Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc. (NYSE:ELS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Keegan Carl: And then shifting gears to home sales, obviously it’s slowing down. I think the queries in the existing home sales or the lack thereof, but I’m curious if there’s something else that you’re seeing, because it is interesting to see the used home sales seem to be kind of leveling out as opposed to new home sales declining.

Marguerite Nader: Yeah, the used home sales is just a function of what available inventory we have. So, it’s really not a function of demand at the property. If we had more, we’d be selling more. So, that’s the way I think of it on the used home side. And the new home sales is really just moderating back to pre-COVID levels, but very strong demand, especially in our key markets.

Keegan Carl: Got it. Thanks for the time.

Marguerite Nader: Thank you.

Operator: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Hau with Truist. Your line is open.

Anthony Hau: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I noticed that the TTC sales is down 10% this year, and TTC membership is also down again this quarter. Can you provide a little bit more color on what’s driving this decline? And which pass is experiencing a slowdown? Is it the cabin pass or is it the camping pass?

Marguerite Nader: It’s the camping pass. We’ve seen a reduction in RV dealer activations. I think it’s about a 10% decline in activations which means it’s coming from the point of sale at the RV dealer. And then, we’ve also seen a decline due to reduced transient activity at the property level. So, if there’s not a lot of people coming through, you just see a reduction in sales.

Anthony Hau: Got you. Can you also provide — can you talk about how like these automated reports are helping with like decision-making? How are you guys using the historical weather data? And what publicly available market-driven housing data you guys are using that you weren’t using before?

Paul Seavey: Well, Anthony, it’s not that we weren’t using it before, I want to be clear on that. I was mentioning kind of over the years, the things that we’ve done to enhance our reporting. So, just by way of example, I’ll take the weather data to kind of share that, in my remarks, I had commentary around the historical weather patterns, the impact, the amount of the rainfall, and so forth. And we have internally in our regular reporting information that flows out to our operations and sales and marketing team leaders about the weather patterns, the forecasts of those weather in the locations that are in focus, depending on the time of year, those are used, as I mentioned, to drive the decisions as far as where to target our marketing, how to communicate with our customers as to when a weekend is going to be nice or how we might direct our activity and encourage them to visit the properties.

That’s just one example of some of the reporting enhancements that we’ve implemented over the years and will continue to do so.

Marguerite Nader: And we’re also using — within our home sales website, we use AI to kind of strengthen the descriptions of homes that are available for sale. And also develop alternate email headlines and social media posts that could kind of improve our performance. And we’ve seen that work well over time.

Anthony Hau: Great. And then like on social media, I think you mentioned that you had 32 million impressions this year. Like, how should we think about that number? Like, what is the click-through rate per impression? Like, what is the conversion rate on those leads? Is it also like driving your marketing cost down as well?