Century Communities, Inc. (CCS) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings. Welcome to the Century Communities Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Tyler Langton, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for Century Communities. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for Century Communities Earnings Conference Call for the Third Quarter 2026. Before the call begins, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described or implied in the forward-looking statements. Certain of these risks and uncertainties can be found under the heading, Risk Factors in the company's latest 10-K as supplemented by our latest 10-Q to be filed shortly and other SEC filings. We undertake no duty to update our forward-looking statements. Additionally, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. Reconciliations of all non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the earnings release furnished to the SEC and posted on our Investor Relations website. The company's presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Hosting the call today are Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman; Rob Francescon, Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer. Following today's prepared remarks, we will open up the line for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dale.

Thank you, Tyler, and good afternoon, everyone. The third quarter was marked by a significant rise in interest rates, continued inflation and macroeconomic uncertainty, which weighed heavily on consumer confidence in general and first-time homebuyers in particular. As we moved through the quarter, our buyers became more cautious, did not feel an urgency to transact, and felt more comfortable moving to the sidelines. As a result, our traffic, conversions, and orders all slowed, weighing on our deliveries and gross margins. These trends have thus far continued into October. Despite these pressures, we continue to make good progress on the operational side of the business during the third quarter and continue to execute on our strategy of deepening our share in existing markets. We grew our ending community count by 7% year-over-year and 4% sequentially to a new company record of 343 communities. Our direct construction costs, finished lot costs, and fixed G&A excluding advertising, all decreased versus the prior quarter as we continue to effectively manage our costs. We also grew our book value per share to a new company record of $90.61. In early October, we acquired HistoryMaker Homes, Texas' longest-standing production homebuilder, that builds exclusively in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Consistent with our strategy of deepening our share in existing markets, this transaction gives us the scale, land position, and local talent to accelerate our growth in the largest housing market in the country and one that we believe will benefit from solid, long-term fundamentals. HistoryMaker also diversifies our product offering given its focus on both the entry-level and move-up markets. While the industry is clearly facing headwinds, our strong balance sheet and land strategy provide us with ample flexibility to navigate the current environment. We remain focused on deepening our share in existing markets through both organic growth and opportunistic acquisitions. Our increased community count within our existing markets gives us a platform to increase scale without significant additions to our overhead structure. I'll now turn the call over to Rob to discuss our strategy, operations, and land position in more detail.

