Operator
Operator
Good morning. My name is Lattania, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to KB Home 2015 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Today's conference is being recorded and a live webcast is available on KB Home's website at kbhome.com. Following the company's opening remarks, we will open the lines for questions. KB Home's discussion today may include forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views and expectations of the market conditions, future events, and the company's business performance. These statements are not guarantees of future results and the company does not undertake any obligation to update them. Due to a number of factors outside of its control, including those identified in its SEC filings, the company's actual results could be materially different from those expressed and/or implied by the forward-looking statements. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures referenced during today's discussion to their most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in the company's earnings release issued earlier today, and/or on the Investor Relations page of the company's website. At this time, I would now turn the call over to Jeff Mezger, President and CEO of KB Home. Mr. Mezger, you may begin. Jeffrey T. Mezger - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Lattania. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today for a review of our second quarter results. With me are Jeff Kaminski, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Bill Hollinger, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer; and Thad Johnson, Senior Vice President and Corporate Treasurer. This morning, I will start with a brief overview of our results for the quarter along with an update on our strategic initiatives. Then, Jeff Kaminski will provide additional detail on our financial results after which I will share a few closing remarks before opening the call up for your questions. Our results for the second quarter reinforce the progress we are making with year-over-year revenue growth and sequential improvement across our key financial and operational metrics. As I mentioned on our first quarter earnings call, we view this year as a tale of two halves. In the first half, among other things, we've expanded our community count and built a robust backlog that has strategically positioned our operations for revenue and earnings growth. In the second half, we expect to realize the benefits of our expanded platform, as we convert our backlog into deliveries and revenues, improve our margins on a sequential basis and achieve greater economies of scale. Our results for the second quarter met or exceeded the guidance provided on the first quarter earnings call, with respect to our community count, housing revenues and average selling prices, as well as the sequential improvement in our housing gross margin and SG&A ratio. Most importantly, we achieved substantial year-over-year growth in net orders, driven primarily by significant increase in our community count. With this net order performance, during the spring selling season, we now have a strong backlog position in place which sets us up for significant revenue growth and profit improvement for the second half of this year. I'd like to review some highlights from the quarter. Our housing revenues of $605 million were up 8% from a year ago, marking our 15th consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth. On a sequential basis, we improved our housing gross profit margin by 90 basis points to 16%. We also lowered our SG&A ratio by 50 basis points from the first quarter to 13%. Net income for the quarter was $9.6 million or $0.10 per diluted share. We performed particularly well with respect to the leading indicators of our business. Our net order value increased 38% from a year ago to $1.1 billion. Net orders for the quarter grew 33% year-over-year to 3,015, tracking closely with the 30% expansion in our average community count. We ended the quarter with 261 communities open for sale representing an increase of 35% from the prior year. On a sequential basis, our ending community count increased 11% from the first quarter. Our ending backlog in units grew 39% to 4,733 and our backlog value rose 57% to $1.6 billion. This was our highest second quarter ending backlog value since 2007. With this solid backlog position and our expectation for continued year-over-year community count growth over the balance of this year, we are now set up for accelerating revenue and profits and to enter next year with terrific momentum. Our results are being driven through our continued focus on four key strategic initiatives, which are to grow our community count, drive higher revenue per community, increase our profitability per unit and to enhance our return on investment. As our results demonstrate, we've made tremendous strides in growing our community count. So I'll move on to the actions we are taking to increase our revenue per community. While we will always take price as the market allows, we're also working to increase revenue per community through our new locations and the types of homes and options we offer and by taking advantage of the many opportunities for revenue enhancements that are available in our unique build-to-order approach. As we've shared in the past, we continue to balance price and pace in order to optimize each asset and are not looking to increase our overall sales per community until we achieve our margin goals. Our second quarter results reflect this strategy, as our absorption rate per community held constant, while our average selling price grew 6% over the prior year, an increase of approximately $20,000 per home. In order to increase our profitability per unit, we have programs in place to drive further improvement in both our gross margin and SG&A ratios. We expect our gross margins to continue to improve in the second half, as a result of four factors. First, the actions we're taking across the system to drive price, while containing or lowering our cost to build. Second, the higher margins we are capturing in our new communities will be flowing through in deliveries. Third, we've invested in field overhead to support our ramp-up in communities in the first half that we are now converting to revenue in the second half. And finally, the added benefit of leverage from our accelerating revenue growth. We expect continued sequential improvement in gross margin over the balance of the year, and we'll significantly narrow the year-over-year gap by the fourth quarter. On the SG&A front, we continue to do a good job of controlling costs, while we ramp up our community count. As an illustration of this point, even with the overhead and marketing costs of the additional communities we have opened this year, most of which have yet to generate revenue, our second quarter SG&A ratio was essentially flat year-over-year. Our accelerating revenue growth in the second half of the year will drive