Earnings Call Transcript - KBH Q1 2026

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the KB Home 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. The conference call is being recorded, and a replay will be accessible on the KB Home website until April 24, 2026. And I will now turn the call over to Jill Peters, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you, Jill. You may now begin.

Jill Peters, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to review our results for the first quarter of fiscal 2026. On the call are Jeff Mezger, Executive Chairman; Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer; Rob Dillard, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Bill Hollinger, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer; and Thad Johnson, Senior Vice President and Treasurer. During this call, items will be discussed that are considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future results, and the company does not undertake any obligation to update them. Due to various factors, including those detailed in today's press release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, actual results could be materially different from those stated or implied in the forward-looking statements. In addition, an explanation and/or reconciliation of the non-GAAP measure of adjusted housing gross profit margin as well as other non-GAAP measure referenced during today's discussion to its most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in today's press release and/or on the Investor Relations page of our website at kbhome.com. And finally, please note all figures are based on our quarter ended February 28, and all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise stated. And with that, here's Jeff Mezger.

Jeff Mezger, Executive Chairman

Thank you, Jill. Good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased that our first quarter financial results were within our guidance ranges. Operationally, our divisions continue to execute well, and we achieved our highest community count in many years, contributing to year-over-year growth in net orders. Perhaps most importantly, we have returned to a mix of sales that are predominantly built-to-order, which we believe will enable us to achieve 70% built-to-order deliveries in the second half of this year. We have a renewed focus on this core strategy as a central component in strengthening our company going forward. With the lag between sale and delivery for built-to-order homes, we expect to continue growing our backlog. A larger backlog will provide many benefits, including greater predictability in our deliveries and higher gross margins than we achieved on inventory sales, typically in the range of 300 to 500 basis points. As to the details of our first quarter results, we produced total revenues of about $1.1 billion and diluted earnings per share of $0.52. We continue to have significant financial flexibility and remain balanced in our capital allocation, investing for growth while also returning capital to our shareholders. We repurchased 843,000 shares of our common stock at an average price below our current book value per share, which we believe is an excellent use of our cash, accretive to both our earnings and book value per share and a factor in improving our return on equity over time. Inclusive of dividends, we returned almost $70 million in capital to our shareholders in the first quarter. In addition, we continued to expand our book value per share compared to the year-ago period to over $61. Consumers have been faced with a variety of challenges over the past 2 years, and the conflict in the Middle East that began at the end of February has added another layer of uncertainty. Against this backdrop and taking into consideration that our net orders in the first quarter were below the level we needed to hold our prior full year delivery guidance, we are lowering our range for the year. Rob McGibney will provide more color on this in a moment. Before turning the call over to Rob, I want to congratulate him on his promotion. As part of our long-term succession plan, Rob assumed the role of President and Chief Executive Officer on March 1, and I transitioned to Executive Chairman of the Board. Rob is a proven results-oriented leader with a deep understanding of our business gained over the past 25 years with the company. He began his career at KB Home in our Las Vegas division, historically our largest and most profitable, where he rose to Division President and then continued on in roles of increasing responsibility within the company. Rob has worked side-by-side with me during the past 5 years while running our homebuilding operations and both the Board and I are confident that he is ready to lead KB Home forward. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rob.

