Legacy Housing Corporation (NASDAQ:LEGH) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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George Melas-Kyriazi: Okay. That’s great news that quality has improved. Question about sort of cash, your loans and your line of credit. Your line of credit, of course, was unused at the beginning of the year, and now you have $13 million. So, you seem to find good opportunities to increase your own portfolio. Do you think that continues, or is there a limit to that?

Duncan Bates: Yes. I mean, cash is king right now. And so, if you’ve got the ability to lend into this industry, there’s plenty of opportunities. And so, we’re being selective, but we have had some good opportunities to put money to work at pretty attractive yields even though the cost on anybody’s bank line that’s variable is fairly high right now. And so, we’ll be selective. We’re not going to go crazy, but we’re certainly not going to turn down good opportunities to either invest in the loan portfolios or on the development loan side where we can put money to work with a lean on a property and a personal guarantee at kind of high teens yields.

George Melas-Kyriazi: Okay. Makes sense. And then just a final quick question. It seems like your own retail operation seems to be doing a little bit better. Have you worked out some of the kinks there? Or…

Duncan Bates: Yes, we’re working on it. I think Heritage has a lot of potential. I mean we haven’t added additional locations in a couple of years, and we’re seeing some opportunities to do that. But the key is getting the management team in place. We’ve made a few changes at the senior management team. We’ve got a few additions that we need to make. But I feel pretty good about how Heritage is being managed and we’re selling more production through Heritage than we have in the past. And I think — but it’s still lower than where we would like to be. And so that’s another area that I feel like we have a — with the right team, we’ve got a good opportunity to grow that side of our business. And it’s still significantly below where our peers are in terms of production that we are selling through our company-owned retail stores. So I just — I think there’s a big opportunity in Heritage.

George Melas-Kyriazi: Great. Thank you very much.

Duncan Bates: Yes, thanks.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Your next question comes from [Ramon Numshoff] (ph), who is a private investor. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Thank you. Hey, Duncan and Jeff, congrats on a great quarter. I wanted to ask a question related to the land development. Maybe if you can give us a little bit more specificity regarding who you hired as part of this new team and sort of what the overall vision is for that whole business?

Duncan Bates: Yes. I mean we’re still — we’re in kind of the early stages of it. We broke the developments up into regions, and we’ve got essentially a regional manager with some team members below him in each region. And the goal right now is just to prioritize and accelerate the development on these properties. And so, like I was speaking about earlier, we’ve got three buckets we’re looking at. I think some of them, as we dig a little bit deeper, may make sense to sell. There are some that may make sense to hold. And then, they are certainly the ones that we’ve made good progress on that we’re really trying to push forward quickly. And so, I’ll continue to provide updates. I understand it’s kind of — it’s high level, but I’m still getting my arms around it and making sure that whatever decision we make on these properties, they’re all being executed from the lens of creating the most value for the shareholders.

And so, it’s not going to be overnight, but I think that the easy ones are either, hey, we need to accelerate this, or hey, we should just look at selling this, and what’s it worth, and if there’s something that make sense to sell, and you can make 3 times, 4 times, 5 times your money, it’s probably a good opportunity to do that.

Unidentified Analyst: Thanks. That’s helpful. I guess my question is, do you see this as like a vertical of the business? Like is this going to be a full rent type of product that’s going to be held on the balance sheet for a long time and you’re just going to sort of accelerate? Or is this something that’s more of — I guess I’m trying to figure out if this is a trade, or is this a long-term hold?

Duncan Bates: Yes. I’m trying to figure that out too. Look, the biggest headwind of this — in this entire industry is where to put these homes. And so, I think if you can create a model that is — that you can replicate over and over again that allows our customers to sell homes into communities, that’s a pretty good model, but it’s going to take some time to get there. And so that’s — I mean you hit the nail on the head. That’s what I’m trying to understand now. I’d like to think that we can come up with something pretty creative where this is a model that we can replicate and solve the largest headwind for our industry, but I’m not — and we have a good starting point. We just have to execute on that and use the knowledge to create something that we can replicate over and over again. And so that is precisely what I’m trying to figure out.

Unidentified Analyst: And sorry, one more question on this. What do you think is the biggest headwind for you to sort of figure this out? Is it capital? Is it time? I mean, what is the limiting capital to sort of…

Duncan Bates: I think we’ve got the capital. I think we’ve just got to understand how it’s viewed and — from a public market standpoint and how the cash flows will be valued, and that’s going to determine if these are long holds, or are these, can you get them to a point where you can maximize the value for the shareholders. Because if I add — if I finished Del Valle and I’ve got 1,100 spaces and rents coming off of those, are investors going to value that at 7 times earnings or are they going to value it like some communities at 30 times earnings? And so, I don’t know the answer to that question yet.

Unidentified Analyst: Understood. Thank you so much.

Duncan Bates: Yes, thank you.

Operator: And I’m not showing any further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Duncan for any closing remarks.

Duncan Bates: Sure, thank you. I’d like to thank everybody who joined today’s earnings call. We certainly appreciate your interest in Legacy. And operator, this concludes our call.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.

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