D.R. Horton, Inc. (NYSE:DHI) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Rehaut: Great. Thanks so much.

Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Truman Patterson from Wolfe Research. Truman, your line is live.

Truman Patterson: Hey good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. So first, has the land market started to capitulate at all on takedown pricing with your alls, ASPs down kind of 8% quarter-over-quarter. Are you actually starting to see the land market correct at all with more meaningful price declines, or is it still just too early to tell?

Bill Wheat: I think generally, it’s still a little too early Truman. Land is typically one of the stickier parts of the process. And as David and Paul both mentioned earlier in the call, it is increasingly difficult to get a lot entitled and on the ground. And so that is something that has held up pretty well. But anecdotally, there are situations where we’re able to make some progress on the land residual with some of our land sellers. But not broad trends yet, for sure.

Truman Patterson: Okay, okay. Thanks for that. And then you all made a recent acquisition in Arkansas. Could you all just, kind of, walk through the drivers of that purchase? And are you seeing more small privates, their willingness to sell at a relatively attractive valuation pop-up given the market slowdown?

Bill Wheat: Yeah. The acquisition of Riggins in Northwest Arkansas gave us — not I want to say, an entrance into the market. We were in there with a couple of communities, but gave us a solid position in a market that has remained strong with good employment growth and limited housing supply again to the earlier question of the secondary markets, a solid market that we are happy to be in. It was a good acquisition and tuck-in for us with a well-established community with a great lot of supply. And so gave us immediate inventory and homes in progress, well-respected builder in the market that we’re happy to as part of the family. As far as other acquisitions, we continue to look at those — and where we have tuck-in opportunities similar to this, we had things that we would explore but no broad-based change in how we look at builders and margin.

Truman Patterson: All right. Thank you all. Appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Eric Bosshard from Cleveland Research. Eric, your line is live.

Eric Bosshard: Good morning. Two things. First of all, the 40% reduction in starts, I’m curious if there’s — what the discipline or logic is in what you’re not starting if there’s buckets of this. You mentioned trying to change the product a bit to fit a price point. But curious if there’s something to learn from how you’re making those decisions of where you’re reducing starts.

David Auld: A lot of our starts decisions are made within the quarter on the basis of what the sales trends are occurring at that point in time. And certainly, through late summer and into the fall, our first quarter, mortgage rates spiking up, cancellations increasing, looking at our current inventory positions neighborhood by neighborhood relative to recent sales paces, certainly led us to slow down our starts. Coming into this fiscal €“ this calendar year into the second quarter, seeing some improvement in our cycle time and supply chain issues unsnarling, and we feel like we’ll be able to start homes and complete them in a more timely fashion this year. So we did — we are trying to meter our starts out a little bit to more closely match our sales demand right now.

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