Earnings Labs

Pure Cycle Corporation (PCYO)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 12, 2015

$11.52

+0.22%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Pure Cycle Corporation Fiscal Year End 2015 Earnings Call. Later, there will be a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mark Harding, President and CEO. Sir, you may begin.

Mark Harding

Analyst

Thank you, and I’d like to welcome you all to our fiscal year-ending 2015 financial results earning call. Couple of housekeeping items. We do have a slide deck for this call. It is on our website, if you go to our website at purecyclewater.com, it’s right there on the first page kind of the middle bottom toolbar there and so slides to keep track and follow along with the presentation. Format for the call today will be, I'll provide a brief overview of the company, our operations and highlight some of the financial results and then I’ll take a few questions towards the end. So with that, I’d like to begin the call, our first slide is our Safe Harbor slide that highlights the fact that statements that are not historical facts contained or incorporated by reference in this presentation, our forward-looking statement and are expressly qualified by the cautionary statements under the Safe Harbor rules. Those of you who are familiar with the company know we are water resource, water utility generate revenues from providing wholesale water and waste water service through several different avenues, we generate agricultural revenues from an agricultural portfolio that I’ll talk more specifically about, we generate revenues from industrial water sales, to oil and gas companies, we generate revenues from our water utility enterprise itself, we have some oil and gas royalty revenues that are new to us this year and then also we owned developable land that is right in the Denver metropolitan area that will be kind of the focus of some of the activity for us in coming fiscal years. So, our next slide, slide four, what I really want to highlight is 2015 really has been a transformative year for our company. As we result all outstanding litigation activities in…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from Doug Newman with UBS. You may begin.

Douglas Newman

Analyst

Hey Mark, how are you?

Mark Harding

Analyst

I am good. How are you Doug?

Douglas Newman

Analyst

Good, good. Hey can you talk about Sky Ranch a little bit and what your sense of timing is on that over the next two or three years.

Mark Harding

Analyst

You bet. The Denver market continues to be among the highest performing housing markets in the country. And one of the statistics that we continue to track are sort of the lot availability we participate through handling local franchise for that is Metro study. But they basically come out and on a quarterly basis defines specifically where to market that and where the price points are in the market. And historically, the stunning statistics that I continue to really emphasize is the Denver metropolitan area just due to the housing availability has a very constraint lot market. And so existing lots out there going for premiums in developed areas. And as a result of that what you see is the price, the entry level price for homes and entry level here in Colorado used to be anything less than $300,000. And the market really was that that was about 50% of all homes that got built in that market segment and I was at the third quarter briefing just last week and that metric has actually declined to less than 9% now. So what it tells you is, there is a high demand for available affordable price lots, now that's our target market at Sky Ranch, our target market is going to be that entry level house making sure that we have a lot that we can deliver for a developer ultimately then to a builder that they can build a home that they can be in that that $300,000 price point. So there is a high attraction for that type of market. The thing that we're looking for Doug is that we want to make sure that as we commit to partner with a developer that that developer is ready with their opportunity to develop the horizontal infrastructure. Now…

Douglas Newman

Analyst

And just one other question on the WISE system. Does that give you - is that a revenue opportunity for you or is that access to water opportunity?

Mark Harding

Analyst

It's couple, it's both of those. What we look at it as we look at that as an opportunity originally to diversify our water portfolio in the Platte system. We've diversified our portfolio in the Arkansas system with picking our agricultural interest in the Arkansas, but this was also a regional project that a number of providers into the market on the Platte and got us some water to do that. We did about 500 acre feet of water associated with that. And in part, some of that success was also what influence our discussion about whether or not our Arkansas River portfolio was going to be a strategic long-term asset there. We were going to diversify our portfolio; that diversification certainly was helped by the WISE project and not only did we get a little bit of water attributable to that. But we have the ability to expand in that. That said it also interconnects all this infrastructure and what we've done through the WISE Group and through our operating agreements are really define how we trade water back and forth amongst each of the entities. How you can move water to one particular entity how that's priced how that's cleared through the system because there may be more demand depending on the type of weather you have. You may have shorter years from more than one water providers. So you have a sort of market-based system where depending on each individual water provider’s portfolio and how that portfolio is delivering that given year. They can buy and trade water back and forth amongst each other, so it's an opportunity for both of those elements.