Thank you, Dale, and good afternoon, everyone. We had net orders of 2,284 homes in the quarter. While we saw typical seasonality in our orders in July and August, with July orders softening followed by an uptick in August, our orders in September were impacted by the approximately 75 basis point increase in mortgage rates as homebuyers became more cautious and affordability continued to weaken. While we experienced a challenging demand environment, our cancellation rate remained low at 14.6% in the third quarter, demonstrating our strict qualification process prior to sales acceptance and the commitment of buyers once they have made the decision to purchase a new home. Our average community count was 339 communities in the third quarter, and we ended the quarter with 343 communities, up 7% versus the prior year and 4% on a sequential basis to a new company record. Our success in increasing our community count has helped mitigate the impact to us of industry-wide slowing absorption levels. We expect to end the year with between 360 and 370 communities, which includes the contribution of 29 communities from HistoryMaker Homes. Additionally, the community count for Century Complete, which accounted for 38% of our third quarter deliveries, increased 9%, both sequentially and year-over-year to 122 communities, the second highest level in its history. This growth is encouraging as Century Complete's business has held up relatively well in the current environment with gross margins above the company average as it tends to compete more with the used resale market and less with the public homebuilders given its focus on more secondary locations. We delivered 2,442 homes during the third quarter. As a reminder, approximately 60% of our deliveries are typically sold and closed in the quarter. And so the pressure on our orders this quarter from increasingly higher interest rates clearly weighed on our deliveries. Incentives on our third quarter deliveries averaged approximately 1,300 basis points compared to 1,200 basis points in the second quarter. We expect incentives on closed homes in the fourth quarter of 2026 to be 200 to 250 basis points higher than third quarter levels as we navigate a higher rate environment, muted consumer confidence, and compete with other builders for year-end closings. In the third quarter, adjustable rate mortgages accounted for nearly 35% of the mortgages that we originated by volume of principal, roughly in line with second quarter 2026 levels. Buyers remain quite receptive to ARMS, and we continue to believe that increased adoption of ARMS can help partially address the market's affordability challenges. While incentives remain a headwind to margins, our operations continued to perform well in the third quarter. Our direct construction costs on homes we delivered declined by 2% on a sequential basis, and our cycle times averaged 118 calendar days. Given pressures from energy costs and tightening in the trades from heightened immigration enforcement, we expect savings in our direct costs to begin leveling off. Our finished lot costs in the third quarter declined by 3% sequentially. Given the muted sales environment in the third quarter, we decreased our starts by 8% year-over-year and 12% sequentially to 2,502 homes. We ended the third quarter with just over 60,000 owned and controlled lots with on a year-over-year basis, our owned lots down 8%, but our controlled lot count up 7% as we continue to proactively manage our land position. As a reminder, our current option lot count of over 27,000 lots is secured by deposits that total just $85 million or approximately 3% of equity, and we only utilize land banking arrangements on a very limited basis and do not cross-collateralize any deals. Before turning the call over to Scott, I wanted to provide a little more detail on our acquisition of HistoryMaker Homes and the strategy behind it. As Dale mentioned in his remarks, this transaction gives us the scale, land position, and local talent to accelerate our growth in the largest housing market in the country. In its fifth generation, HistoryMaker is highly respected in the DFW market, has land positions that broaden our footprint in the market, and has a strong management team that has joined our Dallas division. Consistent with our strategy of increasing depth in existing markets, the transaction will grow our Dallas division's active communities from 12 to 41 as of September 30, 2026, and triple deliveries from 211 to 669 homes on an LTM basis through the third quarter of 2026. HistoryMaker also serves a wider range of the DFW market through its focus on both entry-level and move-up homes. As part of the transaction, we will also maintain an ongoing contractual relationship with HistoryMaker's sister land development company, which was not acquired in the transaction, but will provide us additional land opportunities in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. While the DFW market and Texas in general are impacted like the rest of the country by elevated interest rates and other macro factors, we believe in the long-term fundamentals of these markets. Dallas continues to benefit from solid household growth that is being supported by corporate relocations, a business-friendly climate, in-migration, employment growth, and relative affordability. As Scott will outline in more detail, we are lowering our guidance for our full year 2026 deliveries and home sales revenues and expect incremental pressure on our fourth quarter gross margins to reflect the impact of an industry-wide slowdown in absorption rates and higher incentives. To help mitigate the impact of these pressures, we are controlling our costs, matching starts with sales, and leveraging our low deposit structures to manage our land pipeline. Additionally, we are continuing to execute on our longer-term strategy of deepening our share in our existing markets to drive improved margins and returns. Our balance sheet remains strong. We have ample liquidity and minimal exposure to off-balance sheet obligations through land banking. I will now turn the call over to Scott to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Rob. In the third quarter, pre-tax income was $16 million and adjusted pretax income was $39 million. Net income was $13 million or $0.44 per diluted share, and adjusted net income was $29 million or $1.01 per diluted share, excluding inventory impairment charge and abandonment of lot option contracts. Home sales revenues for the third quarter were $842 million with an average sales price of $345,000. Our ASP in the third quarter was impacted by mix with our Century Complete and Texas segments, the 2 segments with our lowest ASPs, accounting for 60% of deliveries compared to 56% in the second quarter 2026, and 52% in the third quarter 2025. Our deliveries of 2,442 homes decreased 3% sequentially and 2% versus the prior year and continue to benefit from the growth in our community count, mostly offsetting lower absorption rates. Our third quarter 2026 GAAP homebuilding gross margin was 15%, while our homebuilding gross margin, excluding inventory impairments of $19.6 million, was 17.3%. Our adjusted homebuilding gross margin of 19.3% decreased by 70 basis points on a sequential basis, with the primary driver of the decrease being higher incentives. Our inventory impairments reflect pricing decisions related to 6 underperforming communities with less than a year of future inventory across our Bay Area, Houston, and Florida South markets, where we elected to increase absorption and recycle capital. For the fourth quarter 2026, we expect the most significant driver of our adjusted homebuilding gross margin to continue to be incentives needed to generate an acceptable sales base which as Rob noted earlier, we currently expect to be 200 to 250 basis points higher than third quarter 2026 levels. SG&A as a percent of home sales revenue was 14.1% in the third quarter. While lower home sales revenue and higher commissions and advertising expense continue to pressure this percentage, we are effectively managing our fixed costs. Assuming the mid-point of our full year 2026 home sales revenue guidance, we expect our SG&A as a percent of home sales revenue to be roughly 14.5% for the full year 2026, with SG&A as a percentage of home sales revenue of 14% for the fourth quarter. We estimate that our fixed G&A expense will account for approximately 70% of our total SG&A at the mid-point of our full year 2026 home sales revenue and SG&A guidance. Given the investments that we have made over the past couple of years, we firmly believe we can meaningfully grow our annual deliveries to 15,000 homes or more without having to add a material amount of fixed G&A, giving us significant leverage to a strengthening new home market. Revenues from financial services were $21 million in the third quarter, and the business generated pre-tax income of $6 million. We expect the contribution margin percent from financial services in the fourth quarter of this year to be similar to third quarter levels. Our tax rate was 20.3% in the third quarter of 2026 and benefited from favorable adjustments associated with additional energy tax credits claimed related to homes closed prior to 2026. We expect our full year tax rate for 2026 to be approximately 26%. We ended the quarter with $2.6 billion in stockholders' equity and $864 million of liquidity. Our third quarter 2026 net homebuilding debt-to-net capital ratio was 34.9%, and our homebuilding debt-to-capital ratio was 36.8%. Additionally, at the end of the quarter, on September 30, we amended our revolving line of credit, increasing the capacity to $1.2 billion from $1 billion and extending the maturity date 2 years to November 2030. During the quarter, we maintained our quarterly cash dividend of $0.32 per share and repurchased 170,000 shares of our common stock for $12 million. Through the first 9 months of the year, we have repurchased [ 1 million ] shares of our common stock for $71 million or 4% of our shares outstanding at the beginning of the year at an average share price equating to a 31% discount to our company record book value per share of $90.61 as of the end of the third quarter. Regarding our capital allocations, given current market conditions, we will prioritize maintaining ample liquidity and are focused on maintaining debt-to-capital at or below our current levels. Turning to guidance, which includes approximately 100 deliveries from HistoryMaker and reflects the impact of the current environment, we now expect our full year 2026 home deliveries to range from 9,350 to 9,650 homes and our home sales revenues to be in the range of $3.3 billion to $3.4 billion. In closing, we are effectively managing our operations in a difficult environment as we position Century for future growth as the housing market normalizes. With that, I'll open the line for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Min Cho with Texas Capital Bank.