solid sequential and year-over-year improvement in our SG&A ratio. Our fourth key strategic initiative is to enhance our return on invested capital. While we continue to improve our profitability, we also feel we can support the investment necessary to achieve our growth targets, in part through improving our asset efficiency. We will continue to generate cash through land sales, whether they're non-strategic assets we currently hold or a portion of a new acquisition that is not critical to our needs. Year-to-date, we've generated $69 million in land sales, and now expect to exceed our earlier guidance for full year land sales revenue of $100 million. We're also continuing to activate communities that were previously held for future development. We'll take the cash we generate from both of these activities and reinvest in new communities that will generate higher returns. Turning now to the macroeconomic environment and housing. The national economy is continuing to improve with sustained job growth now occurring across the country. This improving employment and economic environment is in turn contributing to increased consumer confidence, which is currently at one of the highest levels reported since 2007. Meanwhile, the housing market also continues its measured recovery. Inventory levels remain well below normal, and while there is still price appreciation occurring in most markets, it is at a more moderate and sustainable pace. Even with the slight uptick in mortgage rates over the past week, affordability remains at compelling levels. The most encouraging statistical trend that bodes very well for future housing demand is the dramatic increase now occurring in household formation. Recent census reports put household formation at an annualized rate of almost 2 million, well above normalized historical levels and significantly higher than the 500,000 households we have averaged per year over the last eight years. This data point suggests that we may be at a turning point in this housing recovery, as household formation has been the missing link. We are well positioned to move with this demand, as evidenced by the increase in our first time buyer percentage to 56% during the second quarter, even with the $20,000 increase in our average selling price. With housing markets continuing to recover, we are experiencing high levels of demand as our product offerings and Built to Order approach resonate with consumers. For the second consecutive quarter, we're reporting solid order growth across all four regions. In California, net orders increased 32%, with continued strength in the Bay Area and Coastal Southern California. During the quarter, we opened for pre-sales at our first urban mid-rise community, 72 Townsend, which is located in the South Beach area of San Francisco. The condominiums are priced in the $1.3 million to $1.7 million range for the lower floors, and over $3 million for the upper floors with a view of the Bay and the initial demand has been very strong. Later this year, we'll be opening a community in the Lower Pacific Heights area of San Francisco with pricing starting around $1 million. While many of you are familiar with the higher density podium products we have developed over the years in the suburban rings of the major California cities, these are our further developments in the urban core; they offer a great opportunity to expand our business presence and our logical extension of our California development expertise. In our Southwest region, we reported 532 net orders, an increase over the prior year of 152% due to both a much higher community count and an accelerated sales pace per community. While our Las Vegas business continues to perform well, for the first time in many years, our Arizona division was also a significant contributor to order growth for the region. This growth is being driven by both activations and investment in new communities. As an example, in May, we successfully grand-opened a large planned community in a great infill Mesa location named Copper Crest. With 440 lots and three product lines, where we are offering price points from the low $200,000s to mid $300,000s that catered the first time, as well as first and second move-up buyers. As both the Las Vegas and Arizona markets continue to improve, we are excited about the potential for this region to contribute a much larger share of our revenue and profit growth going forward. The Central region is currently our largest region in terms of units, and we continue to experience strong demand across all markets. The region generated 8% growth in net orders and a 23% increase in net order value, off of a strong order comps from last year. This order growth was consistent with our community count growth in the region and the positive comp was generated in spite of the weather disruption in May. While we remain cautious, we are still not seeing signs of a slowdown in demand in our communities as a result of the oil price decline. In the Southeast, we also saw strengthening demand, with a net order increase of 38%. As with the Southwest region, we are encouraged with our potential for growth in revenue and profits from this region going forward. In closing, we're pleased with our progress during the quarter. Our investment and product strategy is working as our new communities in all four regions are performing well and a housing market that is continuing to improve. We're growing our community count and backlog and are now positioned for significant revenue growth and improved profitability this year and sustained momentum heading into 2016. Now, I'll hand the call over to Jeff Kaminski who'll discuss our financial results in greater detail. Jeff? Jeff J. Kaminski - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. We continue to successfully advance our key strategic initiatives during the second quarter. Our progress is evidenced in part by the substantial growth in our backlog and community count, which as Jeff said, reinforces our expectations for strong second half deliveries in revenues. We anticipate that this accelerated top-line growth, combined with sequentially higher housing gross profit margins, will drive significant earnings improvement over the remainder of this year. In the second quarter, our housing revenues of $605 million grew 8% from the same quarter last year, extending our trend of year-over-year revenue growth. We were pleased with our operational performance during the quarter, particularly as our Central region operations were faced with severe weather conditions. Looking to the third quarter, we plan to generate housing revenues in the range of $770 million to $810 million, as we convert our sizeable backlog into deliveries and we realize continued improvement in our overall average selling price. For the full year, we are projecting housing revenues in the range of $2.95 billion to $3.1 billion. Land sale revenues increased to $15.9 million in the second quarter from $2.6 million in the prior year quarter. These land sales