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Jeff. I am honored to step into the role of CEO and excited about KB Home's future. With our distinguished brand, differentiated product offerings and industry-leading customer service, there are significant opportunities to create value for both our homebuyers and our shareholders. In addition, our strong financial position provides us with flexibility and the ability to support growth of our business over time. One of the traits that defined our operations in fiscal 2025 was consistency in our operational execution that led to meaningfully improving our build times and tightly managing our direct costs. We will continue to focus on these key areas in fiscal 2026 together with our renewed focus on our built-to-order strategy. We are confident the multiple advantages of our BTO model will ultimately result in a stronger company. We remain optimistic about the long-term housing market with favorable demographics supporting higher demand over time, together with the structural undersupply of homes. Near term, buyers continue to demonstrate the desire for homeownership and the ability to qualify, although tepid consumer confidence, elevated mortgage interest rates and affordability pressures have stifled underlying demand. More recently, the conflict in the Middle East has created more uncertainty for an already cautious consumer. In the first quarter, healthy traffic in our communities, a steady conversion of traffic to sales, the lowest cancellation rate we've experienced in the past 4 years and our higher community count drove a 3% year-over-year increase in net orders. While the growth in net orders is clearly a positive at 2,846, our sales were below what we needed to maintain our prior full year delivery guidance, as Jeff noted. The meaningful improvement in cancellations reflects high-quality committed buyers who are ready and able to purchase a home and also supported net orders at an average absorption pace of 3.5 per month per community. Although this pace was slightly lower year-over-year, we remain focused on our long-standing annual average target of 4 net orders per community to optimize our assets. Most importantly, our order mix demonstrates a deliberate and strategic shift in how we are positioning the business for the long term. We are returning to our core built-to-order model, a foundational element of how KB Home operates. This is how our teams are trained, how we manage our communities, and how we create value. While this will result in a temporary trough in deliveries for the first half of the year, as the higher level of BTO homes we are selling now will benefit our third and fourth quarter deliveries, and we have intentionally slowed our inventory starts, it is a purposeful reset that positions us to be a stronger, more predictable company in the second half of the year and beyond. We are making considerable progress increasing our built-to-order sales. They represented 44% of our net orders in October, growing each month through the first quarter. We exited February at 68%. And in the early weeks of March, we are now above 70%. Built-to-order homes typically generate between 300 and 500 basis points of incremental gross margins compared to inventory homes, and as a result, having a greater percentage of BTO deliveries will drive higher margins. As we increase our mix of built-to-order homes, we are building a solid backlog, a solid sold backlog that has not yet started construction. This backlog provides greater visibility into future deliveries and revenues, improves efficiency in our starts and production processes, and gives our trade partners clearer line of sight into their upcoming workloads. In turn, this predictability supports better execution and over time, contributes to more favorable cost structures. We can leverage the pending starts into more favorable bids and keep our trade partners on our job sites, which is more efficient and further improves build times. Internally, our cost structure benefits from managing the even flow production. With the makeup of our net orders in the first quarter, together with our expectations for BTO sales in the second quarter, we anticipate reaching a turning point in the second quarter in growing our backlog relative to the prior year period. As a result, we expect to drive sequential increases in deliveries as we move through the back half of the year. More broadly, we view this as more than just a mix shift. It is a reset back to our core operating model that extends well beyond the current fiscal year results, which will allow us to operate with greater precision, less volatility and stronger alignment among sales, starts, and deliveries. It reduces the need for speculative inventory, lowers our exposure to pricing swings and supports more disciplined capital deployment. Over time, we believe this will translate into a more durable and differentiated business, one that is better positioned to generate sustainable margins and returns across cycles. We also expect our deliveries in the second half of this year to reflect a more favorable regional mix with increased contribution from our Northern California businesses. Our communities in these markets have historically had higher average selling prices and higher margins. More of these communities between now and with deliveries projected in the third and fourth quarters and beyond, we expect to see the benefits in our financial results. Finally, with greater delivery volumes at higher average selling prices in the second half of the year, we expect to regain operating leverage on the fixed cost component of our gross margin. Our ability to build homes more efficiently continues to be strong. We had already achieved our company-wide target of 120 days from home start to completion on built-to-order homes in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, yet we further improved in this critical area in the first quarter, with a sequential decrease to 108 days. This is an important factor in the value proposition of a BTO home from a customer standpoint relative to the time it takes to purchase a resale or an inventory home. Shorter build times also allow our customers to lock their mortgage rates more easily and cost-efficiently. In reducing our build times, we have now meaningfully expanded our selling window within the year. Last year, it took us about 5 months to build a home, which meant early spring was the latest we could sell BTO homes for same-year delivery. Today, with build times closer to 3.5 months, we can continue selling BTO homes for same-year delivery into the summer. The result is simple. More of what we sell this year turns into deliveries and revenues by year-end, which improves both our volume and cash flow. We ended the first quarter with 276 active communities, the highest count we have had in many years, up 8% year-over-year. We achieved 37 grand openings in the first quarter, in line with our target, and project another 30 to 35 community openings in our second quarter. These new communities will contribute to a peak for community count sometime within our second quarter at the height of the spring selling season. With more communities, we are positioned to drive more sales, and our new communities typically sell at a stronger initial absorption pace, benefiting from the newness and excitement of grand openings and supported by our disciplined community opening process. As we look beyond the second quarter, depending on the pace of sellouts, we expect the community count to step down somewhat in the second half of the year. Our production is in better balance today with a total of 3,353 homes in process, split between 70% sold and 30% unsold. This balance aligns with our expectation to increase our BTO deliveries to at least 70% of our total in the second half of this year. As to direct costs, we continue to benefit from lower trade labor expenses in most markets, but there is some pressure on material costs from lumber. We are managing our lumber locks strategically and drawing on our deep supplier relationships to limit cost increases while also continuing to actively rebid our local and national contracts as well as value engineer our products and simplify our studio offerings to help manage our overall direct cost. Before I wrap up, I will review the credit profile of our buyers who finance their mortgages through our joint venture, KBHS Home Loans. Our capture rate remained high with 81% of buyers who finance their homes in the first quarter using KBHS. Higher capture rates help us manage our backlog more effectively and provide more certainty in closing dates, which benefits our company as well as our buyers. In addition, we see higher customer satisfaction levels from buyers who use our joint venture versus other lenders. The average cash down payment of 16% was fairly steady as compared to prior quarters and equated to over $72,000. On average, the household income of customers who use KBHS was about $133,000, and they had a FICO score of 743. Even with half of our customers purchasing their first home, we are still attracting buyers with strong credit profiles who can qualify for their mortgage while making a significant down payment or paying in cash. 11% of our deliveries in the first quarter were to all-cash buyers. In conclusion, we continue to navigate market conditions with a focus on strong operational execution and disciplined adherence to our built-to-order model to drive results. We are confident that our personalized product offerings and transparent pricing approach are compelling for our buyers. Further, with an increasing number of communities in attractive submarkets set to open in our second quarter, and expected higher percentage of BTO deliveries as well as an anticipated regional mix weighted towards higher average selling prices, higher margin Northern California deliveries later this year, we believe we are well positioned for stronger results in the second half of fiscal 2026. And finally, as we continue to align our overhead to our delivery volume, we have taken steps to reduce our costs, including an unfortunate but necessary 10% year-over-year headcount reduction. While it takes a little time to see the impact of these measures in our financial results and our SG&A ratio is also a function of our revenue level, we do expect this ratio to be lower in the second half of 2026 as well. And with that, I will turn the call back to Jeff.

