Cavco Industries, Inc. Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call

Good day, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Cavco Industries, Inc. Earnings Call for the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2021. I will now hand the call over to Mr. Mark Fusler, Director of Financial Reporting and Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Good day, and thank you for joining us for Cavco Industries Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. During this call, you'll be hearing from Bill Boor, President and Chief Executive Officer; Paul Bigbee, Chief Accounting Officer; and myself. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that comments made during this conference call by management may contain forward-looking statements under the provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements of expectations or assumptions about Cavco's financial and operational performance, revenues, earnings per share, cash flow or use, cost savings, operational efficiencies, current or future volatility in the credit markets or future market conditions. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could affect Cavco's actual results and could cause its actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of Cavco. I encourage you to review Cavco's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, the company's most recent forms, 10-K and 10-Q, which identify specific factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Some factors that may affect Cavco's results include, but are not limited to, the impact of local or national emergencies, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and such impacts from state and federal regulatory action that restricts our ability to operate our business in the ordinary course and the impact on customer demand and the availability of financing for our products; our supply chain and the availability of raw materials for the manufacture of our products; the availability of labor and the health and safety of our workforce; our liquidity and access to the capital markets; the risk of litigation or regulatory action; potential reputational damage that Cavco may suffer as a result of matters under inquiry; adverse industry conditions; our involvement in vertically integrated lines of business, including manufactured housing, consumer finance, commercial finance and insurance; market forces and housing demand fluctuations; our business and operations being concentrated in certain geographic regions; loss of any of our executive officers; additional federal government shutdowns and regulations affecting manufactured housing. This conference call also contains time-sensitive information that is only accurate as of the date of this live broadcast, Thursday, May 27, 2021. Cavco undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement, either written or oral, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call, except as required by law. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill Boor, President and Chief Executive Officer. Bill?

