Earnings Call Transcript - KBH Q2 2023

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon. My name is John, and I'll be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the KB Home 2023 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the company's opening remarks, we will open the lines for questions. Today's conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay at the company's website, kbhome.com through July 21. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Jill Peters, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you, Jill. You may 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 second quarter of fiscal 2023. On the call are Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Jeff Kaminski, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Bill Hollinger, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer; and Thad Johnson, Senior Vice President and 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, a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measure of adjusted housing gross profit margin, which excludes inventory related charges and any 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 with that, here is Jeff Mezger.

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Jill, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered strong results in our second quarter, including a significant sequential improvement in our net orders. Our divisions executed well, improved their cycle times, reduced build costs further on new starts, and opened new communities, all of which will benefit us in the quarters ahead. As for the details of our results, we exceeded the high end of the guidance we provided in March with total revenues of $1.8 billion and diluted earnings per share of $1.94. Our backlog continues to provide stability and deliveries and revenues with 3,666 homes closed during the quarter. This was higher than our implied delivery guidance by about 700 homes, driven by improved build times, fewer cancellations, and better conversion of our unsold inventory. At 11.7%, our homebuilding operating income margin excluding inventory related charges reflected a solid gross margin of over 21%, and a healthy SG&A expense ratio below 10%. This performance along with the cumulative benefit of several quarters of share repurchases drove our book value per share to $46.72, up 24% year-over-year. The long-term outlook for the housing market remains healthy. Market dynamics are characterized by low existing home inventory and limited availability of new homes at our price points, as well as demographics that are particularly favorable for our business, given that we primarily serve the first-time and affordable first-move-up segments. With respect to demand, buyers are adjusting to the higher mortgage rates, and the continuation of a more stable rate environment is a positive factor. In addition, with the lack of resell inventory that I mentioned and market prices now starting to increase, buyers are demonstrating a higher sense of urgency than we saw earlier this year. As we discussed on our first quarter call, we have begun to see a sequential improvement in demand in February, which continued throughout our second quarter. As a result, we generated net orders of 3,936, significantly above our guidance, reflecting a year-over-year increase in our gross orders and a cancellation rate that is moderate back toward historical levels. On a per-community basis, our absorption pace averaged 5.2 net orders per month, which is consistent with our historical second quarter average prior to the pandemic-driven volatility. Our strategic goal continues to be optimizing each asset, which generally results in a monthly absorption pace of between four and five net orders per community and generating high inventory turns. We typically experience a peak in absorption in our second quarter coinciding with the spring selling season, and then see a sequential decline in our third and fourth quarters. While we do not usually provide guidance on net orders, we recognize it is helpful to investors considering the soft comparison in last year's third quarter when interest rates have started the rapid increase. Demand has remained strong in June and while our 2023 third quarter net orders could be influenced in either direction by an increase in resale inventory levels or movements in interest rates, we project a range of between 3,000 and 3,500 net orders. Our business spans geographic markets that were selected for their long-term growth potential. With the diversification provided by our ongoing expansion of our Southeast region, which we discussed on our earnings call in March, our footprint is more balanced today than it was just a few years ago. Much has been written about the California market and over the years building homes in this state has moved in and out of favor from the investor perception point of view. I want to spend a moment sharing some facts with you and our thoughts about the opportunity we see here. While numbers differ depending on the source, some public policy firms peg the existing shortfall of housing production relative to the 40 million people living in California at more than 1 million homes. For a number of reasons, including a challenging regulatory environment, the state is severely under-supplied and there are not enough new homes built each year to overcome the deficit, let alone achieve equilibrium between supply and demand. In addition to this shortage, California's housing stock is aging with approximately 75% having been built before 2000, higher than most of our markets. According to a recent report from Moody's Analytics, the state is projected to have above-average job and income growth longer-term, which together with the factors that I just referenced point to a highly attractive market opportunity in California. Within the state, our business has become better balanced across our served markets with our Inland divisions benefiting from work-from-home trends and affordability, while our coastal price points are now more affordable as we have rotated out of most of our $1 million-plus price communities. We have long-tenured teams in California that are well versed in identifying and acquiring land that meets our return requirements, navigating the complex regulatory environment, and running profitable businesses. From a regional standpoint, our West Coast business is now also augmented by our operations in Seattle and Boise, which provide further diversification and growth. We believe we are well positioned to leverage our scale and capture the sizable opportunity in our West region, while also continuing to expand across the remainder of our operating footprint. Our backlog at the end of the second quarter stood at nearly 7,300 homes valued at approximately $3.5 billion. This marks the first sequential growth in our backlog in the past year. With our built-to-order model, we work from a large backlog and see value in the visibility and stability in deliveries that our backlog provides, particularly in times of challenging market conditions as we saw during the past year. With the improvement in our build times, which Rob will speak to in a moment, we expect to be able to convert our backlog to deliveries more quickly in the future than we've seen over the past two years. During the quarter, we started 3,556 homes, aligning our starts with net orders and ended the quarter with more than 7,300 homes in production, of which over 75% are sold, consistent with our targeted split of build-to-order and inventory homes. We expect to ramp up our starts in the third quarter. And while we continue to prioritize our built-to-order model, we are supplementing our starts with additional inventory homes given market conditions and a lack of supply. With that, let me pause for a moment and ask Rob to provide an operational update.

