Earnings Labs

Lennar Corporation (LEN)

Q4 2023 Earnings Call· Fri, Dec 15, 2023

$92.28

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome Lennar's Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to David Collins for the reading of the forward-looking statements.

David Collins

Management

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding Lennar's business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, strategies, and prospects. Forward-looking statements represent only Lennar's estimates on the date of this conference call and are not intended to give any assurance as to actual future results. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could affect future results and may cause Lennar's actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in forward-looking statements. These factors include those described in our earnings release and our SEC filings, including those under the caption Risk Factors contained in Lennar's Annual Report on Form 10-K most recently filed with the SEC. Please note that Lennar assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Operator

Operator

I would now like to introduce your host, Mr. Stuart Miller, Executive Chairman. Sir, you may begin.

Stuart Miller

Management

Very good. Good morning everybody and thank you for joining today. I am in Miami today together with Jon Jaffee our Co-CEO and President; Diane Bessette, our Chief Financial Officer; David Collins, who you just heard from, our Controller and Vice-President; Bruce Gross, our CEO of Lennar Financial Services, and a few others as well. As usual, I'm going to give a macro and strategic overview of the company. After my introductory remarks, Jon is going to give an operational overview updating construction costs, cycle time and some of our land strategy and position. As usual, Diane is going to give a detailed financial highlight, along with some limited guidance for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024. And then of course we'll have our question-and-answer period. As usual, I would like to ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, so that we can accommodate as many as possible. So, let's begin. We are very pleased to report another very strong quarter and year-end operating results for Lennar. We've executed our operating plan effectively over the past year and accordingly, have simply never been better-positioned from balance sheet to operating strategy to address market conditions in the New Year 2024. Throughout 2023, the dominant theme at the macro level has been the impact of higher interest rates on the homebuilding consumer as affordability has been tested, and demand has been constrained, but the ability to purchase i.e., affordability and the ability to qualify. Generally speaking, consumers are employed and are generally confident that they will remain employed and the compensation will generally rise. Overall, consumer confidence has been reasonably strong, and buyers that can transact have transacted. Underlying this environment is a general chronic supply shortage of homes, especially affordable homes across the country…

Jon Jaffee

Management

Good morning. As Stuart discussed, our operational teams at Lennar continued focusing on executing our operating strategies in our fourth quarter. As our divisions continuously learned from their engagement with Lennar machine, they provide feedback for enhancements and improve the machine in our execution of our strategies. You can see the evolution of this improvement in our even flow operating strategy throughout the year as starts and sales for the second half of 2023 were evenly matched at 37,053 and 37,032 respectively. In the fourth quarter, our production pace as defined by an average of five starts per community per month and average sales pace of 4.7 sales per community per month. Importantly, this strategy is not just about the pace of sales but it's importantly about selling the right homes at the right pace. Our machine matches up unsold production as homes progressed towards completion with pricing information from our dynamic pricing model on a community-by-community and home-by-home basis. In the fourth quarter, as interest rates peaked, this process informed us as to how much we needed to buy-down interest rates and/or offer other incentives to maintain the desired pace. We maintain a consistent starts and sales pace generating increased market share in almost all of the markets we build in. This is seen in our overall growth of 10% from last year as our consistent starts have killed the board of other builders who will pull back. Some examples of markets where we have leading and increased market share in 2023 over 2022 are as follows. Here in South Florida, we are ranked as the number one builder with a market share of 74%, up from 63% a year ago in Dade County and 33% in Broward County, up from 28%, Across the state, in Southwest Florida, we…

Diane Bessette

Management

Thank you, Jon, and good morning everyone. So, Stuart and Jon have provided a great deal of color regarding our homebuilding performance. So therefore I'm going spend a few minutes on the results of our Financial Services operations in our balance sheet and then provide some comments on the first quarter. So, looking at Financial Services, for the fourth quarter, the Financial Services team had operating earnings of $168 million. Mortgage operating earnings were $119 million compared to $80 million in the prior year. The increase in earnings was driven by higher locked volume as a result of higher orders and capture rate and higher profit per locked loan as a result of higher secondary margins and lower cost per loan, as the team continues to focus on efficiencies. Title operating earnings were $50 million compared to $44 million in the prior year. Title earnings increased primarily as a result of higher volume and greater productivity, as the team continues to embrace technology to run a more efficient business. These solid results were accomplished as a result of great synergies between our Homebuilding and Financial Services team. They truly operate under the banner of One Lennar. Now turning to our balance sheet, this quarter, once again, we were steadfast in our determination to turn our inventory and generate cash on maintaining production and pricing homes to market with a goal of delivering as many homes as possible to meet housing demand. The results of these actions was that we ended the quarter with $6.3 billion of cash and no borrowings on our $2.6 billion revolving credit facility. This provided a total of $8.9 billion of homebuilding liquidity. As a result of these -- of our continued focus on balance sheet efficiency, we once again, as Jon mentioned, made significant progress…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session of today's conference. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of Stephen Kim from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Stephen Kim