First question has to do with HistoryMaker. It sounds like they offer a move-up home outside of just your all-spec offering. I was wondering if you're considering adding move-up to your portfolio more broadly.

Yes. As a general statement, we are across the board. So not just in DFW, where we were able to achieve that with the HistoryMaker transaction, but also in our other markets, we are starting to increase our percentage of move-up.

Okay.

And then one -- this is Scott. One of the attractive things about the HistoryMaker acquisition was pretty similar to the Anglia acquisition that we did in Houston, which also got us some additional move-up exposure as well.

Right. Okay. Also, it looks like Century Complete fared much better than your other segments just on a year-over-year basis, even sequentially in terms of orders and deliveries. It sounds like the affordability issues are really impacting the first-time buyers the most. Other homebuilders have talked about traffic being down specifically in that category, but you still had really good traction there. So can you -- is that just the product offering or just the location? If you could just kind of reconcile those 2 different thoughts, please?

I think it's all of that. Locationally, first and foremost, they are more secondary locations. They're in employment centers and things like that, but again, not in the bigger cities. And so there's less public pressure with the discounting that's going on with our public peers and some of the larger privates. And so that's where Century Complete has a benefit in the geography that it operates within is that without that, we're really competing against what we would look at as the used home resale market. And obviously, a new home has a lot of benefits for that if we can bring it in at a similar price point. So the product also -- the way that is, it's a full offering in terms of there's no options or upgrades in that product, but it's well-equipped as an entry-level home, and we're seeing fairly good demand for that as the market in general is playing out.

Okay. Do you offer ARMS in that, for a Century Complete home?

Yes, we do.

You do. Okay. And do you see a higher percentage of ARM relative -- at Century Complete relative to your other brands? Could that be a reason for the strong demand there still?

Min, it's nothing that is all that significant between the 2 brands in terms of the mortgage product selection and offering that consumers are choosing. One of the other dynamics that we do see play itself out currently on the Century Complete is you have a fair amount of exposure to the Midwest within that market. And, generally speaking, the Midwest has fared fairly strong compared to maybe some of our other regions. So the Midwest exposure within Century Complete has performed very well as well.

Your next question comes from the line of Rohit Seth with B. Riley.

Just on the incentive composition, of the 250 basis points in further step-up in incentives, how much is rate buydown costs versus any price cuts? And then is the increase kind of broad-based? Or is it concentrated in the West or Southeast where orders were particularly weak?