Welcome, and thank you for joining us today to review our results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year. Reflecting on the year, I went back to last year's call. By the time we reported in May of last year, we were starting to see some positive demand signs. However, the magnitude of the pandemic was increasingly apparent, and it was an incredibly uncertain time. At Cavco, we are already well into the process of implementing policies and approaches to support our employees while safely keeping all of our operations open to support our customers. Nobody could have guessed at what was ahead, and we said on the call that projections and predictions were meaningless. We set clear principles for the path forward, and we remain flexible. We now know that we were in the early stages of a long and very challenging year. To be reporting our 11th straight year of increased revenue and operating earnings with that backdrop is remarkable. And it can only be attributed to the people at Cavco who have persevered and remained extremely committed. That's true for the year and has been demonstrated again in the fourth quarter when the Texas freeze and power outages impacted people across all of our operations. Again, they found ways to quickly open back up even while dealing with their personal challenges due to the unprecedented weather event. The business results speak for themselves, but were only possible through extraordinary and very capable effort. Focusing on a few of the results, we recorded the highest quarterly net revenue in our history. Our manufacturing utilization was approximately 75%. While that's lower than before the pandemic and little concerning given the rapidly growing backlog, it's very good progress in light of persistent labor and supply challenges that have not let up. At times during the quarter, utilization did reach 80% despite significantly less hours worked and the supply inefficiencies we've discussed before. Backlogs were up again this quarter, growing $131 million to $603 million. That equates to approximately 32 to 34 weeks. While we need to keep pushing to produce more than the extraordinary order rates that are driving those backlogs, order rates were up 50% over last year's fourth quarter and 40% for the year. These incremental orders account for about 85% of the backlog growth this year. After a dip in forest product costs in October and November, which favorably impacted our fourth quarter margins, supply costs escalated rapidly. For example, oriented strand board was up 275% over the past year and 48% from the start to the end of the fourth quarter. As we've worked to increase inventories where possible to address supply risk, we expect a lag in our manufacturing margins, whereby cost of goods sold will continue to drift up even after spot markets hopefully peak and decline. The bottom line here is that I feel we've done a good job keeping up with input costs, and I expect gross margins will be moving around a bit from quarter-to-quarter due to this lag in material costs hitting cost of goods sold and the wild changes in input costs that we've seen. Our retail operations continue to perform very well. Like other MH retailers, if they could get more homes, they could sell them. They have done a great job adjusting to the dynamics of the past year, which has been an emphasis on e-leads and phone-ups during the bulk of the year when walk-ins were down. It's been a consistent story of higher conversion rates, which means people are out to buy not just shop. Traffic and sales continue to follow a seasonal pattern, but at a significantly higher level than in recent years. Regarding financial services, I want to specifically recognize the outstanding job done by our people at Standard Casualty, who responded remarkably to the February Texas freeze, which was in their customers' time of need. This tremendous commitment has made a huge difference for many impacted homeowners. Claims from that event exceeded our reinsurance limit of $2 million. Despite this, financial services had a strong quarter and year, with gross profit up 84% and 12%, respectively. As Paul will explain, the quarterly comparison was to last year's period when we had some CountryPlace mortgage valuation adjustments and loan loss assumption changes, resulting from the late March market disruptions. Regardless of performance in both, lending and insurance was strong. In the broader housing picture, the homebuilding industry is only touching the level of new unit starts needed to balance household formations, and with supply and labor constraints, the country's pent-up demand for units from a decade of underbuilding is not yet being worked down. While we know there will be cycles driven by interest rates and other macroeconomic drivers, there is a tremendous need for more affordable housing. Beyond the past year's challenges and our need to focus on delivering strong results, we stayed focused on the long term as well. Our strategy of investing in our plants, seeking acquisitions and new growth opportunities and investing in our people was not paused by the pandemic. As one example, during the quarter, we announced the purchase and development of a new park model facility in Glendale, Arizona, which will increase capacity for park model customers and also increase our HUD capacity because it frees up the second line in our Goodyear plant. That project is on schedule to open later this year. We're investing in improvements to our plants that will increase productivity and improve the workplace for our coworkers. And we're committing ourselves to training and career programs that will pay off in retention and skills improvement. These are the fundamentals that will enable Cavco to produce more homes and have a bigger impact on affordable housing. With that, I'll turn it over to Paul to discuss the financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to go through the operating results, and I'll turn it over to Mark to walk through the balance sheet changes. So as Bill mentioned, net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 was the highest quarterly revenue in the company's history. We ended up at $306.5 million, which is up 20.1% compared to $255.3 million during the prior year's fourth fiscal quarter. Within the factory-built housing segment, net revenue increased 19.6% to $288 million from $240.8 million in the prior year quarter. The increase is primarily due to a 13.8% increase in average revenue per home sold primarily from product pricing increases and a product mix shift to slightly more multi-section homes, both of which contributed approximately $27.7 million of additional net revenue. Units sold increased 5.2%, which contributed approximately $19.1 million. Home production continues to improve. The factory utilization for Q4 of 2021 came in at approximately 75%. However, we do still continue to face challenges with inefficiencies from unpredictable factory employee absenteeism, hiring challenges, and building material supply shortages. In the financial services segment, net revenue increased 26.7% to $18.5 million from $14.6 million, primarily due to $1.1 million of market gains on equity securities compared to $2.3 million in losses in the prior year quarter. Additionally, the impact of having more insurance policies in force compared to the prior year quarter was partially offset by a reduction in interest income from the formally securitized loan portfolio to continue to amortize within expected levels. Consolidated gross profit in the fourth quarter as a percentage of net revenue was 23.1%, up from 20.3% in the same period last year. The increase is primarily the result of the factory-built housing segment increasing to $20.6 million in Q4 of 2021 versus 19.0% in Q4 of 2020. Most factors have been implementing product price increases at a rate greater than the input cost increases, resulting in higher total gross margin dollars per home, also expanding the gross margin percentage. In addition, some incremental margin was provided by expensing raw materials purchased at a relatively lower market price at the beginning of the quarter before times of rapid increases, given our first-in, first-out inventory accounting policy. So this means that margins in the early part of the quarter were better than in the latter part of the quarter. Improved gross margin as a percentage of revenue in financial services were 61.9%, up from 42.7% in the same period last year, primarily due to the result of higher unrealized gains on marketable equity securities and beneficial noncash valuation adjustments. The prior year included $2.1 million in noncash valuation adjustment charges including loan loss reserves from economic conditions stemming from the pandemic, while the current period has a benefit from these same items of $0.7 million. These benefits were partially offset by higher weather-related claims from the deep freeze that occurred in Texas in February of 2021. Selling, general, and administrative expenses in the fiscal 2021 fourth quarter were $44 million, or 14.3% of net revenue compared to $37.4 million or 14.7% of net revenue during the same quarter last year. The cost increases were from higher salary and incentive compensation expense on improved results, increased charges related to paid off time policy, vacation enhancements, and a severance expense of $1.3 million related to the separation from the company's former chief financial officer. The fourth quarter also included $1.4 million expenses related to the SEC inquiry, including a related accrual for the potential outcome of the inquiry. There are really three main drivers of the reported SEC number: one, lawyer fees; two, insurance recoveries; and now, this accrual. I also want to remind you that the previous period included $2.1 million of D&O insurance premium amortization at no expense in the current quarter. Other income in this quarter was $3 million compared to a net expense of $631,000 in the prior quarter. The current quarter includes unrealized gains of $2.1 million on corporate equity investments compared to unrealized losses of $2.1 million in the prior year quarter. This increase is partially offset by $0.6 million in reductions in interest income or non-cash and commercial loan receivables given lower interest rates. Pretax profit was up 118.4% this quarter compared to $29.7 million and $13.6 million for the prior year period. The effective income tax rate was 15.2% for the fourth quarter compared to 12% in the same period last year. The higher effective tax rate in the current year period relates to higher income, partially offset by greater tax benefits from stock option exercises. Net income was up 110% to $25.2 million compared to net income of $12 million in the same quarter of the prior year. Net income per diluted share this quarter was $2.71 compared to $1.29 in last year's fourth quarter. Now I'll turn it over to Mark to go through the balance sheet changes.