produce essentially breakeven results in both periods. So far this year, we've generated $69 million of land sale revenues and are on track to slightly exceed our goal of approximately $100 million for the full year, as we continue to execute on targeted opportunities to monetize certain land positions through either sales or reactivations as part of our focus on enhancing asset efficiencies. During the second quarter, our overall average selling price of homes delivered grew 6% year-over-year, to approximately $339,000, reflecting increases in three of our four regions. We expect to continue to generate year-over-year increases in the mid-to-high single-digit range for the remaining quarters of 2015, as well as for the full year. Our housing gross profit margin of 16% for the second quarter improved 90 basis points from the first quarter 2015. Excluding the amortization of previously capitalized interest and land option contract abandonment charges, our second quarter adjusted housing gross profit margin was 20.3% in 2015, representing a sequential increase of 80 basis points versus the first quarter and a decrease of 230 basis points from the second quarter 2014. As we expected, our gross margin performance for the second quarter improved sequentially from Q1. We anticipate additional sequential margin increases in the two remaining quarters of 2015, particularly as we gain operating leverage by delivering a higher number of homes and the increasing revenues from our expanded growth platform. In the fourth quarter, we expect the sequential improvement to be even more pronounced due to an increased proportion of our deliveries coming from recently opened, higher margin communities and the impact of start-up field cost diminishing as we convert orders to revenues in these communities. Consistent with the guidance provided during last quarter's earnings call and assuming no land option contract abandonment or impairment charges, we are forecasting a third quarter housing gross profit margin in the mid-16% range. For our fourth quarter, we are slightly increasing the prior guidance and now anticipate a gross margin in excess of 18%, again assuming no abandonment or impairment charges. Our selling, general and administrative expense ratio for the current quarter of 13% improved sequentially by 50 basis points as compared to the first quarter, but increased 20 basis points from a year ago. On a year-over-year basis, this slightly higher ratio was primarily due to increases in staffing and other community-related expenditures to support both an anticipated uptick in third quarter and fourth quarter deliveries and our expanded community count. At May 31, 2015, we had 67 more communities open for sales than we had a year ago. We expect to generate sequential improvements in our SG&A expense ratio in excess of 100 basis points for the third quarter and an additional 100 basis points to 150 basis points for the fourth quarter as we produce increased revenues from our newer communities and continue to manage our overhead costs. In the second quarter, our effective tax rate of 24.5% reflected the positive impact of $1.7 million of federal energy tax credits we earned from delivering energy efficient homes. For the third and fourth quarters of this year, we are forecasting an effective tax rate of approximately 38% with tax credit impacts if any expected to be minimal. Our second quarter average community count rose 30% year-over-year to 248, which helped drive a significant increase in our net orders and net order value that Jeff summarized earlier. During the second quarter, we opened 42 new communities, including four communities previously held for future development. Year-to-date, we have opened 11 such communities as part of our asset efficiency initiative and we plan to continue to evaluate our land held for future development to identify additional communities for reactivation. We ended the quarter with 261 communities open for sales, up 35% from the previous year. During the quarter, we closed out of 16 communities, which was fewer than we expected and will result in a somewhat higher than anticipated number of community closeouts in Q3. For the remainder of the year, we expect community closeouts to exceed openings. As a result, we anticipate our community count would decrease sequentially in the third quarter and remain relatively flat in the fourth quarter. However, on a year-over-year basis, our average community count should increase in the mid-20% range for the third quarter and in the low double-digit range for Q4 against the higher 2014 comparison point. For the full year, we anticipate that our average community count expansion will be in the range of 18% to 20% versus 2014, which is at the high end of our previous guidance. For the past eight quarters, we've generated year-over-year increases in our average community count, reflecting the strong inventory pipeline we have built through our substantial investments in land and land development over the past few years. During the quarter, we invested $253 million in land and land development of which more than 70% was related to land development. And we owned or controlled approximately 50,000 lots at quarter end. We anticipate investing a total of $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in land and land development in 2015, which we believe will support our community count and revenue growth objectives. In conclusion, we are looking forward to a strong second half of 2015, as we continue to execute on our strategic initiatives aimed at accelerating growth in revenues and profits. With a strong backlog and expanded community count underpinning our expectations, we are confident in our ability to achieve these goals. Now, I will turn the call back over to Jeff for his concluding remarks. Jeffrey T. Mezger - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Jeff. Before we conclude our prepared remarks, I would like to take a moment to thank the employees of KB Home who're driving our success on a daily basis. I sincerely appreciate all of your hard work. We're entering the second half of the year from a position of strength with an expanded community count and a strong backlog supporting our revenue and delivery projections for the remainder of 2015. As we move ahead, we intend to continue to advance on our four strategic initiatives and to build on the momentum we have in our business today. With our plans for 2015 firmly in place, we are looking toward 2016 with optimism. We already have the land pipeline in place to meet our delivery goals for next year. And we expect the financial improvements over the next two quarters to carry into 2016. While it is still too early to discuss next year, our preliminary projection show that we will see improvement in our major metrics, including deliveries, revenues, gross profit margin, SG&A expense ratio and earnings on a year-over-year basis. Therefore, the future looks bright for KB Home. Now, we'll open the call up to your questions.