Jeff Mezger, Executive Chairman

Thanks, Rob. We have a favorable lot position owning or controlling over 63,000 lots at the end of our first quarter, 41% of which were controlled. Our growth strategy remains primarily centered on expanding our share within our existing markets with the geographic footprint that we believe is positioned for long-term economic and demographic growth. Our approach toward allocating our cash flow remains consistent and balanced. We are achieving our priorities of positioning our business for future growth, managing our leverage within our targeted range and rewarding our shareholders through share repurchases and our quarterly cash dividend. We are maintaining our land investments at a level that will support our current growth projections and invested about $560 million in land acquisition and development in the first quarter with roughly 60% of our investment going toward developing land we already own. In closing, I want to thank our entire KB Home team for their commitment to serving our homebuyers and the discipline with which they've been executing our built-to-order model, which we believe will result in a stronger company going forward. Although market conditions remain challenging, we are focused on the appropriate levers to drive improved results, renewing our focus on built-to-order, reducing our build times, lowering our costs, opening new communities and staying balanced in our capital allocation. We plan to continue our share repurchase program in fiscal 2026, with between $50 million and $100 million of repurchases planned for our second quarter. Following the end of the spring selling season, we expect to have more clarity on our year. As a result, we anticipate providing margin guidance with our 2026 second quarter earnings announcement in June. We are committed to delivering long-term shareholder value, and we look forward to updating you as the year continues to unfold. Now I'll turn the call over to Rob Dillard for the financial review.