Thanks, Paul. So comparing the April 3, 2021 balance sheet to the March 28, 2020 balance sheet, the cash balance was at $322.3 million, up from $241.8 million a year earlier. The increase is primarily due to four items, which include net income offset by noncash unrealized gains on equity investments and other noncash items; changes in working capital, including greater accrued expenses and other current liability balances which include higher customer deposits received as a result of higher order rates; principal collection on consumer loans; and then sales of consumer loans greater than loan originations. These were offset by purchases of property, plant, and equipment, including the purchase of the Glendale, Arizona park model facility, higher inventory purchases, and repurchases of our common stock. Investments increased from the recovery of the underlying equity markets during the period. Inventories increased due to rising prices of raw materials used in production. Prepaid and other assets were higher from the assets reported in regards to the loan repurchase option for delinquent loans that have been sold to Ginnie Mae. While we are not obligated to repurchase these loans, accounting guidance requires us to record an asset and liability for the potential of a repurchase. The balance included an increase from additional loans in forbearance, offset by routine amortization of prepaid balances, including the additional D&O premiums. Long-term consumer loans receivable decreased from principal collection on loans held for investments that were previously securitized. Operating lease right-of-use assets and the related liabilities increased from a five-year lease renewal of our Goodyear manufacturing facility. Accrued expenses and other current liabilities increased from deferred payroll tax payments under the CARES Act, higher customer deposits which have grown with the factory backlogs as well as the delinquent loan repurchase option previously discussed. Lastly, stockholders' equity was approximately $683.6 million as of April 3, 2021, up $76 million from $607.6 million as of March 28, 2020. And the balance sheet includes a new treasury stock line item, representing the cost of our repurchase of Cavco shares during the period. And with that, I'll turn it back to Bill.

Thank you, Mark. I want to follow up on Paul's comments about the SEC costs and the related accrual. I know that given the very long time the situation has been unfolding, there's likely to be a lot of interest in this. We appreciate that, given that the amount is financially immaterial to our overall results and that it pertains to a desired settlement with the SEC, we're not separately identifying the accrual amounts. I also want to clearly say that our decision to accrue does not indicate any change in our view of a possible settlement, which remains uncertain. I understand this likely raises the question then why did you accrue now? This is a process and one that the SEC controls and drives. As part of their process, we saw fit to formalize the settlement proposal. And from an accounting perspective, this triggered the need for an accrual. You should not interpret this to mean that a settlement is imminent. I also want to caution that legal fees and potentially other costs are likely to continue. While I recognize this is news for reasons that I hope you'll appreciate, we aren't in a position to say more about it at this time. With that, Grace, let's turn it over for questions.

Your first question comes from the line of Daniel Moore from CJS.

Just a quick housekeeping to start. How much revenue and gross margin benefit did you see in the quarter from the additional week kind of year-over-year?

Is that a number, so that one... Give me a second. We will come back to it later.

Yes. We'll come back to it, Dan.

Sure. So a lot of detail on the prepared remarks, Bill, greatly appreciate it, a lot of moving parts in the business. What are your expectations for shipments in fiscal Q1 relative to Q4? And what should we think about the levels of potential shipments as we look out to Q2 and Q3, given this supply chain constraints that are well documented and particularly around PVC and siding and the disruptions from the Gulf, et cetera. So any commentary on how we should think about the cadence of shipments going forward would be helpful?