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Thank you, Jeff. I'll start with some color on our net order results and then discuss the progress that we've made on build times and direct costs, followed by a supply chain update. As Jeff mentioned earlier, the sequential strengthening of our net orders month by month in our second quarter continued the trend that began in February. We focus on optimizing each asset on a community-by-community basis, balancing pace, price, and margin. In late 2022 and early 2023, as we converted more of our large community backlogs to deliveries, we were in a position to adjust pricing to stimulate sales, and we took steps in most locations to lower pricing based on current market conditions. That trend reversed in our second quarter as demand improved and markets began to normalize, and we were able to raise prices in about two-thirds of our communities, the benefit of which we expect to see in early 2024 when these homes are delivered. In the other one-third, pricing yield remained flat or was lowered, with the latter representing only a handful of communities. We continued to use rate buydowns selectively, such as when a buyer leads to qualify, which occurred in fewer communities than earlier in the year. As to build times, we drove a significant sequential improvement with a reduction of over 40 days in the second quarter from slab start to home completion. At roughly seven months, our construction times are still running above our historical level of between four months and five months depending on the division, but we are making solid progress in returning to those levels. In addition to reducing our cost in the amount of cash we have tied up in our work in progress, faster build times should also help our selling efforts on our personalized homes. The construction time improvement was driven by a normalizing supply chain and better trade labor availability, as well as our ongoing initiatives to simplify our product offerings, designed, CDO choices, and structural options. We have reduced our SKUs by 43% over the past 18 months, retaining the studio options that are most frequently selected by our customers and those most readily available in the supply chain. These changes have created efficiencies for our teams, our trade partners, and our customers while helping to lower our cost and time to build. We shared with you on our last call in March that direct costs on homes started were down approximately $19,000 from the peak in August 2022. During the second quarter, we continued to make progress in this area with an additional reduction of roughly $4,000 on new starts. Specific to the supply chain, while some products remain in short supply with long lead times in several markets such as air conditioning and heating equipment, insulation, and electrical products, including the switchgear and transformers, overall product availability continues to normalize. With respect to trade labor, it is becoming more available contributing to our compression in build times. In most of our markets, we have developed long-term relationships with our trade partners, many over the course of multiple decades. The even flow production inherent in our built-to-order model is attractive to contractors who value the consistency of our starts as opposed to the peaks and valleys of a speculative business model. As we look forward, we plan to continue leveraging the improved cycle time, lower costs, and normalizing supply chain to help drive future volume and margins. And with that, I will turn the call back over to Jeff.