Rob Dillard, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Jeff. I'm pleased to report on the first quarter fiscal 2026 results. As Jeff and Rob said, we continue to manage the business with discipline, focusing on optimizing every asset by pricing to the market maintaining a healthy pace and delivering our built-to-order advantage. We expect that this strategy of providing a personalized home that the customer prefers will also benefit our financial performance as we shift the delivery mix towards higher-margin built-to-order homes in 2026 and beyond. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, we were within our guidance range with total revenues of $1.08 billion and housing revenues of $1.07 billion, a 23% decrease on a year-over-year basis. We delivered 2,370 homes in the quarter. This result was near the midpoint of our guidance range as we continue to experience moderate demand from a cautious consumer. Deliveries benefited from a 22% reduction in build times for built-to-order homes to 108 days, a 9% sequential reduction. Lower build times increase capital efficiency and benefit volume, as Rob discussed. Average selling price declined 10% to $452,000 due to regional and product mix and general market conditions. Average selling price declined 3% sequentially due primarily to regional mix. Housing gross profit margin was 15.3%, and adjusted housing gross profit margin, which excludes $2.2 million of inventory-related charges, was 15.5%. Adjusted housing gross profit margin was 480 basis points lower, primarily due to pricing pressure, higher relative land costs, regional mix and lower operating leverage. We continue to manage costs effectively and achieved an 8% reduction in total direct construction costs per unit. SG&A as a percent of housing revenue increased to 12.2% as lower costs were offset by a decrease in operating leverage. SG&A expense decreased 14% due to reduced selling expenses associated with lower unit volume and fixed cost controls. SG&A benefited from a favorable impact of an $8 million insurance recovery. While such recoveries occur from time to time, the absolute size and relative impact of this quarter's recovery was greater than usual. Homebuilding operating income for the first quarter decreased to $33 million or 3.1% of homebuilding revenues. Net income was $33 million or $0.52 per diluted share, benefiting from a 13% reduction in our weighted average diluted shares outstanding. Turning now to our guidance. Our guidance for the second quarter and full year 2026 reflects the current uncertainty of the new home market, which we believe has been impacted by affordability concerns and recent geopolitical tensions. We continue to focus on controlling the controllables and have improved our operations with lower build times and lower costs. We believe that this operational improvement, combined with our strategy to shift to a higher mix of built-to-order homes will further benefit our financial results in the second half of 2026 and beyond, as Rob detailed in his comments. In the second quarter of 2026, we expect to generate housing revenues between $1.05 billion and $1.15 billion, based on expected deliveries of between 2,250 and 2,450 homes. Housing gross profit margin, assuming no inventory-related charges, is expected to be between 15% and 15.6% for the second quarter of 2026. Price will continue to be the primary driver for margin pressure as we balance price and pace for the remainder of the year. Margins are expected to be impacted by higher relative land costs, regional mix, and reduced operating leverage as deliveries are expected to remain below prior year levels. We expect to continue to partially offset this margin pressure with lower direct construction costs per unit. We continue to expect margins to improve in the second half of 2026, driven largely by positive operating leverage from typical seasonality and a more favorable regional mix with a shift to higher-priced, higher-margin West Coast communities, as well as our strategy to increase the mix of built-to-order homes delivered. The second quarter 2026 SG&A ratio is expected to be between 12.4% and 13% due to expected reduced operating leverage despite cost controls. We had solid results, reducing both fixed costs and direct construction costs in the first quarter, and we expect this to continue in the remainder period of 2026. We expect our SG&A ratio to decline in the second half of the year due to lower fixed costs and increased volume. Our effective tax rate for the second quarter is expected to be approximately 19%. The tax rate is expected to trend higher in the second half of 2026 due to reduced impact of energy credits. For the full year 2026, we expect housing revenues of between $4.8 billion and $5.5 billion based on between 10,000 and 11,500 deliveries. This full year guidance is based on current market conditions. We anticipate refining full year guidance and providing additional details as we gain further clarity on the spring selling season. Turning now to the balance sheet. We continue to manage our capital with discipline. With a dual focus on funding growth and returning excess capital to shareholders with over $5.7 billion in inventories, a 1% sequential increase, we believe that we are well positioned to fund growth in the near and long term. We own or control over 63,000 lots, including approximately 26,000 lots that we have the option to purchase. We continue to invest in growth, as indicated by the $567 million we invested in land and development, while also exercising discipline through our rigorous underwriting standards, that resulted in abandoning contracts to purchase 3,400 lots at a cost of $2.2 million. We believe that this rigorous land process has improved the quality of our land inventory and will benefit future profitability. We're confident that we'll continue to identify and execute land opportunities, matching our consistent cash flow and considerable liquidity. At quarter end, we had total liquidity of $1.2 billion, consisting of $201 million in cash and $1 billion available under our $1.2 billion revolving credit facility. As with last year, the $200 million utilization of our revolving credit facility is seasonal in nature. We have no debt maturities until June of 2027. We will continue to be thoughtful in managing our capital structure to ensure we capitalize on favorable market conditions to refinance any maturities. We continue to target a debt-to-capital ratio in the neighborhood of 30% to support our strong BB positive credit rating. We are comfortable with our current 32.9% ratio. Our strong balance sheet, combined with the returns from our operations has enabled us to return over $1.9 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases in the past 4.5 years. In this period, we have repurchased 37% of our shares outstanding, which we believe is the highest percentage of shares repurchased during this time among our peer companies. Returning capital remains a core part of our focus on delivering strong total shareholder returns in all market conditions. In the first quarter, we paid $17 million in dividends, representing a 1.8% yield, and we repurchased 843,000 shares for a return of capital of $50 million. We ended the quarter with $850 million available under our current repurchase authorization. We expect to repurchase between $50 million and $100 million of common stock in the second quarter. As we look ahead, our strategy is to enhance our results through increased operating rigor as we shift our delivery mix towards higher-margin built-to-order homes. We believe that this operating strategy, when combined with our shareholder-focused capital strategy, will maximize shareholder value over the long term. With that, we'll now take your questions. John, would you please open the line.