Yes, the situation remains challenging. The supply disruptions have not decreased, so the risk level is still similar to previous quarters. Thankfully, these issues haven't caused significant shutdowns at our plants, although we've experienced a few isolated instances of reduced production for a day. As we've mentioned, these disruptions tend to create inefficiencies rather than complete shutdowns. We're focused on improving our capacity utilization. Currently, we've reached 75% in the fourth quarter, and our goal is to return to pre-pandemic levels of around 80%. I believe achieving this is possible; we've even reached 80% at times during the quarter despite having fewer production employee hours. We're managing well in terms of throughput and efficiency, but we need to raise our numbers to that 80%. Demand is not a concern, but the challenge lies in increasing labor hours and navigating the supply issues. That’s our outlook, and I don’t have a specific forecast to share.

Okay. Doesn't sound like you expect daily or weekly production to step back, at least on what you're seeing today materially, it's just a quick function of how quickly we can improve it. Is that a fair assessment, at least? I mean just wanted...

Yes. That's exactly right. I mean, all of our focus in manufacturing is just to get as much throughput as we can and hoping that we can turn the tide on this unhealthy backlog build. None of us want it to be that high.

Okay. Are you seeing incremental demand coming from trading down versus site built, particularly given rising raw material inflation? Any anecdotal or other evidence there?

I only have anecdotal evidence and what we believe to be happening logically. We have previously discussed that although we are facing challenges with efficiency and supply, we are more efficient with labor and materials compared to site builders. This means the market for manufactured housing continues to expand. Additionally, the rapid increase in housing costs has been widely reported. All of this suggests that there is a segment that, in different circumstances, would be opting for site-built homes, but is now gravitating towards the higher end of our offerings. I believe this is occurring, although I lack extensive data to substantiate it. On the other hand, there is concern that those at the lower end of the market who would typically be qualifying for a manufactured home are now being priced out. This shortage of supply is worsening.

Understood. That's helpful. And labor availability and absenteeism, are you seeing any improvements as the pandemic recedes or just kind of too early to tell?

Yes, it's somewhat unpredictable. Whenever we feel optimistic due to a positive week of net hiring, we often face setbacks the following week. However, I believe we are making progress. I anticipate that in the upcoming months, there will be improvements in the general economy, which should encourage more people to seek work and apply for jobs. Additionally, I believe that part of this progress is linked to our efforts to enhance opportunities within our workplace and to raise wages. We are implementing many initiatives that I think are making a difference. Therefore, I remain hopeful about overcoming the hiring challenges we are currently experiencing.

Got it. And lastly, and I'll jump back. But it's exciting to kind of hear about or see how the development of the new park model facility takes place, what other geographies that you've got targeted for potential greenfields where maybe you can open a plant and then increase capacity, not only at the new plant, but alleviate a little bit of stress on some existing ones? Or will you sort of wait and see how this goes first and then go from there?

Yes. We don't really want to wait and see. I mean, we want to be relatively aggressive about investing because our view, as we've talked in the past, is very confident as far as demand going forward. So we're not sitting on our hands. The challenges with new capacity, obviously, it doesn't happen overnight. So you've got to have the confidence in demand, which we do, but the challenges are the same challenges that face us in our existing operations. Can you get the labor? Can you get the supplies in a situation where some supplies are being allocated right now? And the classic challenge in MH also is how are you going to get kind of the shelf space, the access to market because most places are already served. So we've always said that we've got a real interest in the next frontier for us geographically, which is the Northeast, just geographically. And we're working hard to figure out how we can grow our shipments. So whether that's acquisition or more greenfield, we'll have to see how it unfolds.

And your next question comes from the line of Greg Palm from Craig-Hallum Capital.

I wanted to start off with back to the demand environment. Curious what trends have been like in April and May? And I guess, any noticeable difference between retail and community channel calendar year-to-date?

I'll take the second part first. It's kind of a short answer, they're both going strong. I know early on in the fiscal year when the pandemic was getting underway, communities kind of took a step back, kind of more of a wait-and-see attitude, and the street dealer business just took off. I'd say today, both are very strong; hard to separate them. And what was the first part, the demand as far as regional? Was that what you're asking?

No, I was just asking about the trends for the current quarter-to-date in April and May, and whether anything has changed since your fiscal Q4.

Generally, continued to be very strong. One of the things, and this might be a little more information than I need to throw out there that you're interested in. One of the things we've started doing is keeping a really close eye on quotes as a leading indicator of demand. Then generally, I can just tell you, they remain very strong. The theory being that there should be a correlation between quotes to our manufacturing plants and ultimate orders. And from that perspective, we just don't see any letting up right now. Obviously, the same things would be the turning points, if we see a significant increase in rates that will change the tide. But right now, there's just no reason not to be pretty optimistic about continued strong demand.

