Bill Boor
Analyst · CJS Securities. Your question please
Thanks, Mark. Welcome, and thank you for joining us today to review our results for the fourth quarter of 2023. This quarter saw the full impact of the economic pressures and retail inventory issues we've been experiencing through the latter months of calendar 2022 and into this year. Our volumes were down 10% year-over-year, revenue dropped approximately 6% or $29 million and pre-tax profit was down about 15%. So it's clearly been a challenging operating environment. On the positive side, we have seen improvement in order rates with net orders up meaningfully, compared to the last two quarters. In fact, on a same plant basis, net orders were about double what we saw in Q3. We spoke last quarter about watching orders as we entered the seasonally stronger selling season and it's a good sign that we also saw that order rate improved throughout the fourth quarter. And while average selling prices off sequentially, pricing has held up well despite the drop in industry shipments. Overall, our average selling price was down about 6% sequentially. However, the majority of that decline was mix-driven as opposed to price reduction. A very important component of our business model and something we focus on in downturns is keeping our cost structure as variable as possible, so we can maintain profit and cash flow at lower volumes. This is something that can be seen in this quarter's results. Factory built gross margins remained high at 24.4% essentially flat year-over-year, despite the negative impact of Solitaire purchase accounting. Certainly, this was helped by pricing and commodity cost improvement, compared to last year. However, it's also due to outstanding cost management in our plants as they transition to reduced schedules. Despite same plant production rates being off 24% from the peak last summer, gross margins have held, and on a comparable basis excluding one-time items in Solitaire, SG&A was lower than last year's quarter. Our leaders have adjusted quickly and very well and we are demonstrating the focus on cost and efficiency we consider to be key to our success. The bottom line is that in a challenging demand environment, we posted operating income of $54.3 million and similar free cash flow generation. I’m very proud of these results that demonstrate the expertise, resilience and nimbleness of our operating teams. Regarding market conditions, it's difficult to generalize across the system in an environment like this, but I'll try. For some time, we've been facing a retail inventory issue that has kept wholesale orders below actual industry retail sales. We're nearing the end of that issue and getting closer to a 1:1 ratio of home buyer demand and manufacturer orders. I've commented before that this issue will not go away suddenly and my comment here is not to say that every local area and dealer has gotten to their target inventory. However, in general, this issue is largely behind us and that's a positive for order rates going forward. As I've kept in touch with both independent retailers and our own stores, there's a lot of optimism. Retailers are seeing healthy traffic, quotes have remained at a high level, frankly, higher than we saw over the previous two years. We watch quotes as a leading indicator of future deposits. The traffic and quote data support the view that to the extent interest rates and macroeconomic factors allow, the fundamental need for our homes is building positive pressure for future order improvement. We've seen in the total housing industry that new home sales are starting to improve further indicating that buyers are adjusting the interest rate changes and in many cases adjusting their expectations of the home they can afford. Supporting this view after several years of product mix shifting toward multi-section homes, we're now seeing that trend reversed towards single section homes. As Allison will cover in more detail this quarter, we completed the Solitaire acquisition and continued share repurchases, while maintaining a strong cash balance. So our capital allocation approach remains unchanged by current order environment. I want to express my sincere appreciation to all the folks at Solitaire and within Cavco, who have worked on various aspects of the integration. It's hard work and they've made really great progress. I've spoken in the past about the very real benefit of rounding out product offerings both in the Solitaire and Cavco-owned stores, our retail team has moved quickly and this is well underway. We're also focused on product updates and product development, particularly aimed at lower price point homes. So through a lot of hard work, everything is moving forward with a very good company. Let me switch gears. Last quarter, I talked about the milestone achieved in January and we went live with cavcohomes.com, our new consumer facing digital home marketplace. I won't repeat all the aspects involved in this game changing improvement and how we support our dealers and our prospective homebuyers. But I do want to give a sense of our progress. Early traffic and lead generation has been strong and is expected to continue growing. We've been very happy with the reaction of our retailers, particularly our smaller retailers have been enthusiastic about having an easy-to-use website they can update with prices, photos and videos. And all retailers are benefiting from the additional exposure and leads being funneled to them for follow-up. With the site now in place and fully functional, we will be continuing the process of adding more Cavco brands and expanding the suite of customization options to support our retailers and homebuyers. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Allison to discuss the financial results in more detail.