Matthew Bouley, Analyst

So first, I guess based on the numbers you gave around inventory homes, it seems like the built-to-order orders really improved kind of beyond what you get just from cutting spec starts. So my question is, obviously, we talk about the sort of gross margin benefit, that's pretty clear. But when you talk about mixing the business back to built-to-order, maybe this will be a preview of your Investor Day a little bit. But what does that kind of more full and visible backlog do for your sales folks, your operators, what changes around your thought process on production and starts? Just any more color on why the business overall runs better relative to spec production.

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Matthew, thanks for the question. When we look at our built-to-order business, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, it's really part of our DNA. It's how we set up things. It's how we look at the world, it's how we train our salespeople. So we're not surprised to see the shift to built-to-order. Part of it is just we haven't been starting the specs so we're not competing with ourselves in our own communities with both heavy spec load as well as build-to-order. But the benefits that it provides to the business in predictability. The first place I would go is that we've got this backlog of sold not started homes that we can leverage that gives us a cadence where we can operate on even flow production. That benefits all across the board, whether that's on our fixed cost or just managing to a consistent level of construction in our communities. Plus we can use that cash, if you will, of homes that we have sold not started because it also gives our trade partners visibility. And most of the markets that we're operating in right now, we're seeing starts are down pretty significantly year-over-year, and there are trade partners that are hungry for work. So that's the first place that we point to with this guaranteed sequence of starts that's coming up. You mentioned it, but one of the obvious ones is the big margin, incremental margin that we see within the same community, selling built-to-order versus the inventory. And from a customer's perspective, our view, my view is that we're creating something different. And it's not just treating a home like a commodity or a widget, where people take what's out there and available, but they're getting to create their own personal value by picking their lot, picking their floor plan, picking their elevation, going through the design studio process and really making that home their own and designing it to fit their needs and their lifestyle and fit their budget as well.

Matthew Bouley, Analyst

Okay, understood. That's very helpful. Moving on to the guidance, you mentioned removing about 1,000 deliveries from the full year forecast. Q1 orders increased compared to last year, but you noted that this wasn't sufficient to maintain the guidance. I'm curious if that Q1 order number was the sole reason for the change in guidance, or are you also considering any recent market trends from March or adjustments related to the progression towards built-to-order? Is there anything else that has shifted since the guidance was provided in January?

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. It's really the combo of the things that you mentioned. Part of it is the orders. Our orders while was a positive year-over-year comp, and we're pleased with the transition to more BTO sales, they were below our internal expectations that we had and how we built the plan for the year. As we get into the early part of March, there's a lot of noise out there. And we mentioned in our prepared remarks this conflict in the Middle East that started right at the end of February. And we saw pretty good sales results in the first week of March. But the last couple of weeks have been a little softer than what we would like to see or what we normally get this time of year. And we just don't have a lot of visibility right now as I don't think anybody does into how long this conflict may go on, and how it's going to impact consumer psyche and confidence. But we feel that right now, it's weighing on the consumer. So those are really the 2 reasons why we adjusted the guide and provided a little wider range than we normally would for full year deliveries and revenue because of the lack of visibility we got into the short-term kind of acute nature of the market right now.