Yes, Rohit, we've experienced over the last 6 or 8 quarters, a pretty consistent split of our incentives really trending about 60% towards price, 40% towards mortgage side. Generally speaking, we would expect that within the 200 and 250 basis point guide to continue. Obviously, with rates being higher and some of the additional support from an affordability perspective, our consumers, potentially, it's a little bit more heavily weighted towards the mortgage side in Q4, but generally likely a pretty similar split. And then in terms of regions, generally speaking, I think from our buyer profile, the recent rise that we've seen in interest rates has been pretty consistent across our portfolio. So I wouldn't necessarily call out any one region going forward from that guide being a bigger driver or other of that increased incentive.

Got it. And then just a follow-up. You said this September trends continued into October. I'm just wondering if you can quantify either by absorption, what the pace was like in October versus September?

Yes, nothing specific and I think we want to quantify at this point. Everything is quite down this October as is, and we're pretty focused on ending the month strong. One item that was in our prepared remarks, and I think is pretty apparent from the rate movement, is we did see a fairly significant change from a buyer hesitancy and a lack of consumer confidence occur in September. I think you can look at our absorptions rates for the quarter, September is typically a stronger month within the quarter and imply a little bit of how that proceeded throughout the quarter. But so far, October has behaved fairly similar to September.

Okay. Rates did come down a little bit from the top. Was there any buyers coming back and anything like that?

There was a little positive energy in our sales offices when the rates came down a little bit, but this has just happened very recently. So it's hard to say if that's going to be a trend or not.

Your next question comes from the line of Jay McCanless with Citizens JMP.

First one I had, based on where the 3Q backlog was and the new guidance for closings, it looks like you are intending to sell and close about 1,300 homes to get to that mid-point. I guess with conditions as rough as they are, what gives you the confidence that you can sell and close that many homes in a seasonally weak quarter?

Yes. Jay, I mean there's a handful of items, obviously, that go into the guide, not just what we typically sell and close during the quarter, but where we see our current inventory and the amount of opportunities that we have. I think we've generally started a number of homes throughout the year that we feel like we've got a fair amount of opportunities for which to sell into and hit the mid-point of the guide.

And then the second question I had, it was encouraging to hear you guys talk about a declining lot cost. I think you said it was down 3%. Is that a trend that can continue into fourth quarter and into '27 and help offset some of this other direct cost pressure you talked about?

Yes, Jay, I think we're very pleased with where our lot cost is trending. There's various different ways, obviously, to play the land market. One of the areas that we've been pretty focused on is maybe a little bit more of a traditional lower deposit play in terms of how we're locking up our control pipeline. We think this gives us a fair amount of flexibility, not just from go-forward timing, but also terms, and we do think we're having some success and that is starting to flow through the P&L. So we're optimistic that, that trend will continue. Obviously, the land side is ever evolving and it continues to be competitive. But we're very pleased with where that's been, and we certainly hope that's a driver as we get into future periods.

Got you. And then the next question I had, it sounds like Complete is doing very well versus resale competition, but several of your competitors have called out in this earnings cycle that they're seeing a lot of pressure from existing homes. Are you guys feeling that anywhere and any regions you might want to call out? And I guess as part of that discussion, are you seeing your competitors bring on extra inventory, trying to clear some extra homes ahead of year-end?

Well, I think we always have that in the homebuilding environment where Q4, people are looking at their inventory and if it's built up a little bit, they want to move it out and start the year fresh. So there's always a little more competition. It appears like in Q4. That's one of the reasons we've guided that we may have 200 to 250 basis points increase in incentives just because there is going to be more competition that way. As far as any market we call out that we're really having pressure from existing used homes, I -- there's nothing that comes to mind, Jay. Of course, you can have that in subdivision by subdivision in terms of proximity and kind of where you price, what your product is, and all that. But there's nothing that would come to mind that says this particular market is having challenges as it relates to competing with resale homes.

Your next question comes from the line of Alan Ratner with Zelman.

Question on just kind of your view of the elasticity of demand right now. We've heard from some other builders, they have a view that given the combination of how quickly rates have moved as well as the fact that we're in a seasonally slower time of the year, and they feel like throwing more incentives at the buyer really does not achieve kind of the desired sales results that maybe you would expect or hope for. You obviously seem to be taking a different approach by increasing incentives here. So can you talk a little bit about where you see the elasticity? Is it a situation where you feel like you still have a decent pipeline of interested buyers and you need these incentives to either get them to qualify or pull the trigger? Or is this more an effort to attract more traffic because traffic has waned here?

