeah, Stephen, that's fair.
Okay. Thank you, guys.
We will take our next question from Deepa Raghavan with Wells Fargo Securities.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. You know, there's a lot of talk on supply chain constraints, how it's not getting better, in fact, weakening. Even with all of this, your closings came in above your high end of guidance. I'm curious, you know, was there anything that particularly drove the beat? Like, did you find additional resources quicker than expected? Maybe had a better workaround or was just, maybe, you know, things like Omicron or weather were just not as bad as you anticipated when you originally guided?
Well, look, we're slightly on the high end and slightly high end of our guide, which we're thrilled with. I think it's more a testament to the strength of our operations team, our construction team that really work incredibly hard to deliver homes in a tough environment and it's hard out there. You know, I think we've done a better job based on, you know, being in this environment now for a year probably, you know, or going on almost two years, that we've probably got, you know, better forecasting methodologies and assuming how and how quickly things are gonna move through the cycle. Continues to be tough out there. That's not taking anything away from our construction team that I think really knocked it out of the park.
No, that's fair. Yeah, it was good execution no doubt. But I was just curious if the guide was set a little conservatively to begin with. Anyways, my follow-up is on, again, you know, supply chain issues, but you know, more categories based. Is any of your categories, like, you know, active adult versus first time buyer experiencing any tougher supply chain issues versus the other, just given that some products may be perhaps unique to some categories or is it similar level of constraints? And also, should we, if and when we go into a market slowdown near term, can you talk through which of these categories you think you can take the most share in? Thank you.
To your first question on, are there particular supplies? No, I think it's consistent across buyer groups and it's kind of the same, you know, the same commodities, the same items that continue to see constraint. You know, things that involve microchips are hard to come by. You know, there are some commodities, some lumber components that are difficult for sure. But in terms of differences between buyer groups, I wouldn't highlight anything. You know, as for kind of, are there consumer segments where we could take share, I would tell you we're looking to grow our company across the board.
Our mix of business today is exactly where we want it positioned and so as we look to grow the company, we'll look to do it, you know, equally across all consumer segments. You know, I'd highlight that our Del Webb brand remains, you know, the most recognized and powerful brand within the active adult consumer group. You know, we like what we're able to do there. Similarly, we like the gains that we've made in the entry-level consumer space with our Centex product, which, you know, that product's mostly being sold or started as a spec home and sold, you know, just prior to the home being finished.
Thanks very much. Good luck. I'll pass it on.
We'll take our next question from Carl Reichardt with BTIG.
Thanks. Morning guys. Deepa actually asked one of my questions, so I just have one. I wanted to ask how traffic trended during the quarter and into April, and then how much does it matter if interest lists are heavy relative to what you can produce and you're using best and final offer pricing more frequently and more internet marketing. Is traffic still the leading indicator of sales that we've all used to think it has been? I'm just interested in your perspective on that, and that's all I got. Thanks guys.
Yeah, Carl, I think to your point, traffic is not as good an indicator of the strength of the market as maybe what it used to be. You know, most of our communities don't have available inventory that you can buy off the, you know, off the lot, so to speak. So, you know, some of the things that we're really paying attention to today is the traffic to our website, virtual visits, in addition to the customers that actually come into the stores or the model, you know, the model parks physically. So it's important. Trust me, we pay attention to it. It's something that, you know, I watch on a weekly basis what's going on with our traffic, but it is a little bit different, right now, you know, compared to how it used to be.
The difference, you know, maybe between now and pre-pandemic is the virtual traffic, which is, you know, ridiculously strong compared to, you know, maybe a prior cycle.
How was walk-in over the course of the quarter, Ryan, and into April?
I don't have those numbers. Is that walk-in, Carl, you were asking about?
Walk-in. Just what we consider, you know, old school traffic, let's say.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because of everything Ryan just said, you know, that is, you know, relative to pre-pandemic good, but declining a little bit and mostly because I think people know there's no inventory to look at. So they're not coming into the stores often, but they're, you know, they're still searching for homes and maybe literally and figuratively. You know, many places have, you know, such limited lot releases that, there's not anything to go look at.
Great. Thank you Bob. Appreciate it. Thanks Ryan.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session for today. Mr. Zeumer, I will turn the call back over to you.
Great. Appreciate it. Thank you, Abby. Appreciate everybody's time today. We're certainly available for questions as we go through the remainder of the day, and we will look forward to speaking with you on our next call. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.