Legacy Housing Corporation (NASDAQ:LEGH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Smith: Hi, guys. First question for me. I just wanted to look at the finance business just a little bit. And correct me if I’m wrong, it looks like you might not be keeping up with kind of the rising rate environment. Can you talk about if you guys are using the finance business really as a lever to kind of drive product sales?

Duncan Bates: Sure. Mark, the nice thing about our finance business is it throws off so much cash that we’re not borrowing to land. So if we were – we had a warehouse facility, and we were borrowing and the rate on that went up pretty dramatically, we would be in a much different situation than we are today. So our strategy over the last year or so has been to keep our rates down and to keep our prices up. And certainly, the financing programs at Legacy helped drive sales for the business.

Mark Smith: Okay. Perfect. And then just looking at if production looked really solid from unit sales this quarter. Can you just talk about kind of where the production was versus kind of inventory you had a little bit more at the end of Q3? So just kind of weighing what you were able to move through from an inventory standpoint versus kind of production here during Q4?

Duncan Bates: Yes. I mean we had talked about, I think, on the last call, especially in Georgia, we had an issue where we had a lot of homes, so we’re stuck in the yard and we weren’t able to ship. So during the fourth quarter, we were able to work through a lot of those. And that certainly helped us. But we are constrained from a manufacturing standpoint. That said, I think heading into a slowdown, I’d much rather have three plants that I’m trying to feed than 40. So I think overall, we’re pretty well positioned going forward.

Mark Smith: Okay. And that’s kind of my next question was just how you feel about manufacturing today? Do you have the labor materials or things that you want to continue as we look at Q1 and into ’23 to be able to kind of produce at the levels that you’d like?

Duncan Bates: Yes. I think from – we’d always like an abundance of skilled labor. But I think what we – the teams that we have now are doing a good job. From a material standpoint, the supply chains have really loosened up. And our – one of the challenges that we’ve been working through is you went through 2 years where your purchasing department did everything that they possibly could to get materials. And now that materials are abundantly available and prices are coming down, we’re really working to try to get the biggest discounts that we can. But we’re not having any of the issues that we had during COVID with appliances and other things not being readily available.

Mark Smith: Okay. The last question for me, kind of big picture. Just – you guys gave some great data in your 10-K on kind of the industry and affordable housing, but any other insights you can give on kind of what you’re seeing from a demand perspective especially with cannabis squeeze consumer out here? Or are you continuing to see improved demand for affordable housing?

Duncan Bates: Mark, it’s a really interesting time right now, right? You’ve got stick-built home prices near all-time highs. Rates obviously moved up very quickly and underwriting standards have tightened. So I mean, if you look at some of the stats around average stick-built home price across the country, I mean, it’s a pretty big number. And when you think about our product, right, it’s significantly less expensive. I think the – from a demand standpoint, we have two channels of our business. We either sell through to a retail customer through independent dealers or through our company-owned dealerships or we sell to manufactured housing community owners. There the – I’d say on the dealer side, dealers do have a lot of inventory right now, and the demand is slower from the dealer channel.