PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE:PHM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Michael Rehaut: Right. Just one last quick one, if I could. It’s actually kind of also in response to clarification on a prior sneaking question. When you talk about the lumber costs being up year-to-date and that impacting maybe the back half of the year, just wanted to get a sense from you. I mean, on a dollar basis, it’s significantly lower than it — the percentage is kind of obfuscates the dollar amount, which is somewhat lower on an absolute basis when you think about where lumber was. And secondly, I would presume there’s also some amount of potential labor savings that might come through in the back half just given where the market has gone over the last 6 months and a 40% increase in lumber, all else equal sounds one way, but, to me, there’s potential offsets to that. Just wanted to know what you thought if that makes to you?

Ryan Marshall: Yes. So in real math, our lumber load was down about $10,000 in the deliveries. Q1 will have that benefit in it. That obviously impacts the margin guide that we gave. I think you heard Ryan say that labor is actually likely to be a little bit stickier so we don’t really know if we’re going to be able to drive those costs down. So — and Ryan, I think, said it well. Lumber is a commodity. We typically have the pricing of the lumber impact our closings two quarters in the future, right, because when we order then build the house so the pricing we feel in the market, we feel in our income statement two or three quarters later. And that’s true for most of our commodity pricing. And I would tell you, other than lumber, it’s been an inflationary market, so we’ve seen pressure on pricing.

Again, Ryan talked about labor being a little bit sticky. Obviously, we are working with our trades, and it’s how we build, where we build, can we help them be more efficient in order to offer us a better price, and that’s what our procurement teams are working on right now. And as we highlighted in the prepared commentary, that process, whatever it yields, will impact our margin profile likely late in ’23 or even into early ’24 by the time those price changes get negotiated and then start flowing into houses that would close with a 6-month build time, again, two, three quarters from now.

Michael Rehaut: Perfect. Thank you so much

Operator: Our next question comes from Carl Reichardt with BTIG.

Carl Reichardt: Thanks. Good morning, everybody. you mentioned, Ryan or Bob, the mix of deliveries 36% first time, 39% move up, 25 active adult. Is your expectation for ’25 — or ’23 on that 25,000 unit guide to be much different than that mix or shift in any meaningful way?

Bob O’Shaughnessy: It’s interesting, Carl. I don’t know that meaningful, but certainly, you heard a couple of things hopefully from us. 60% of our sales have been spec. They are — our spec inventory is largely in our first-time communities. Our community count, which was up 8% year-over-year, the preponderance of that is in first-time communities. The mix of our lots looking forward is a little bit richer towards first time. So I wouldn’t call it a big shift. But yes, I would tell you that first-time has been — even if you think about the sales paces in the quarter, the decline was the lowest in that first-time space. So that’s where the activity is today.

Carl Reichardt: Okay. Thanks for confirming that, Bob. And then just on active adult, I’m curious how that business has trended. Has it been over the course of the last four months or so given that customer is more likely to pay cash, less worried about rates? We had a thin existing home sales environment, but the stock market has been tough. Could you just maybe chat a little bit about how that customer seems to be faring in an environment like this and contrast them with what you’re seeing in the first time in the move-up market just attitudinally? Thanks.

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