Analyst

Great. Thanks very much, guys. Yeah, so much great information you provided. So thanks a lot. I imagine folks will be asking you about a little bit more detail on the gross margin. So what I actually wanted to focus on was your balance sheet. And in particular, you ended the year with very heavy level of cash, over $6 billion, I think, on the homebuilding cash. And I was curious what you feel sort of a normal level once all the dust settles and you get to a level of cash where you feel sort of sustainable and appropriate to sustain over the long term. What that level roughly would be, how we should think about that? And related to that, given that I assume $6 billion is probably more than that number, I'm guessing by maybe a couple of billion or something like that, your $2 billion in share repurchases that you sort of set as the baseline level seems frankly a little low, given that we're expecting you guys to generate cash flow and so forth this year. So I was wondering if you could help us understand how we should be thinking about your cash balance going forward? And what it would take for you to apply more of that to repurchases and I guess I should have specified that, I'm curious if you could articulate why you're willing to hold more cash than you need at this time?

Stuart Miller

Management

Well, Steve, let me start by saying you know the old adage, rich or poor, it's good to have cash, right? So just starting there, I would say that we're really rolling into the new us and developing a by-design approach to the way that we operate our business. And as is the case with evolution in general, you kind of grow into with some stops and starts, the new version of how you kind of look at the way you've configured. So I would say this. We're starting to look at our cash flow numbers, cash flow generation. We're starting to see kind of a consistency year-over-year in the kind of a baseline in the $3 billion, $3.5 billion range. You'll probably see in our Q that or in our K that, that number will be higher for 2023, but the amount of consistent annual cash flow is something that we're watching develop over time. And so when you ask your question that fits into the context of how do we think about the certainties of the programming that we have in place. As I noted in my comments, one of the interesting things of this past year was looking at the durability of our land banking relationships, the capital providers and the execution in and around land bank as markets become stressed. There's been a tremendous amount of learning around that and evolution. So the answer to the question is we kind of see our steady state cash flow is developing around $3.5 billion a year. How much cash we feel comfortable holding is something that we're -- we recognize that maybe $6 billion or $5 billion or $7 billion. Some might say that, that's too much. As we gain confidence as we start looking at the buy design approaches to the component parts of what's developing into Lennar machine, we're going to be increasing the amount that we return to shareholders through stock buybacks and other mechanisms. And so we might be a bit behind the curve that people perceive. Right now, we're going slower rather than faster as we develop new core components to our strategy that are becoming etched in stone and where we're developing confidence. So again, it might be a little slower than some might think it should be, but we are hitting stride with our comfort zone in buying back stock and thinking about the deployment of liquid assets.

Stephen Kim

Analyst

Really helpful because, obviously, you're undergoing a very significant transformation, and I think I'm hearing a lot of steady state. I'm hearing a lot of predictability in what you're laying out. And obviously, that's something that we think is critically important to an eventual revaluation. It just seems like when you had initially -- when you started off your comments, you said it's good to have cash, but I think when you're arguing for a revaluation, some of the investors that we speak with would argue that holding too much cash actually is a hindrance to a revaluation because it effectively seems like the company may be holding on to cash with the hope that they could deploy it in some sort of traditional way, i.e., land or something like that, which maybe isn't in line with what a lot of the rhetoric around being asset-light is. So your commentary about this is a period of time where you were sort of gradually developing the systems to the point where you have that predictability, I guess it's helpful. So if I'm interpreting your comments right, we should basically expect the level of cash to come down to maybe a lower level, once you have established those systems to your satisfaction, but you're not there yet. Is that a proper way of paraphrasing what you're saying?