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Rob. Moving onto our mortgage joint venture, KBHS Home Loans, about 80% of the mortgages funded during the quarter were financed through our JV and these buyers continue to have strong credit profiles. About 60% of KBHS customers utilize conventional mortgages and roughly 90% use fixed-rate products. The average cash down payment held steady with the first quarter at 15%, equating to roughly $72,000. The average household income of these buyers was over $137,000, above the median household income in our submarkets, and their FICO score was 736. We continue to attract buyers above our targeted income levels with healthy credit, who can qualify at higher mortgage rates and make a significant down payment. During the quarter, we maintained our cautious approach to land investment, spending $81 million to acquire new land. While our divisions are diligently looking for land deals, we're being disciplined in our underwriting with respect to achieving our required returns. We have the flexibility to remain selective given our current lot position and healthy balance sheet. With demand improving, we expect our land acquisition activity to accelerate during the second half of 2023. We continue to actively develop land that we already own, as we invested $316 million in development and related fees during the second quarter. As part of a continuous review of our land portfolio, we are renegotiating some land contracts to reduce purchase prices and extend closing timelines. We are also reengaging with sellers on certain deals we had previously abandoned, often finding that we are now able to secure better terms or better pricing. Our lot position stands at just under 58,000 lots owned or controlled, of which approximately 43,500 are owned, representing just over three years supply, which is consistent with our historical level. Generally, we continue to develop lots on an adjusting time basis focused on smaller phases with a lower cash outlay, balancing our development phasing with our starts phase to manage our inventory of finished lots. We are well positioned as we currently own or control the lots that we need to achieve our delivery growth targets over the next couple of years. We again increased the amount of capital that we returned to shareholders during the quarter, given the strong level of cash generated from our operations. Our repurchase totaled $92 million for nearly 3% of our shares outstanding. Over the past 24 months, we have now repurchased about 15% of our outstanding shares at an average price of $36.81, returning approximately $610 million to shareholders, including our quarterly dividend. The repurchases have been accretive to our earnings and book value per share and enhanced our return on equity. Looking ahead, we will remain balanced in our capital allocation, reinvesting in our business and returning cash to shareholders. In closing, I want to thank the entire KB Home team for their commitment to our customers and our company, which drove our strong results in the second quarter. While there are still uncertainties with respect to the economy in the second half of our fiscal year, we have a business model and balance sheet that will allow us to remain flexible in navigating market conditions. We are well positioned to achieve our now higher guidance for 2023 of about $6 billion in revenue at the midpoint and a gross margin of approximately 21.2% based on the size and composition of our backlog. We look forward to continuing to update you on the progress of our business later this year. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Jeff for the financial review.