John Lovallo, Analyst

This is actually Matt Johnson speaking for John. I appreciate the time. First, could we discuss gross margin a bit? If I remember correctly, last quarter you mentioned that the first quarter would be the low point for the year regarding gross margin. Now, it seems that at the midpoint of your outlook, you're anticipating a decline in the second quarter compared to the first. Could you provide more insight into what is driving this expectation and what gives you confidence that margins will improve from the second to the third quarter? Additionally, if you could share some numbers regarding the mix of build-to-order versus spec deliveries, particularly comparing 1Q and 2Q, that would be helpful.

Robert Dillard, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

We believe that gross profit will remain relatively flat and we are comfortable with our guidance range. Looking at the drivers between quarters, we do not anticipate significant price changes, but we expect to achieve delivery cost reductions. Additionally, there will be a mix factor that will contribute to a decrease before we see an increase. As we consider the second half of the year, we expect that the shift to Build To Order (BTO) will result in an increase in gross profit margin. We also anticipate seasonal unit uplifts, which are factored into our guidance and should improve margins, alongside further cost reductions. We are confident in this outlook since we are actively selling and marketing houses now, and we can determine the margins for BTO homes before constructing them, unlike spec homes where the outcome is uncertain until completion.

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

I'd add to that as we look out towards the back half of the year, I mentioned it in my prepared remarks, that we have a lot of things that are just structurally different that we see that are going to lift margins. And Rob mentioned the shift to BTO, leverage on fixed with greater scale. But a big one that I mentioned is the shift or the transition back to a bigger, better business in Northern California. So as we look to the back half of the year, we're getting deliveries from communities, from stores that are open in Northern California today that have a much higher average selling price and have very healthy margins. And as those become deliveries, some of these average selling prices are between $1.2 million to over $2 million. So it has a big impact on the overall company margins, and we see that happening today. If you think about Northern California, we've gone through a little bit of a trough here with communities over the last couple of years. It used to be one of our biggest, most profitable businesses. And in that area of the country, it takes a really long time to bring lots to market. So we've been working on these things for years. They're finally here, we're delivering, and we like what we see, and it's going to provide a real tailwind for margins on the back half of this year.

Matthew Johnson, Analyst

Yes, that all makes a lot of sense. I appreciate all the details provided. If I could follow up on the direct costs, I believe you mentioned they were down 8% year-over-year, which is impressive. However, it seems there are some factors influencing that. Could you elaborate on how materials and labor have impacted those costs? Additionally, while it's still early, have you noticed any disruptions related to the situation in the Middle East, specifically concerning supply chain issues and what your suppliers are indicating about potential price changes or availability?

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Overall, you noted the number year-over-year. We've made good progress with the things that we can control and value engineering our products and rebidding and renegotiating, reworking our national contracts. So that's all structural and will stand. Lumber has started to tick up here recently, and we've got various locks in a lumber strategy where we have different lock periods for different divisions. And there's potentially some tailwind or headwind coming from that as we relock some of these depending on what happens with lumber. But we think that our strategy is sound there, and I don't think that it's going to be a significant impact and likely it may just be an offset to further direct cost reductions that we'd otherwise be able to go out and get and achieve. As far as the impact from the situation in the Middle East, it's just really difficult to tell. With oil prices being higher, certainly, that can bleed into land development and vertical construction. And then a lot of the products that go into a home, there's petroleum that's involved in those products at some point. So potential cost increases there, we're hopeful that we can continue to offset that with some of the proactive things that we're doing, but it really is a total unknown at this point. We haven't seen it yet. It hasn't showed up yet in our cost.

Stephen Kim, Analyst

Yes, the move to BTO is very clear. It's obvious that there's some margin benefits there. With it, though, you're probably also going to see, you would think, slower backlog turns and maybe a temporary drag on cash flow. I'm trying to get a sense for what we should be thinking in terms of a going forward backlog turnover ratio in 2017 to 2019, pre-COVID, you were kind of running at like your exit rate of the year, your fourth quarter, which usually was your highest, was like kind of in the low 60s. I'm wondering, is that like kind of a reasonable level that we should be thinking about for the business to kind of return back to that kind of a level? Or do you think you can do better than that? I noticed you said your build time was like 3.5 months, that would imply a backlog turnover ratio of like 86%. So I mean just some guidance here or some color would be really helpful.