Stuart Miller

Management

Thank you for the commentary. I think that helps me answer a little bit better. And let me say that we are decidedly not holding on to cash to execute the next large-scale M&A program or some out-of-the-box growth program. So, I wanted to spell that thought process. It simply is -- and this past year has been an incredible year for our company in terms of developing the confidence around durable systems that are actually working very well. It's been a proving ground. And so I would say, don't read too much into the holding of cash. It simply is the development of confidence and stride in terms of the way that we deploy liquid assets.

Stephen Kim

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. Really appreciate it. There was some news very recently regarding the marketing of your rental portfolio. I was wondering if you could put some context around that for us because we got a lot of questions from folks around whether this is something that we should be expecting to provide a cash infusion even above and beyond the normal operations would generate.

Stuart Miller

Management

So look, I think that the base answer to that question is, we'll see. The determination to market portfolio was driven by limited partners. And the timing is one where it's kind of a suboptimal time to be thinking about a sale, although who knows where interest rates go, that could change quickly. So we'll see what happens. There might or might not be. This is an episodic kind of program where it will happen or it won't, but it won't be material to the either the balance sheet or the income statement company. I'm sure if there's any profit would be discounted. And in terms of the cash infusion, it would simply be additive to our cash position and maybe can inspire us to do more stock buyback. So we'll just have to wait and see on that. I don't think there's any additional guidance that could be given at this point.

Stephen Kim

Analyst

Appreciate that. Thanks so much, Stuart.

Stuart Miller

Management

Thank you, Steve.

Operator

Operator

Next, we'll go to the line of Alan Ratner from Zelman & Associates. Please go ahead.

Alan Ratner

Analyst

Hey, guys. Good morning. Yeah, thanks for all the detail and congrats on the great performance this year. Stuart, I'd love to get your thoughts because I heard a lot in the commentary about the tailwinds that you guys had over the course of this year related to tight inventory and the interest rate move these last few days or weeks has been obviously striking. But I think one of the great unknowns and uncertainty is what impact that does have on the resell market as far as potentially freeing up some inventory and getting some people move. And obviously, there's puts and takes to that on your business. But what is your expectation there assuming kind of rates settle out near current levels as far as what that could do to the resale market and how the new home market might react to higher inventory levels in ’24.

Stuart Miller

Management

Really interesting question, Alan. I thought about this a lot over the past year as the resale market has appropriately held down to mortgages that are very attractive interest rates and therefore, have not added to the traditional supply that defines the resale market. But the more I think about it and test my thinking, it just seems to me to be a zero-sum game if the resale market is activated by a tick down in interest rates, which it might be because in traditional fashion, first-time buyers find that the family is growing and they move up to a move up, second move up position. It does seem to me that to the extent that interest rates do activate the resale market and additional supply comes on the market, along with that supply comes additional demand because what has been missing from the market is the traditional resell buyer looking for that move-up home and decided the first-time market have been very thirsty for new home product because the traditional resell product simply hasn't been available. So I suspect if the existing home market is activated as interest rates do trend down, should they trend down, that it will result both in additional supply for the first-time buyer and additional demand for the move-up buyer. And we've been thinking a lot about that. And I think that we're very well prepared for that migration as well.

Alan Ratner

Analyst

Great. Appreciate your thoughts on that topic. Second, on the margin, interesting. So you're not giving formal full year guidance, but I guess we can certainly piece together your expectations by you saying that you expect full year margins to be pretty similar to '23. So that would imply a fairly healthy ramp through the year. I was hoping you can just give us maybe specifics on what type of trajectory on incentives does that imply? I would imagine land costs are going to be trending up in terms of what's flowing through the P&L. So should we just interpret that as your expectation that incentive should come down 200, 300-plus basis points over the course of the year from where they sit today?

Stuart Miller

Management

So if you go back to the days when seasonality was the norm, and we went on the seasonality hiatus for a period of time, that was always the case. The trajectory of our margin started lower in the first quarter and accelerated through the year. And I think Diane detailed that in her comments. That's all -- that has been the case. I think that in our case, specifically, as we went through the fourth quarter, the fourth quarter was a pretty rugged interest rate quarter, especially as we went through the first couple of months. And so I think that you have kind of an anomalous margin push down in our first quarter. I think that you're going to see a normal flow of margin improvement as we go through the year. I think the more extreme incentivization in the fourth quarter to maintain pace was -- it looks today as if it's really a thing of the past at that level. And as we look at where our margin is likely to go, I think we have pretty good visibility because we went through November and then early December and seeing the market kind of ease up and the buyers come back to the market as interest rates did start to ease. Jon, do you want to weigh in on that?