Jeff Kaminski, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. I will now cover highlights of our 2023 second quarter financial performance and provide our current outlook for the third quarter and full year. Amid steadily improving housing market conditions throughout the second quarter, our solid execution produced financial results that exceeded our expectations and guidance across all key metrics. In addition, our strong operating cash flow allowed us to repurchase an additional 2.2 million shares of our common stock and eliminate outstanding borrowings under our revolving credit facility. Our housing revenues of $1.76 billion for the quarter rose from $1.71 billion for the prior year period, reflecting a 6% increase in the number of homes delivered, partially offset by a 3% decline in an overall average selling price. Based on our current construction cycle times and backlog, we anticipate our 2023 third quarter housing revenues will be in the range of $1.35 billion to $1.5 billion. For the full year, we are increasing our range of expected housing revenues to $5.8 billion to $6.2 billion. We believe we are well positioned to achieve this top line full year forecast based on the construction status of homes in our second quarter ending backlog, current housing market conditions, and anticipated continued improvement in our build times. In the second quarter, our overall average selling price of homes delivered decreased to $480,000 from $494,000 in the prior year period, as increases of 2% to 11% across three of our regions were offset by a 5% decrease in our West Coast region, which has the highest ASP of our four regions. The decline in this region was, as in the 2023 first quarter, mainly the result of a community mix shift in our Southern California business where several communities with $1 million-plus selling prices delivered out in 2022. For the 2023 third quarter, we are projecting a sequential decline in the overall average selling price to approximately $470,000 and expect an increase in the fourth quarter due to a higher mix of deliveries from our West Coast region. We still believe our average selling price for the full year will be approximately $485,000. Homebuilding operating income in the current quarter was $202.1 million as compared to $264.5 million in the year earlier quarter. The current quarter included abandonment charges of $4.3 million versus $0.7 million a year ago. Excluding inventory-related charges, our 11.7% operating margin for the current quarter decreased 380 basis points year-over-year. We expect our 2023 third quarter homebuilding operating income margin, excluding the impact of any inventory-related charges to be in a range of 9.5% to 10.1%. For the full year, we expect our operating margin, excluding any inventory-related charges, to be about 11%. Our 2023 second quarter housing gross profit margin was 21.1% as compared to 25.3% in the year earlier quarter. Excluding inventory-related charges in both periods, our gross margin decreased by 390 basis points to 21.4%. The year-over-year decline was mainly driven by price decreases and other homebuyer concessions, together with increased construction costs and a shift in the mix of homes delivered. Assuming no inventory-related charges, we are forecasting a 2023 third quarter housing gross profit margin in the range of 20.4% to 21.0% and a full year margin of approximately 21.2%. Our selling, general, and administrative expense ratio of 9.6% for the 2023 second quarter improved from 9.8% for the 2022 quarter. The slight improvement mainly reflected operating leverage from higher revenues in the current quarter. We believe our 2023 third quarter SG&A expense ratio will be approximately 10.6% to 11.2% and our full year ratio will be about 10.3%. Our income tax expense for the second quarter of $50.5 million represented an effective tax rate of 24% compared to 26% for the prior year period. The 2 percentage point improvement was due to the favorable impacts of federal energy tax credits in the current quarter. We now expect our effective tax rate for the 2023 third quarter as well as the full year to be approximately 23%. Overall, we produced net income for the second quarter of $164.4 million, or $1.94 per diluted share compared to $210.7 million, or $2.32 per diluted share for the prior year period. Turning now to community count. Our second quarter average of 253 increased 20% from the year earlier quarter. We ended the quarter with 249 communities, reflecting 20 openings and 27 sellouts during that period. We anticipate our average community count for the third quarter to be up approximately 10% year-over-year with a sequential decline in our quarter end community count, reflecting increased sellouts due to expected continued solid order trends and a higher proportion of communities with a relatively low number of remaining homes to sell. We expect the full year average to be up about 10% year-over-year and the year-end count to be approximately flat as compared to the prior year. To drive continued new community openings, we invested $396 million in land and development during the second quarter and ended the quarter with a pipeline of nearly 58,000 lots owned or under contract. In the 2023 first half, we invested a total of $763 million in land and land development, of which approximately 83% was for land development. At quarter end, our total liquidity was over $1.6 billion, including nearly $1.1 billion of available capacity under our unsecured revolving credit facility with no cash borrowings outstanding and $557 million of cash. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.2 million shares of our common stock at an average price of $42.58, which is 9% below our quarter-end book value per share. With over $400 million remaining under our current common stock repurchase authorization, we intend to continue to repurchase shares with the pace, volume, and timing based on considerations of our operating cash flow, liquidity outlook, land investment opportunities and needs, the market price of our shares in the housing market, and general economic environments. Our quarter-end stockholders' equity was $3.8 billion, and our book value per share was up 24% year-over-year to $46.72, reflecting our financial performance coupled with common stock repurchases over the past several quarters. In conclusion, we are very pleased with our solid second quarter financial performance and strong operational execution, key factors supporting our enhanced financial outlook for the remainder of the year. Given favorable trends in both cycle time and housing market conditions, we are optimistic about our improved full-year forecast and expect to finish 2023 on a solid foundation for further improvements in 2024. We will now take your questions. Please open the lines.

