American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE:AMH) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Daniel Tricarico: Thanks, Dave. You mentioned capital as the governor to development pipeline growth. So I wanted to be a bit more specific on capital sources and uses. Next year, there’s likely to be a funding gap between cash flow after dividend plus net dispositions to fund around another billion of development on top of the debt maturities next year. So is it fair to say you’re comfortable staying patient, looking for a bit of a reprieve in rates to issue unsecured? Is it maybe a heavier concentration within your JVs or even slowing new starts? Any additional thoughts there? Thank you.

David Singelyn: Yes. So I agree with all of your things. One is we’re not really setting any expectations today on decline in rates. If they occur, it’s going to be a tailwind for us. The use of JVs, as you have seen in 2023, is a very, very important part of the capital program for us. It allows us to allocate properties that are much better in a JV structure than maybe on our balance sheet. And so we have the ability to bifurcate them. As we go into next year, I would expect it to look a little bit like 2023 from a capital standpoint. And the majority of the reliance will be on recycled capital and retained capital. Maybe a little bit of incremental debt, but that’s not going to be the reliance of creating the program unless the capital costs significantly change. And if they do, we have the ability to ramp up.

Daniel Tricarico: Great. Thank you for that. And then, could you comment on the opportunity set for portfolio deals in the market? Have you guys been underwriting any and how you would view that trade-off if an opportunity were to rise in relation to the development pipeline?

David Singelyn: Yes. We’ve seen a few portfolios. We’ve underwritten a few portfolios. I think we’re aware of the larger ones that have traded. And as I indicated earlier, it first needs to start with the quality and location of the assets. And quality is a number of things. It’s the age of the property. It’s the characteristics of the property. But we also want to be in the better located areas. That’s the real benefit of our development program is that we have the ability to build in the parts of the market where the home builders are actually building to sell. These are the better located properties. So, we have a focus through our asset management of having a building a higher quality portfolio long-term. And the portfolios that we have seen really haven’t fit well into that plan.

Operator: Our next question is from Austin Wurschmidt with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Austin Wurschmidt: Great. Thank you. With your loss release really holding strong late into the leasing season, I guess the potential for that to improve really early next year as you move into the peak leasing season. I guess, should you be able to continue drive lease rate growth above historical trends in 2024 and absent any broad macro slowdown, what would change the pricing power you have right now?

David Singelyn: Thanks, Austin. Our plan is pretty simple. We plan on finishing this year strong and being fully prepared for the spring leasing season. Generally, we see a really nice uptick in demand around mid-January. That starts to translate into real strength into February and March. There are a number of factors that give us a lot of confidence on rate going into next year. I talked about the affordability gap between renting and buying in our markets being 28% at this point, plus the loss to lease, plus the fact that we don’t see any major supply changes into next year. I give us a lot of confidence that we should be able to continue to do better than historical averages.