Yes, makes sense. I was a bit surprised that ASPs were flat quarter-over-quarter. I know it's still a big jump on a year-over-year basis. And I think you called out mix shift a bit more towards multi. I don't know if that comment was specific to the year-ago period or sequentially. But I guess, what would be the reason that ASPs won't continue to go up? Is that your expectation as you've continued to take up pricing here in recent months?

Yes. It's a little different answer for the sequential quarter-to-quarter of the year. Mark, do you want to answer it?

Yes. So this is Mark. Yes, we had a comment that you mentioned was related to Q4 over Q4 year-over-year. So sequentially, we did actually see a little bit of a mix shift towards more single-section homes. So that was offset by increased prices on kind of the multi-section. So kind of net-net flat like you mentioned.

So excluding any potential mix shift going forward, is it still safe to assume that like on a like-for-like basis home prices are still going up? I mean, I think you've been taking price increases even more recently, correct?

Yes, that process just continues. Yes. I mean, as Paul talked about, the input costs really shot up during the quarter. So we're doing our best to kind of keep up with that. And we tried to explain the dynamic that we see with margins and the fact that there is a lag between the current pricing of input costs and what flows through our cost of goods. So it's something to keep an eye on, I think, as I said, we're going to probably see some bouncy percent margins.

I would like to know the gross margin rate at the end of the quarter. You mentioned it was higher at the beginning and lower at the end, but I'm curious if you could quantify the decrease, specifically for the factory-built segment. Was it a reduction of around 100 to 150 basis points?

I don't think we have the quantification, but just to give a little more background on that, we looked at the rate of materials per floor in October, and there was really a dip between the end of September, and then the dip really started in October and continued all the way through November into most of December. And so as those costs were purchased as raw materials, those then became cost of sales or expense in primarily January and February, which is why we had that increased margin and in the earlier part of the quarter. Don't have the specific amount of that. But just in general, the cost per floor was roughly 20% less in those in that October, November period than what we had in other periods, primarily in lumber and OSB.

Next up we have Jay McCanless with Wedbush.

Just to ask one more question on that. Should we think normally that there's going to be kind of that two-month lag where you buy raw materials and it takes about two months for them to go into a home? Or has that lag shorter right now as you're trying to ramp utilization?

I believe it's a reasonable guideline because we are working to increase utilization while ensuring we have the necessary materials. It's not just about price; we also need to consider their physical availability. Therefore, we're not aiming for a very lean inventory in this environment; instead, we want to secure as much as possible. I think that a two-month lag is probably a good rule of thumb.

Yes, that makes sense. And like you said, a change in ramping up production, the factories are very keen on making sure they have enough product to continue to build.

Okay. Great. And then I understand that you don't want to comment much on the SEC investigation, but I got a little lost, Bill, when you were discussing why you needed to take the reserve this quarter. Could you go through that again, please?

Yes, that's reasonable. I’d like to discuss everything, but we prefer to do so when it's completely finalized. Essentially, as we've mentioned before, we are optimistic about reaching a settlement. In the last quarter, we worked with the SEC and put together a formal settlement proposal for them. When we did that, it became necessary from an accounting standpoint to recognize an accrual. That's essentially the update. The main difference from the previous quarter was that, while we were in discussions, nothing was formalized then. Our Board had ratified it, and it was mostly informal discussions between a junior SEC member and our external counsel. The formalization occurred in the fourth quarter.

Okay. That's clearer. I have another question regarding low-end consumers possibly being priced out, specifically low-end MH consumers. Do you have an estimate of how much of your market that represents? Is it around 5% of the total addressable market or 10%? How much do you believe has been priced out among lower-end buyers?

Yes, it's kind of a tough question because we still have such high demand, right? So we're not seeing the demand impact from it. I'm just kind of reflecting on what's obviously going on in the market and the fact that the country has got this affordable housing issue, I believe that's a low-end market issue. And that part of the market, it just got a lot harder by houses. So Jay, I don't really have a quantification of it. Just I think that while we believe that there's a huge general pent-up demand for housing, it's disproportionately growing at that low end.

Our next question comes from the line of Ian Lapey from Gabelli Funds.

Bill, first, congratulations on 11 straight years of growth in revenues and earnings. This year, especially during a pandemic, is truly impressive.