John Lovallo, Analyst, UBS

Good afternoon, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one is maybe on just the margin outlook for the third quarter on both gross and operating. It seems like a fairly wide range and down sequentially. The down sequentially part seems like it could be a function of timing and mix. But curious what you see as sort of the factors that may drive the higher and lower end of both of those margin ranges, please?

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Let's start with the full year for a moment. We have increased our guidance by 20 basis points for the full year midpoint compared to last quarter. This reflects our more optimistic outlook. We experienced a significant shift in the mix with deliveries pulled forward into the second quarter, which positively impacted our margins during that period. Much of the improvement in the second quarter can be attributed to this higher leverage from the deliveries. Overall, our margin progression aligns closely with our expectations. We previously mentioned that we anticipate consistent gross margins in the latter half of the year, and we are still hovering around the 21% range for the full year, slightly higher in the first half and a bit lower in the second half. The decline in the second half is influenced by when many units were sold, considering the market conditions and pricing challenges from the prior year's third and fourth quarters. Therefore, we expect the lowest margins in the third quarter, with a modest increase starting in the fourth quarter.

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Sure, Jeff. So backing up a little bit. We shared with you before that we had adjusted pricing down in late Q4 of '22 and on into early Q1 of '23 to find the market and get back to our minimum pace of one per week per community, especially in those communities we delivered out a large chunk of the high backlog levels we were carrying, and those changes worked. They were effective. And then as the market weakened and picking up and strengthening in February and our pace improved, we started lifting price, which is just part of our ongoing strategy to optimize each asset, and that continued throughout the second quarter. So on the first part of your question, the price increases we implemented in Q2, it was really broad-based across our footprint. I mean, if we didn't have any divisions where we didn't have some lift in pricing, and I mentioned in the prepared remarks that hit about 70% of our communities that they spread out across the country. And the average increase was a little over $11,000. And then on the balance, there were less than 10% that received a price decrease. And I'm not exactly sure on the amount of price. It was less than what the increases were. I think it was around $8,000. And then the remainder of those, the other 20%, it was flat with no pricing change.

Michael Dahl, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to start on the demand environment. It seems like you're saying it's still pretty strong into June, and I think your guidance when I look at the orders about the community count guide, it doesn't imply that pace. While it slipped sequentially, it's still better than normal seasonality. So maybe could you just add a little color on what you've seen more specifically as you've kind of exited the spring selling season and how you're seeing that shape up relative to what you'd normally expect?

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

I'm sorry, Mike. As I mentioned earlier, demand has remained strong in our third quarter. There's minimal inventory available on the resale market, which is causing buyers to pay a premium for new products instead of opting for resale, as there isn’t much desirable inventory for them. We typically experience a seasonal decline in sales during the third quarter, but our forecast doesn’t indicate as significant a drop as usual, primarily due to this lack of inventory. If interest rates remain stable and the current market conditions persist, this leads us to a forecast of just over four sales per community per month. We're quite satisfied with how consumers are responding under these circumstances. You addressed many of the points I would have mentioned in my response. In most of our markets, there are many large, well-financed landowners who remained patient during the decline in demand, and pricing did not drop significantly. Now that demand is recovering, we can assess submarket conditions again; numbers are tight, but solutions can be found. We have had success with some smaller sellers who are not as financially strong, where previously we saw abandonment. They held onto their properties for a while, but we are now re-engaging with them and are securing better pricing or terms, providing them with certainty of closure once more. Our teams consistently searched for opportunities, although we weren't as proactive in Q3 and Q4 as we are now in pursuing land deals. The market is quite competitive as we are not the only builder seeking land. However, we have a strong team and a solid network in the area, and there are still deals available. We will maintain a balanced approach. Rob, if you have any insights, I can't identify any market that stands out as significantly better or worse than the others; they all seem fairly typical, unless you're aware of something different.