Douglas Newman

Analyst

Okay. Thanks.

Mark Harding

Analyst

You bet.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jeff Manne with Midas Advisors [ph]. You may begin.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hey, Mark how are you?

Mark Harding

Analyst

I am good Jeff. How are you?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Good. So just quickly I mean obviously you have a lot of stuff you’re thinking about investing and now that you sold the land and you have about $40 million. I guess my question is that is it possible do you have a kind of range or budget as to how much you want to put into the Sky Ranch development, or else you want to put into the other projects you’re looking at and how much I guess because obviously with the world prices where they are and who knows if or when the rebounding that revenue hopefully will stay the same could decrease more obviously the companies should have accountable cash balance that you never want one time issues, I was curious as to whether you want to discuss that and laid out a plan if you're willing to share it or not?

Mark Harding

Analyst

We have discussed that. We’ve earmarked some of those numbers. I hesitate to be specific to say it's not so rigid to say we’re not going to go above this number or that number what we're really looking for is opportunities for connections. So, we have a couple of very specific opportunities to extend some infrastructure that will be at us access to new connections. Both existing connections as well as additional growth areas where we can add new connections tying into that. And so those are the things that we’re looking at right now, we’d like to have some anchors on those where we have point of connections and then can bolt-on to those as we have additional acquisitions in there. So what you’re going to see us pursue is sort of a roll-up type strategy on some of these independent systems that are here in the metropolitan area and be able to get existing connections as well as new connections attributable to that. As it relate to Sky Ranch itself there is a threshold limit there and we don’t want to be - we want to be as smart about that offsite infrastructure and so what we’re looking at is just a phased component of that where we can open up that first phase of that and we have taken a look at that, that could be in the $12 million to $15 million those would obviously be reimbursable to us so that ties up some money but it doesn’t actually, that money does come back to us through refinancings through the metro districts that we have there. That’s an opportunity for us not only to earn a rate of return on that then also to be able to participate at a greater extent on some of the lot. So, if you look at Sky Ranch our threshold might be at that level and then you're right what this liquidity event does is it really takes out of a dilution risk, we’re very sensitive to that even more sensitive to that than we took a look at and one of the successes that we had that I didn’t mentioned that we are very proud of. Obviously that what we also did was we decreased that denominator, we were able to acquire an additional 300,000 shares and we did retire those shares. So, our overall share count in addition to making the balance sheet much more attractive, the equity side was improved also. But how we’re going to take a look at that in the future, we’re going to make sure that we aren't that dilution risk and we want to make sure that we do reserve some of that capital so that we have the ability to pursue these types of acquisition.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, great. And then just one follow-up on the Sky Ranch and so I guess now that you purchased that money I guess you’re speaking to developers now and they know that you’re bringing not just the lamp that cash the table I guess I am assuming you’ve gotten a lot more interest?

Mark Harding

Analyst

True. It certainly improves their rate of return, it leverages their capacities and what they can bring to the table as well and so what we’re looking for is equal commitments on their part to invest shoulder-to-shoulder with us and make sure that we can deliver lot as quickly as the market absorbs them.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, great. Mark, thank you very much. Appreciate the time.

Mark Harding

Analyst

You bet.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And I am showing no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Mark Harding for closing remarks.

Mark Harding

Analyst

Okay. Well, so I'm going to thank you all for your continued support. We’re obviously thrilled about a great year and then all the opportunities that lie ahead of us. Just for verification purposes, I will be in New York on December 3rd, so I'll be sending out an email to lot of those of you that follow us in the New York area and see if we have an opportunity to set up some time or we can get together and drill down on some of the specifics, give you a little bit of additional color to the extent that’s available and I can decide. And then, we will be presenting at the NYSSA Water Conference there on December 3rd. So with that, I’d like to again thank you all for your continued support and look forward to a great year. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thanks for your participation. Have a wonderful day.