Jon Jaffee

Management

Yeah, I would agree with what you said, Stuart. In addition, we did see as we moved into sort of the holiday season at the end of the quarter, less of a rebound as interest rates came down due to holiday seasonality, which is sort of normal. I also think that we should expect that the real focus on not just the fact that rates are lower, but more effective use of adjustable rates in order to bring down the cost of mortgage buydowns. The buyer still is in need of a lower effective interest rate to both qualify and afford homes at today's prices.

Alan Ratner

Analyst

Great. Thanks again guys. Appreciate it.

Stuart Miller

Management

Thank you, Alan.

Operator

Operator

Next, we'll go to the line of Kenneth Zener from Seaport Research Partners. Please go ahead.

Kenneth Zener

Analyst

Good morning, everybody.

Stuart Miller

Management

Good morning.

Kenneth Zener

Analyst

A key part of even flow cadence is structuring land as a variable cost. I think, a very meaningful innovation for you guys. But can you quantify what percent of your closings have been coming from these finished homesites that average 85% to 90% of your purchases this year? So how much -- what percent of the closings came from these finished homesites in the quarter? If you could give us some context, that would be useful versus last year or earlier this year. And then this is the key question, quantify the margin impact that you're making versus the asset efficiency that you're achieving? Because I think the latter point is misunderstood. That's my first question. Thank you.

Diane Bessette

Management

Well, can I just jump in? So in the fourth quarter, about 48% of our deliveries were on in some sites that we purchased from third parties. I don't know what it was at the beginning of the year, but I'm sure it turns it up every quarter, and I think that we should expect to see that trending up in 2024 as we continue to become even more land lighter, reducing land on our balance sheet and having more control.

Stuart Miller

Management

There was a second part to…

Kenneth Zener

Analyst

Right. The margin impact versus the asset efficiency.

Diane Bessette

Management

Yeah. So I think if you look big picture, it’s a growing number, but I would say that it's probably 20 or 30 basis points is probably a good [indiscernible] and that will probably grow as we increase that percentage. But [indiscernible] about 20 or 30 basis points.

Kenneth Zener

Analyst

Excellent. And then I think the second item, and I think this is more about messaging, and we've spoken about this in the past, but investors are seeking clarity on net income to cash flow and buybacks. I realize your company is evolving as you reduce your land exposure, but just generally as a heuristic, could you kind of inform the statement, I think, Diane, you might have said this, actually, that the balance of cash flow will go to share repurchases absent debt payments. Is that a simple rule of thumb that is guiding your company? And Stuart, I think you were highlighting that you're not looking for large land deals. So I think with the simple heuristic people would have more confidence in that application of your cash flow. Thank you.

Stuart Miller

Management

Yeah, I think that's a good characterization for right now. But what I'm trying to articulate is that we are evolving our thinking in this regard. I want to say emphatically that we're not looking for and holding back for large land deals. We're not looking for and holding back for M&A transactions. So let's say that that's not the direction that we're going right now. And that the cash flow generated [Technical Difficulty] conservatively right now, allocation between debt retirement as debt comes due and the remainder for stock buyback.

Diane Bessette

Management

And I think, Ken, I would also just add as it relates to that, you might be referring to the fact that in prior quarters and prior years, we did a fair amount of early redemption on our future senior notes. And obviously, because we really want to -- I've always said that while the debt to total capital ratio is important, I think what's perhaps more important in my mind, there's a little been nominal dollars on your balance sheet. And so we really wanted to take down the nominal dollars [indiscernible] And now we’re at $2.5 billion. It feels like there isn't quite a need to keep pulling debt forward. We can just kind of pay it down in an orderly fashion as it becomes due. So that's what I was thinking about it at the moment.

Kenneth Zener

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Stuart Miller

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next, we'll go to the line of Michael Rehaut from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning, everyone, or I guess, almost good afternoon. Thanks for all the comments so far. And also, congrats on the fast turnaround after year-end. That is very impressive. So I would agree with Diane's comments earlier. I wanted to first zero in a little bit on SG&A and corporate G&A for the first quarter. It looks like you're having revenue growth expectations alongside the -- predominantly driven by the higher closings. But negative leverage, I guess, on both metrics by a pretty decent margin given the double-digit revenue growth outlook. So I just want to understand the drivers of that. I know you said on the corporate G&A, there's more investments. So maybe just talking a little bit more on SG&A. If there's higher commissions or other factors that we should be aware of? And on a full year basis, should we expect SG&A and corporate G&A leverage outside of just this first quarter dynamic?