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

No. You got it there, Jeff. I think that's right.

Alan Ratner, Analyst, Zelman and Associates

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Nice results and thanks for the time. First question, you kind of made a comment, which is similar to what we're hearing from pretty much everybody about ramping some spec starts in the near term given the tightness in resale. And you guys are obviously a built-to-order builder at your core. So I'm curious if you could give some numbers behind that. What percentage of your starts right now are speculative? What — where do you see that share going for your business? And anything we should think about as far as the mix differences on the spec homes, either from a price standpoint, margin standpoint, geography standpoint?

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. Sure. So we don't really manage it to percentages. I mean it depends on what's going on in the specific community and the specific division. And first of all, we're committed to our built-to-order model. But in the short term, with the lack of inventory in the market, we're going to get more starts in the ground to take advantage of this current market condition with ultra-low inventory as we reload our pipeline with more built-to-order sales and we'll reduce spec starts. But just talking about what's going on out there, I mean there was an article released this morning, and it was observing that there are fewer resale homes for sale in May than any other month on record. And we're running at just 1.8 months of supply and we've got, I think, it was 35%, 37% of the resales out there now selling above list price. So it's not straying from our overall strategy, just looking to take advantage of the current conditions with no inventory or low inventory. As far as the product, we've got laboratories out there in each of our communities that kind of tell us which plans, which product, which price point with what features are most in demand. And those are the — when we do start inventory, that's going to be our focus is to align with that.

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Well, to that point, we've had good success with inventory starts because it takes a few weeks to get a permit. You pick the floor plan, the elevation you're permitted. And it sells before the foundation support then the buyer gets the full array in the studio. So it's not a — it's an inventory start, but it's really just a pre-plotted start to compress the time because we're fighting the cycle times still, get more houses in the ground and the buyers are buying them in the early stages. So it's worked very well for us.

Stephen Kim, Analyst, Evercore ISI

Yeah. Thanks very much, guys. Congrats on the good results. It seems like from your comments that you're pretty much able to sell whatever it is that you can build. And so I wanted to ask you a question or so about your starts. I think you had indicated that you were planning to have starts in the third quarter, I think somewhere north of where your orders would be, correct? So I mean clarify that if you could. Are we talking about 3,500 starts or so? And then that would be up year-over-year. But I think you said your community count would be kind of flat by year-end. And so I'm just kind of curious as to what we think is — what do you think is a good run rate for starts as you look ahead? Is — let's say it's 3,500 in the third quarter, is that — can we annualize that? Can we take that times four and say that that's kind of a reasonable annualized rate that kind of a thing?

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. It's interesting, Steve. I'll let Rob fill in some of the color. But in general terms, we should start in the — in the following quarter, you should start at least what your sales orders were previously. So if we sold 3,600 or whatever the number was in Q2, that would be your starts in Q3 because you're rolling over year built-to-order sales, but we're also covering inventory sales and we're building a bridge from the fits and starts we had in the second half of last year on sales and starts. So, our desire would be to start all the built-to-order we can and then supplement it with additional inventory starts. If you think about it, these would be deliveries in Q1 or August starts on our current cycle time maybe even into March. And we want to make sure that we're ramping up our volume levels for 2024. But Rob, do you have any other color you want to fill in?

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

I think you did a good job, Jeff. I’ll leave it at that.

Stephen Kim, Analyst, Evercore ISI

Okay. Great. So I guess you're sort of suggesting that we can sort of think about that starts pace in the quarter as being a good indicator of where your annualized run rate could be if you multiply it by four. I guess my next question is, if you have increased or changed your earnest money requirements on the part of your buyers. I was kind of surprised and pleasantly surprised to hear you talk about the strength of your buyers, the credit metrics and the down payments and so forth. And I was wondering whether or not you were seeing a greater ability to get more earnest money from your buyers when they make an order?

