KB Home (KBH)’s 2014 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call Transcript

Page 1 of 15

Below is the KB Home (NYSE:KBH)’s Q4 2014 earnings call transcript. KB Home (NYSE:KBH) reported earnings for their 4th Quarter and Year-End 2014, ended November 30, 2014, after the financial markets closed in New York on Tuesday, January 13th, 2015 at 11:30 a.m. ET.

KB Home (NYSE:KBH)

KB Home (NYSE:KBH) is one of the largest and most recognized home building companies in the United States. Since 1957, the company has built more than half a million quality homes. Based in Los Angeles, KB Home (NYSE:KBH) is a Fortune 1,000 company and is the first home builder listed on the NYSE.

Participants:

Company Representatives:

Jeff Mezger, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director.

Jeff Kaminski, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Bill Hollinger, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer.

Thad Johnson, Vice President and Treasurer.

 Analysts:

Michael Reinhardt, JP Morgan
David Goldberg, UBS
Megan McGrath, MKM
Robert Whitnall, RBC
Stephen Kim, Barclays
Stephen East, Evercore
Michael Dahl, Credit-Suisse Group
Ivy Zelman, Zelman Associates.
Susan Berliner, JP Morgan
Nishu Sood, Deutsche Bank

Operator

Good Morning. My name is Rob and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the KB Home 2014, 4th Quarter and year-end earning conference call. At this time all participants will be in the listen-only mode. Today’s conference is being recorded and a live webcast is available on KB Home’s website at kbhome.com. Following the company’s opening remarks; we will open the lines for questions. If you would like to ask your question at that time, please press star, 1 on your telephone keypad.

KB Home’s discussion today may include forward-looking statements that reflect management’s current views and expectations of market conditions, future events and the company’s business performance. These statements do not guarantee the future results and the company did not undertake any obligations to update them. Due to a number of factors outside of its control including those identified in the SEC filings, the company’s actual results could be materially different from those expressed and/or implied by the forward-looking statements. A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures referenced during today’s discussion to the most directly comfortable GAAP measures can be found in the company’s earnings release issued earlier today and/or on the Investor Relations page of the company’s website.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Chief Executive Officer for KB Home, Mr. Jeff Mezger. Mr. Mezger, you may begin.

Jeff Mezger, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Thank you Rob, Good Morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our review of our 4th Quarter and full-year 2014 results. With me today, are Jeff Kaminski, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Bill Hollinger, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer and Thad Johnson, Vice President and Treasurer.

I will begin with a summary of our 4th Quarter performance and provide some color on our accomplishments and some challenges we encountered during the period. Then, I will share our key areas of focus for 2015 as we continue to pursue top line growth and improvement and profitability while also now working to enhance our returns through improving our capital efficiency. Following this, Jeff Kaminski will provide greater detail on our financial results after which I will offer some concluding remarks before opening the call up to your questions.

During the 4th Quarter we achieved continued progress across many of our core financial matrix. We reported $796 million in revenues, an increase of 29% over the prior year and 2,229 deliveries. Our average selling price was up $351,500, which increased by 17% year over year, was a key contributor to our top line growth as our investment and product strategies continue to drive results. Our adjusted growth margin was 18.7%. I am disappointed with this result as we expected to perform better, and I would provide additional details around this topic in a moment.

Page 1 of 15