Earnings Labs

Green Brick Partners, Inc. (GRBK)

Q3 2017 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 7, 2017

$67.81

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to Green Brick Partners’ earnings call for the Third Quarter Ended September 30, 2017. Following today’s remarks, we will hold a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be available for playback. Details for accessing this replay will be made available at the end of the call. A slideshow supporting today’s presentation is available on Green Brick Partners’ website www.greenbrickpartners.com. Go to the Investors Presentations tab and click on Reporting and scroll down to the SEC filings. The company reminds you that during this conference call, it will make various forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements with respect to revenues, earnings performance, strategies, prospects and other aspects of the business of Green Brick Partners are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. Please read the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements contained in the company’s press release, which was released on Monday, November 6 and the risk factors described in the company’s most recent Annual and Quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Green Brick Partners undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements that are made during the course of this call. Today, the company will be referring to adjusted EPS and adjusted homebuilding gross margin, which are non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of adjusted EPS to net income attributable to Green Brick and adjusted homebuilding gross margin to homebuilding gross margin are contained in the earnings release that Green Brick issued yesterday. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Green Brick’s CEO, Jim Brickman. Please go ahead, sir.

Jim Brickman

CEO

Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining our call. With me is Rick Costello, our CFO and Jed Dolson, our President of the Texas region and congratulations Jed on your promotion too being President of the Texas region. As the operator mentioned, a presentation that accompanies this earnings call can be found on our webpage at greenbrickpartners.com. At the top of the webpage, click on Investors & Governance, then click on Reporting and scroll down to SEC filings. That’s where you will see the third quarter investor call presentation. I will give everyone a second to do this. Our pre-tax income of $14.6 million was a record quarter for Green Brick and represents an increase from Q3 2016 of 48%. This record income was achieved on quarterly revenues of $113.7 million, which is an increase of 24% over third quarter 2016. Despite the strong revenue growth, our backlog as of the end of the third quarter still grew 19% over September 30, 2016. Through the third quarter of 2017 on a last 12-month basis, our revenues stand at $419 million, a year-over-year increase of 30%. Please flip to Slide 4. Since the great recession, the housing market has been undersupplied every year to such an extent that the cumulative housing surplus has been completely eliminated. Demand remains strong. The challenge for homebuilders is now to build homes that buyers want in locations they can afford. Now, let’s move to Slide 5. Two of the best markets are our core markets of Dallas and Atlanta. During the last year, Dallas and Atlanta continued to be ranked the second and third largest job growth markets in the nation, not only have a both freight markets adding significant numbers of new jobs, but both markets also post the two highest job growth rates among the…

Rick Costello

CFO

Thanks, Jim. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to review our 2017 third quarter and year-to-date financial results. First, as shown on Slide 15, our significant growth in revenues and earnings has been accomplished despite keeping one of the lowest, if not the lowest net debt to capital ratios of any public builder. Our net debt to capital ratio, where net debt is debt minus cash was approximately 7% as of September 30. This compares to an average of 40% for public builder peers. Now, let’s review Slide 16. I am going to start with the highlights and then move into the details. For Q3 of ‘17 versus Q3 of ‘16 and year-to-date for the first three quarters of this year versus the first three quarters of last year, first some key operational metrics. Net new orders increased by 18% for the quarter and 17% year-to-date. Home deliveries increased by 20% for the quarter and 23% year-to-date. Home sales revenues increased by 23% for the quarter and 22% year-to-date. So, you can see a lot of similarities between the quarterly performance and the year-to-date performance. The dollar value of units and backlog increased by 19% year-over-year and our pre-tax income was up 48% for the quarter and 45% year-to-date. Now, for some more details. For the third quarter, the number of net new home orders was 241 homes, an increase of 18% compared to the third quarter of 2016. For the first three quarters of 2017 versus 2016, our net new home orders have grown by 17% from 683 to 798. Green Brick delivered 235 homes for the quarter 20% more than the third quarter of 2016. Year-to-date Green Brick delivered 698 homes, a 23% increase over the first three quarters of 2016. Home sales revenues were $108.4…

Jim Brickman

CEO

Thanks, Rick. I am really product as everybody at Green Brick that really worked hard this quarter to produce such great results. We have a number of land deals under contract. We have been working on for a long time that should fuel our growth in 2018 and beyond. Even without these new deals, the number of lots owned and controlled has grown to approximately 5,700 lots, up from 5,100 lots as of September 30, 2016 despite starting of 1,000 homes in the last 12 months. Thank you for your help and support. And I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ken Ling from Citi. Your line is now open.

Ken Ling

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open

Hi, congrats on the strong quarter.