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Stephen, it's definitely something that we had to work on when the downturn happened as we learned through that process that even though you have a buyer emotionally committed to the purchase, when rates ran up the way they did, the rational side of a payment outweighed the emotional side of the commitment. So we learned we didn't have large enough deposits and we were actively — do you want to share, Rob, what we're doing in this?

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Sure. Yeah. So Steve, we set a minimum at 2% or 2% of base price, many of our divisions. And it depends on the buyer profile and what the profile of the community is too. But we've got a minimum of 2% of the base price and then it goes up from there. We've got additional deposits for studio and things like that. So a minimum of 2% with several divisions that are ranging above that, which gives us a little more coverage and protection.

Matthew Bouley, Analyst, Barclays

Hey. Good evening, guys. Thanks for taking the question. So it sounds like you're closing out of more communities than you're opening. I know you also just spoke about sort of ramping up starts. So I mean, is this a situation where you're starting to outright meter sales again or is there perhaps an opportunity to be a little more aggressive on the pricing side? Just any color on kind of the availability of communities as you roll through this year. Thank you.

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Matt, we'll continue. We use the term we optimize the assets, and in that regard you don't slow it down if you're running out of lots unless it's irreplaceable. Then you may meter out sales. A lot of the community count cadence that we're going through, if you think about it, we put a halt to a lot of land development in the third and fourth quarter last year as we're trying to figure out how deep is the trough and do we need it, have a community down the street, let slow this one down. So we actually put a pause on land development and then reviewed it community by community. And in some cases communities were put on hold for six, seven, eight months that we've now reenergized and we're developing that caused the delay in openings. So we've got the sellouts accelerating again and as the market improves and you'll see our community openings come right back in Q1, 2 and 3 next year. So it's not a case of running out of things to do. We'll keep the pace up and keep optimizing each asset. Well, we're talking two different things because what I was referring to was starts. And a lot of the starts as to compress the cycle, while we're still getting our build times down so we'll release things as inventory starts and then we sell it by the time the foundation's board and the buyers still get to choose everything. But as we look over the balance of the year, the primary focus will be how do we get more built-to-order sales that continue to fuel our growth in 2024.

Joe Ahlersmeyer, Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Hey. Good afternoon, everyone.

Jeffrey Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Joe.

Joe Ahlersmeyer, Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Just a quick follow-up on the starts question we've been discussing. Is this related to two insights you've gained? One is your success in repricing and reselling the cancellations from the fourth and first quarters. The other is the lessons learned from the current tight supply chain, where having better visibility on costs in relation to the homes you're selling has positively impacted margins. Are these insights influencing your decision to increase specifications?

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

We experienced significant fluctuations in demand during the third and fourth quarters, and then we saw improvements in the first and second quarters. The higher cancellation rate compared to our historical norms led us to accumulate more inventory, which we needed to address. Consequently, we focused on clearing that inventory, impacting our built-to-order sales and delaying new starts. We faced a period of insufficient starts because we needed to reduce our inventory, which we have now accomplished. Looking back at the second quarter, we were genuinely surprised by the demand's strength. Had we known on March 1 how robust demand would be, we would have initiated more house starts in the second quarter. Moving forward, we plan to catch up in the third quarter. Throughout this time, our cost surprises relative to what we sold homes for and their construction costs have been minimal, as most of our costs are locked in when we begin construction and often before sales occur. Therefore, it wasn't mainly about margin control; rather, it was about managing the fluctuations in demand and starts to maintain balance. As things are stabilizing for us, we intend to ramp up our starts again.

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

I think, far less for us than probably some of our competitors. I mean, we've been so focused on energy efficiency for such a long time here that I don't think we've got a lot of heavy lifting to do to get to that point. And it's something that we're still analyzing. Each of our markets are on different code cycles and all that to really understand what the impact is. But our HERS scores and the ratings that we've been building to I think are already very efficient. So I don't think it's a big leap for us to take the next step there.