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

We don't view the business in that way. However, I believe that we will likely land somewhere between the 60% and 80% figures. The backlog turnover we've experienced has been somewhat misleading compared to our usual business because as we enter a quarter, we might see 500, 600, or 700 sales and inventory closings that weren't included in the initial backlog. This inflates that ratio. With our current build times and by creating our plans from the ground up during quarterly and annual planning, we are relying on the improvements in cycle and build times we've achieved thus far. Therefore, I think aiming for 60% to 70% is a reasonable target. Yes.

Jeffrey Mezger, Executive Chairman

Steve, just to clarify one other thing. Our built-to-order approach is actually better with cash. If you think about carrying a couple of thousand spec homes that you have to sell and close, they're fully loaded and all the cash is out, and we're setting this up where it's real-time deliveries, the home gets completed, the loan is approved and the buyer goes and closes. So it's actually better cash management. If you can just roll through the work in progress sold at the percentage we're targeting.

Stephen Kim, Analyst

Got you, okay. That's really helpful. Another side effect of moving to more built-to-order is that it potentially exposes you to higher cancellation rates. I know cancellation rates are super low this quarter. One of the things I've been thinking about is that your customer deposits as a percentage of average selling price are about 2%, which is pretty low even compared to other built-to-order builders. I know you've traditionally kept lower customer deposits than other builders, and I'm curious if you could talk about why that is, why you adopt that as part of your strategy, and is that something you might change going forward?

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

Steve, I'd say it's something that we always evaluate, and we might change going forward depending on market conditions. When market conditions are really strong, it's easier to command a higher deposit. But today, with the way things stand, we don't want to let that deposit upfront be a major obstacle to somebody purchasing their home. And my view on it is that when somebody comes in and buys the personalized home and they go through that process that I described earlier, and they're creating their own personal value that's unique to them. That's as much of a hook is getting them to stay in the deal as the deposit is. So we don't anticipate that we're going to have real issues of cancellations. The backlog quality that we've got, the buyer profile is very healthy. They're creating their own value in their home. And we feel good about how we're positioned with that.

Michael Rehaut, Analyst

I wanted to first just revisit kind of the first quarter and March to date sales trends, which was obviously behind the guidance reduction? And also just better understand, if possible, how the year-over-year sales pace trended throughout the first quarter in terms of December, January, February? And if there's any incremental color in terms of at least on a year-over-year basis, how that kind of played into March.

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

Our sales and order cadence generally progressed as expected for the season, improving each week throughout the quarter. We achieved 3.5 sales per community for the quarter. December started off slower for us, impacting our year-over-year comparison. However, we gained solid momentum in January and February, ultimately finishing the quarter up 3% year-over-year. In March, the latter part of the month was softer than we had hoped for. The conflict in the Middle East, which began in late February, has created some short-term pressure on consumer sentiment. This has affected our visibility in the short term. We are uncertain how long this situation will last and its impact on consumer behavior. We have taken this into account in our guidance by adopting a more cautious approach, reflected in a broader full-year revenue and delivery range than we typically provide at this time. Yes, we have been intentionally reducing the number of speculative starts and aligning our starts with our built-to-order sales. Our starts were down to around 1,800, specifically 1,805 in the first quarter. Looking ahead to Q2, we anticipate generating more built-to-order sales, which will in turn drive our starts. Currently, we have a substantial backlog of homes that are sold but not yet started, and this will contribute to our starts over the next few months.

Richard Reid, Analyst

Actually, I just wanted to confirm your start pace in the first quarter. I can back into that based on your homes in production, but maybe just wanting to confirm the number because I believe the math would imply something less than 1,000 units versus, say, the 1,800 that you started in Q4. And then maybe just piggybacking off of that, how start pace versus sales pace should look as we move through Q2, Q3 and Q4.

Rob McGibney, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. We have intentionally reduced the number of speculative starts to align with our built-to-order sales. Our starts were down, but they were around 1,800, specifically 1,805 in the first quarter. Looking ahead to Q2, we anticipate an increase in built-to-order sales, which will drive our starts. Currently, we have a solid backlog of homes that are sold but not yet started, and this will contribute to our starts over the coming months.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.