Jim Brickman

CEO

Thank you.

Rick Costello

CFO

Thanks, Ken. Good to hear from you.

Ken Ling

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open

Good to hear for me too. In regards to the Challenger partnership, it’s been a couple of months now, it sounds like pretty strong start out of the gates, how does this track compared to your initial expectations?

Jim Brickman

CEO

Well, as you can tell we are not aggressive in what we project and it’s really turned out much better than we projected. I just met with them last week or at beginning of this week and going over the 2018 business plan and their projections next year are greater than our projections and we expect them to really have a really outstanding 2018 also.

Ken Ling

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you. And what kind of conditions are you looking for, for Green Brick to take on to additional 20% in the later years?

Jim Brickman

CEO

Well, the primary condition really is that we are confident they are going to produce great financial results. We want to make sure our culture is merged together. I think that’s going to be the place Brian Bahr and the team he has put together are just great operators, great people, honest people, and have a great culture. And we expect that transaction to progress as we intended when we bought it.

Ken Ling

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open

It sounds good. A quick question on community count, it’s been growing double-digits for the last two quarters, is that something we can expect going forward into 4Q and also next year?

Rick Costello

CFO

We really don’t speak to our forward-looking projections. You can see that year-to-date our new order growth and our revenue growth has exceeded our increase in net new communities actively selling. We certainly like that trend and hope that can continue, but that we really don’t want to set those kinds of expectations, Ken.

Jim Brickman

CEO

Ken, but I can give you a little bit of color. One of the things I think you are going to see just at Green Brick is that we are going to have more storefronts opening, because many of our communities are smaller and we are aggregating a lot more small communities under 100 lot communities. So, yes, I think you are going to see pretty good community count growth, because of that. And just to change your direction into smaller – many more aggregating smaller communities and that’s really the kind of thing that I think differentiates us from some of the giant builders is we are aggregating high margin smaller communities that we think of would be highly accretive to earnings.

Ken Ling

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open

Thank you. That’s helpful. If I could sneak in one last question, I guess congrats to Jed first of all being promoted. Does that change anything for land acquisition and development for the Georgia, Atlanta area?

Jim Brickman

CEO

No, it doesn’t at all. Our business strategy and we think our advantage is very different from the giants and one of the reasons why we just haven’t had made a lot of acquisitions other than Challenger Homes recently is that it’s very important for us to find a local operator that has deep roots in its community, because we know that real estate is a local business and the entitlement zoning process, timing process with homes, we need to find partners that have very long relationships in those communities. So, we have those in Atlanta. Brian Bahr has that relationship in Colorado Springs. Jed and I and our builders have those relationships in Dallas and we are trying to seek out other building partners that operate and think the same way in other markets.

Ken Ling

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open

Thank you. Congrats, again and good luck.

Jim Brickman

CEO

Thanks.

Rick Costello

CFO

Thanks, Ken.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question will be coming from the line of Chase Basta from AWH Capital. Your line is now open.

Chase Basta

Analyst · AWH Capital. Your line is now open

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

Jim Brickman

CEO

Hi, Chase.

Chase Basta

Analyst · AWH Capital. Your line is now open

You mentioned the 11% increase in the average sales price of homes in the backlog this quarter. Just curious what’s causing this to accelerate, is it kind of a – is it a mix issue or is it reflective of the home price environment in Atlanta?

Jim Brickman

CEO

It’s definitely a mix issue. You will also see that our single-family homes tend to populate the backlog more so than our townhomes. And we have had a fantastic amount of growth at Southgate Homes, which is our premier semi custom builder here in town, where their ASP is significantly higher and they are really building their business through backlog growth.

Chase Basta

Analyst · AWH Capital. Your line is now open

Okay, makes sense. And then can you comment just generally on the outlook and what you are seeing in Atlanta and Dallas and kind of differences in those two markets?

Jim Brickman

CEO

Well. Atlanta I think the market is very competitive. Dallas is also very competitive. We are in two of these big markets and obviously every giant public builder when they see those kind of housing starts that are going to seek out that revenue growth. So, both markets are competitive, but as can see from our gross margins, they haven’t been – they have held up, we can see them continuing to hold up, because our AAA locations we have supply constraints in all those locations. So, yes, the cities are both very competitive. We are not competing against giants like Lennar entering the market and merging to make them even bigger, but we try to stay out of their way.

Chase Basta

Analyst · AWH Capital. Your line is now open

Okay, appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And at this time, I am not showing any further questions. I would like to turn the call back over for closing remarks.

Jim Brickman

CEO

Well, we would like to thank everyone for their participation and their support, continue to look for positive results from Green Brick. Thank you. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.