Truman Patterson, Analyst, Wolfe Research

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I would like to understand the timing regarding the reduced construction costs. In the first fiscal quarter, your construction cycle times were approximately eight months, and in the second fiscal quarter, they were about seven months. You mentioned last quarter that direct construction costs had decreased by around $19,000 from the peak, and I believe you indicated they went down another $4,000 this quarter. I would anticipate that many of these cost savings will materialize by the fourth quarter of this year, but I am hoping you can help clarify the timing of that.

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. Well, we — do you want me to take that or you, Jeff?

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. No, I was going to say, hey, Rob, why don't you take that.

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Okay. So a lot of it depends on the timing. I mean, if you're talking about the peak, and I believe it was August, we said last quarter we come down $19,000 from that. But we're also working through houses during that point in time that had — it was a challenging market. So challenged on sales price and rate buy downs and things like that. As far as the additional incremental $4,000, that's actually where we ended up in May. So we'll see some benefit of that through the starts that we got in May. We'll see a bigger impact once we get into Q1 and Q2 of next year. Now cycle times accelerate more obviously we'll see it faster. We're focused on that. But if we can bring cycle times down another 30 days to 45 days, the better and bigger impact we'll have in Q4.

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Well, to that point, we've had good success with inventory starts because it takes a few weeks to get a permit. You pick the floor plan, the elevation you're permitted. And it sells before the foundation's board and the buyer gets the full array in the studio. So it's not a — it's an inventory start, but it's really just a pre-plotted start to compress the time because we're fighting the cycle times still, get more houses in the ground and the buyers are buying them in the early stages. So it's worked very well for us.

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. Well, we — do you want me to take that or you, Jeff?

Jeffrey Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. No, I was going to say, hey, Rob, why don't you take that.

Rob McGibney, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

As far as the financing concessions or buy downs, we're no longer promoting a specific rate buy down program. We talked about getting our price right and we made those adjustments in the last half of — back half of — last part of '22 and into '23. So where we do use it and it's applied on an as-needed basis for the most part for those buyers that needed to be able to make the purchase or qualify and it's just not that significant overall. Our Q2 sales averaged about 0.5 and financing concessions outside of the normal closing cost funds we provide in certain markets to cover items like title or escrow fees in. And our goal is just to offer the best base price that we can and provide transparency on that price. So we're primarily using the financing rate buy downs on an as-needed basis versus artificially inflating the price of the home so it can be incentivized. And really, many of our buyers understand that they can refinance down the road when and if rates fall, but you can never change the price that you paid for the home.

Michael Rehaut, Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. First, I wanted to circle back to the order pace for the third quarter. And obviously, understanding you haven't given guidance for the fourth quarter, but you pointed to a moderation in sales pace, but something less than your normal level of seasonality and still within the four to five — desired four to five sales per month. So, without necessarily talking specifically to the fourth quarter, 4Q normal seasonality is about a 20% drop off in sales per month versus 3Q. Is it fair to kind of anticipate that given today's market where you're kind of still staying within your built-to-order disciplined, but maybe increasing a little bit of the inventory homes and that's what's helping that third quarter sequential decline being less than normal? Could we also — assuming the market stays where it is, particularly from a supply standpoint, is it also fair to expect 4Q seasonality to also be a little bit more muted and perhaps even staying closer to the low end of that four to five per month range that you've described?

Jeff Mezger, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Mike, I think that's an appropriate theory. If market conditions stay like they are today with as little inventory as it's out there, we would expect that we would do better than historical in the fourth quarter. But only tweak to your comment is it's not because we have more inventory. It's just our sales pace impact in the second quarter sequentially each month of the quarter, we sold more built-to-order growth than we did inventory. I think it kept tilting that way and I think as our build times come down you'll see it tilt even more in that regard. So, it's not whether it's an inventory or somebody picking their lot, it's just general market conditions and the desire to be a homeowner.

Operator, Operator

Thank you, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the question-and-answer session and this also concludes today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.