Alan, it's a great question and certainly one that I think that we talked about a lot. Spent a fair amount of time talking about. If you go -- if you kind of go back a year or so ago, I think we all felt like there was a pretty direct correlation between some of the additional incentives and the amount of absorptions that we were able to get for it. As we look at it today, listen, I think for our buyer profile, affordability continues to be the main concern. We are generally dealing with a buyer that is looking for a home out of some level of need. And so I think for our buyer profile, there likely is a little bit more inelasticity than maybe some of our peers to have the ability to wait. So we do see that it continues to be there, maybe not to the extent that it was last year. But we absolutely -- as we continue to solve the affordability equation for our buyers and provide them with a home that meets, really, the monthly payment that they're looking for, we are able to get them off of also kind of that final decision point. One item that is certainly very prevalent with our buyer profile, obviously, is the volatility in rates, not just the rate themselves. We are optimistic that as some of the volatility in the 10-year has settled down over the last couple of weeks that buyers will come back and maybe put their buying choice [ unpause ].

Great. I appreciate the thoughts there. Second question, if I look at the balance sheet, you have had an increase in leverage about $500 million since the beginning of the year. And I know part of that's funding the share repurchase activity, which slowed, but still had some buyback there this quarter. Yes, I'm just curious if cash remains kind of in negative territory here for the foreseeable future, are you still committed to continue to borrow -- continuing to borrow to fund repurchase activity, recognizing where your stock is trading? Or are you thinking maybe a shift in the strategy to preserve some cash and kind of pay down some of that debt that you recently took out?

Yes. Alan, great question. So from an overall capital allocation priority perspective, we have in our prepared remarks, I think currently, we're prioritizing keeping the debt-to-cap fairly consistent to down from where we're at right now at Q3. I think we have the ability with how we have structured the land side of the equation to certainly give ourselves a fair amount of flexibility in when and how we do our capital allocation back into the business. So I think our first priority, going forward, will really be to make sure that we're focused on the debt to cap. If that presents itself an opportunity to continue to do share repurchases at opportunistic levels, given kind of that overall governor, we certainly will look to do it. But from a prioritization standpoint, I think as we look over the next couple of quarters, you'll certainly see us work that dollar amount down.

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Barron with Housing Research Center. Alex Barrón: I wanted to drill down a little bit on the acquisition. I wanted to know, did you guys fund that just with cash on hand? Did you raise some debt? And then as far as motivations for you guys to buy it and for them to sell, if you could just discuss that a little bit as well as what are some of the metrics of how you guys consider buying these builders? Is it book value? Is it outlook on revenues or some of those discussions, if you could?

Yes. Yes. So -- let me give you a handful of thoughts. So just from a funding, we have a revolving credit facility that we just extended the maturity on 2 years and also increased the capacity to $1.2 billion, very, very efficient form of capital for us. So the acquisition itself was funded based off of proceeds from our revolving credit facility. So all cash, but proceeds came from there. How we look at acquisitions generally at Century, I think you're aware, we have a long history of very successful acquisitions. We -- it's something we pride ourselves on and think that we're quite good at, quite frankly. This is the tenth one that we've done since we've gone public in 2014. You're seeing a little bit of a new strategy from us as it's evolved itself over the last 3, where we're really focused on bolt-on acquisitions in our existing markets in order to drive that scale and that leverage. So the last 2 that we did were an acquisition in Nashville, Tennessee, one in Houston, and then this one here in Dallas. We think the ability to drive scale and drive a lot of that local knowledge, local land resources, as well as leverage from the G&A side is something that we're excited about. And I think from a longer-term growth perspective makes a lot of sense. From a valuation perspective, I don't think we're going to do any specifics here. I can say I think it was an attractive win-win for both parties. We're very, very excited about an ongoing relationship that we have with the sister development company for HistoryMaker. This allows us to leverage some really long history of local relationships and resources in terms of bringing land to market for us. So we're very excited that, that will be accretive for both parties going forward. And then from a bigger picture standpoint, I think as the market gets more difficult and certainly the consumer gets tighter, it becomes a little bit more difficult for private builders really across the environment to continue to be competitive. So I think this is a little bit of a case study of acquisitions that we think we'll have the opportunity to execute on going forward.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Rob for some closing remarks.

Thank you. To everyone on the call, thank you for your time today and interest in Century Communities. To our team members, including our newest from HistoryMaker Homes, thank you for your hard work, dedication to Century, and commitment to our valued homebuyers.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.