Thanks, Ian. Yes, thank you very much.

A few questions on financial services, if I could. I guess starting with Standard Chartered, how significant was the excess of claims above the retention limit? And did this event, the Texas freeze, has that resulted in higher pricing, either for your primary insurance or from your reinsurers? And also any impact on demand for insurance?

Yes. The pricing impact is not clearly visible at the moment, if there will be one. It tends to occur sporadically with both our rates and reinsurance rates, so there is no obvious effect from that angle. The event was noteworthy because it involved a large number of smaller claims, unlike, for instance, a hurricane. There were many claims, and if they exceed $2 million, I cannot confirm how much above that amount they went. However, the scale was comparable to some of the notable hurricanes we've experienced in the past. It was a significant issue.

Okay. Regarding the commercial lending operations, I understand that you initially entered this business to address the gap left by National Lenders. Have larger lenders returned to floor plan financing for retailers? And do you still see this as a promising growth opportunity, especially since independent retailers are likely to open more stores due to strong demand?

Yes. I mean there's availability for floor plan lending out there. We continue to do. You're absolutely right. The initial thrust of that years ago was because so many big lenders exited the market. We're kind of comfortable with how we manage it. And we do think it's important for some of our relationship with independent dealers. So it's not something we look to necessarily grow aggressively from a profit perspective. We use it as kind of a way to support those independent dealers and the level has been relatively stable over time.

Okay. And lastly, for CountryPlace, any updates on the chattel lending operations and any expansion there?

Yes, we still see it as an opportunity. We've had some success in the market with certain securitizations, which is encouraging. We believe we are effectively pricing the risk associated with chattel lending. Over the past year, the rates unexpectedly dropped significantly during the pandemic, which was surprising to me. Despite that, we are considering increasing our balance sheet commitment to chattel lending in the future.

Next up we have Bill Wolfenden from Cottonwood Investments.

I have a couple of questions. You announced a share buyback a couple of quarters ago, but it seems you only bought back 6,000 shares. With over $375 million in cash and investments on the balance sheet, could you discuss your capital allocation priorities for the next few years?

Yes. The small amount of buybacks is almost regrettable this quarter because it wasn't significant, but we still view it as an important tool for managing our cash balance moving forward. We've recognized the need to manage that cash and were quite surprised at the beginning of this fiscal year when we generated cash flow. At the start of the year, we were uncertain about what would happen. After taking a pause to assess the pandemic's impact, we accelerated some actions. Our investment priorities include enhancing our plants and pursuing organic growth, as evidenced by the work at our Glendale, Arizona facility, which required a substantial cash investment this quarter. We are also actively exploring acquisitions and hope to make progress in that area. Additionally, as I mentioned in response to Ian's question, we are open to using some capital for chattel lending if the risk-reward situation is favorable. Our priorities remain consistent, and we understand the necessity of putting cash to work.

So based on those comments, you anticipate the buyback potentially picks up then looking forward as we sort of get through the pandemic and potentially the SEC issue? I mean, it just seems like you're buying your own shares might be more beneficial than earning zero in cash?

Yes. I mean, we got the authorization and intend to use it to try to help manage the cash flow. So that still is the case now.

Great. And then just a housekeeping question. Can you elaborate on exactly what the nonmarketable equity investments entail?

Yes. So those are our joint venture in retail operations that we partially own.

Okay. Great. And then has there been any new proposals that we may have missed from the new administration in Washington that could potentially benefit the manufactured housing industry?

Yes, nothing that I would really say is noteworthy on the call here. No.

And we have a follow-up question from Daniel Moore from CJS.

Bill, just wondering any update at all or color around the CFO search?

It's ongoing. I wish it was done, but we're doing well kind of holding down the fort. So it's like any recruiting effort, it's kind of ongoing until the day you got it done, and we're not quite there yet. So anxious to get there, though. Thanks for asking.

Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back to Mr. Bill Boor, President and Chief Executive Officer, for any closing remarks.

Thanks, Grace. Just in summary, we continue to operate through some very real challenges and risks, but most notably, the supply and labor that we talked about. In a year with so much to work through, it's beyond gratifying to be able to report the strong financial results. And as I've said a few times, it's due to a tremendous amount of hard work by our very capable and committed people across the company. So we're all very mindful that there's a lot of work ahead. We want to reduce the backlogs. We want to provide more quality, affordable homes, loans, and insurance coverage to the folks out there that we try to serve. So really appreciate everyone's time today. Thank you for that, and thanks for your continued interest in the company.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may all disconnect.