Diane Bessette

Management

Yeah. So I think, Mike, as we've been articulating, we have been seeing a little bit more broker participation as sales have been a little challenging at certain times, we've been utilizing brokers judiciously, certainly using tiered programs and the like to ensure that we are capturing sales, but spending dollars judiciously. Additionally, as you heard us talk about, the machine, a very big part of that is the lead generation on the digital side, how do you get more leads into the funnel so that we have higher conversion rates. And so we've been, again, judiciously spending dollars on that spend because we believe that in the end, that will really produce a higher net margin for us because it's less costly than brokers or other things. So I think those are the two areas that have really been impacting our SG&A in the last few quarters.

Stuart Miller

Management

Yeah. Well, that was that was a great articulation of the operational side, but that's good, Diane. But the fact is that as we've gone through this, the ups and downs of the past year with interest rates, the use of our digital platform has really been a learning curve and has challenged us to get better and better and better. And while we have great affection for and engagement with our realtor community, we certainly don't want to incur costs that we don't have to incur. And so we have been working carefully to make sure we're managing the balance between the necessary engagement with realtors and what we can actually accomplish organically through our digital platform, and that is rippling through our SG&A. We've seen the realtor spend and some of the marketing spend tick up as we have driven to maintain sales pace. So we're seeing some of that. It's going to be a story of evolution as we go through 2024. Anything you want to add to that, Jon?

Jon Jaffee

Management

I think that's the right articulation as you said in your opening remarks, Stuart, we're continuing to learn about the execution of our machine. And as we turn the dials, whether it's interest rate buy downs or incentives or the flow through our digital funnel or the selectiveness of brokers, we're in that stage where we are trying, learning, experimenting and providing the feedback to how we get better and more efficient at each of those levers that we pull to drive this consistent production and sales pace.

Michael Rehaut

Analyst

Great. Thank you for that. I guess secondly, just drilling down a little bit more on the gross margins and understanding it's a pretty fluid situation, certainly. But against kind of a backdrop where you've done low 24% gross margins in the back half of '23, now you're talking about low 21% in the first quarter, but perhaps the full year getting back to something around what you did on a full year basis in '23, it would seem like this upcoming first quarter, obviously you took steps to ensure volume and orders coming in the door that appear to be maybe, I don't want to say extraordinary, but you did what you needed to do, let's say, to ensure those volumes coming through at maybe a little bit more of a stress period. Is it fair to kind of think about perhaps a 200 basis point or 200 to 300 basis points this type of first quarter deviation as being kind of -- I don't want to say a onetime event. But as you have the more recent interest rate backdrop coming back to late summer, and where you did a gross margin closer to that 24%, is there any reason not to think that you'll be getting back to that 23%, 24% type of gross margin and relatively short order outside of, again, perhaps some more aggressive measures that you took from an [Technical Difficulty] that are kind of tangible and quantifiable that you see as more of just affecting the first quarter. Is that kind of the right way to think about kind of moving past this period in the very short term?

Stuart Miller

Management

So it's a great question, Mike, and it's one that we're thinking a lot about. And I think that the answer to that is we'll see, but it is our instinct that, that is very much the case. As I noted in the fourth quarter, you really saw as interest rates started to migrate above 7.5% towards 8%, as I said in my remarks, it really felt like you were hitting an inflection point where you really felt in the field that the buyers were maybe starting to hit a tipping point of losing some confidence. The way I think about it is as we've gone through this time of higher interest rates, even as we saw a sharp increase in interest rates at the inception, we were able to see incentives work. The incentives were able to help the buyer get to a point of affordability, and they transacted on the need for their housing. As we got into the fourth quarter, they were starting to get to that point where we weren't sure that incentives, even on the aggressive side, we're going to work. Time went on, interest rates started to moderate just a little bit, not kind of as they did in the past couple of days, but just that moderation took kind of the edge off. And maybe the market needed to get to a new normal. I don't know what that was actually going to be. But the question is -- the answer to your question is we did what we had to do. We did what it took to activate the market at the moment in time. We're not going to build inventory. We are not going to pull back on the overriding strategy, we're driving cash flow. We're going to meet the market where the market is, and we're going to drive through it. And that's exactly what we did through our fourth quarter. You're right that some of the margin impact might be a bit more severe as we reflect that through the first quarter and there could well be a kind of snap back and we'll have to wait and see because we are going through the seasonality of this time of the year right now.

Jon Jaffee

Management

Stuart, if I could add, as you think about the machine and the process that we've been describing to you for quarters now, it's really a reflection of the reality that none of us have a crystal ball at any moment in time to see which way rates or buyer enthusiasm is moving. So as we sat in the fourth quarter, we just dealt with the rate for what they were versus a speculation of where they might go. And so as Stuart just articulated, we appropriately used mortgage rate buydowns to keep a pace going. As we sit here today, rates look better. But again, we don't know where they're going, but we're well positioned to just maintain that pace, which by definition means we would use lower-cost mortgage buydowns, continue to drive the consistent pace. So as Stuart articulated, we'll use our margin as a sharp absorber given market conditions, interest rate environments, and you should see it move up and down as the market moves up and down.

Stuart Miller

Management

One last thing I'll say is, an interesting anomaly that we noted through our fourth quarter was, there was a greater reluctance to use an ARM product that would normally take place as we go through an interest rate cycle and much more focus on a 30-year fixed buy down, which was more expensive. And just a small tick or normalization of interest rates, and especially what's happened over the past days, really is migrating the attention of buyers through the prospect of an ARM product being more acceptable. This, of course, reduces the amount of incentive that's flowing through the system. And so we're going to have to wait and see. Again, it's [touching the feed] (ph) day-by-day basis, and that's what we're working on. Why don't we take one more question?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our final question comes from Susan Maklari from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Thank you for squeezing me in. Good afternoon. My first question is just building on your comments in response to the last question, which is as you think about coming into the year with less than one finished spec per community, which is low and especially relative to maybe some of your peers that are in sort of similar product price points market, how do you think about the ability to leverage the improvements in the Lennar machine to flex the business to get to the 80,000 closing that you've guided to or to even perhaps flex up or flex down relative to that number depending on how the market comes together this year?

Stuart Miller

Management

Look, to that extent, everything that we are doing, even the migration to the larger number of deliveries is by design. It's about the number of communities that we have and the pace through those communities. And this is becoming very much a focused detailed program that is managed by Jon with what we call our daily call, it actually every other day, and our operating group is laser-focused on production pace, starts pace, cycle times dovetailing with sales pace at the division and community level. This is being handled on a very active hands-on basis. Jon you want to?

Jon Jaffee

Management

Just as you said, Stuart, the by design approach is to not have completed inventory, which have new inventory moving through our production machine, which we don't need to flex up or down, it will consistently come through and will consistently drive deliveries towards our goal of about 80,000 for this year. So the market conditions will ebb and flow most likely, but our machine will be very consistent through that delivering by design target that we have.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Okay. And then in your comments, you detailed some really impressive market share gains that you've realized over the course of the year. As you think about the forward year, can you talk a bit to maybe who those share gains you think largely came from? And then the ability to further outgrow the market as you drive some of these company-specific initiatives?

Stuart Miller

Management

So we're certainly not going to be naming names, and it's different across the platform. And I don't think you would even be able to identify a specific where it came from. I would say every market is different, every strategy in various markets for the competitive landscape has been different. Remember that there are some numbers that have been constrained by access to capital. There have been others that just have a very different strategy. Our strategy has been clear and consistent and where there has been pull back by one another or a group of other builders. We've winged in, we’ve built certain voids and picked up market share in that process, whether it's been a land acquisition, whether it's been in the acquisition of new trade partners to help focus on cycle time and help bring costs into focus or whether it's been in accelerating sales or sales pace, we've been able across the board to lean in and drive market share.

Jon Jaffee

Management

I think the market share, the position is a byproduct of the strategy as you're hearing, it's becoming the most efficient, effective buyer of choice from Lennar sellers and the most efficient, effective builder choice for our trade partners. That's what really drives our strategy and it produces, other builders pull back or maybe accelerate will provide us consistent growth, that consistent volume to both Lennar sellers and to our trade partners.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Okay. [Technical Difficulty]

Stuart Miller

Management

Okay. Thank you very much. We're going to end it there. I want to say thanks everybody for joining us. It's been a really exciting year for our company in terms of evolution, in terms of execution and in terms of learning curve and look forward to reporting on progress through 2024. Thanks for joining.

Operator

Operator

That concludes today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your line, and please enjoy the rest of your day.