Jason Lenderman - VP, IR & Treasury Sheryl Palmer - Chairman & CEO Dave Cone - EVP & CFO.

Tim Daley - Deutsche Bank Ivy Zelman - Zelman Associates Stephen East - Wells Fargo Matthew Belay - Barclays Michael Rehaut - JPMorgan Will Randow - Citigroup Jack Micenko - SIG Carl Reichardt - BTIG.

Good morning, and welcome to Taylor Morrison's Fourth Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we'll conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to introduce Jason Lenderman, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury..

Thank you, and welcome everyone to Taylor Morrison's fourth quarter 2017 earnings conference call. With me today are Sheryl Palmer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Dave Cone, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Sheryl will begin the call with an overview of our business performance and our strategic priorities.

Dave will take you through a financial review of our results, along with our guidance. Then Sheryl will conclude with the outlook for the business, after which we will be happy to take your questions.

Before I turn the call over to Sheryl, let me remind you that today's call, including the question-and-answer session includes forward-looking statements that are subject to the Safe Harbor statement for forward-looking information that you will find in today's news release.

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections.

These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors identified in the release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and we do not undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements. Now, let me turn the call over to Sheryl Palmer..

Thank you, Jason, and good morning everyone. We appreciate you joining us today as we discuss our most recent equity offerings, share our 2017 results and provide guidance regarding our expectations for 2018. Needless to say, Dave and I excited to dive into each of these topics.

As I reflect on 2017, and the first few weeks of 2018, I am delighted with what Taylor Morrison was able to accomplish. We set aspirational 2017 goals and once again the teams across the organization found ways to deliver and deliver big. What makes me exceedingly proud is how we responded to several curveballs thrown our way.

Instead of allowing these challenges to limit us, we turned them into opportunities that ultimately to find our year. I'll get into some of the specifics and resulting accomplishments in just a bit, but before I do that, let me begin by sharing my thought on the recent exit of our private equity sponsors TPG and Oaktree Capital.

As you know in January of last year, we conducted our first secondary equity offering since the 2013 IPO, which began the monetization process for our private equity sponsors to divest first stake in the company.

In a not coincidental symmetry, we were able to complete that process in January of this year through the final equity offering that fully monetized their investment. In just under 12 months we completed seven equity offerings and reduced our private equity sponsor's ownership from over 70% to being fully divested from the company.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of effort involved in each of these offerings and our teams were able to make each one very successful. I want to thank all of those involved that help make this happen. I also want to thank Oaktree and TPG of their partnership during their seven years of involvement with the company.

It truly has been a partnership in every sense of the word and even that we'll be losing them as Board members, I know I can speak for the whole management team when I say that we feel privileged to count them as friends.

With the change in ownership structure as the backdrop, I believe it's important to reiterate our commitment to our existing four pillar strategy. This strategy and the focus paid to it will remain the same even as the company stepped into this new chapter of our journey.

We've been very successful as a result of this strategy and we will continue to leverage it to drive enhanced returns. More specifically, we will continue to pursue core land opportunity, build distinctive communities driven by consumer preferences, control costs and drive accretive profitability while balancing pace.

Our focus on these principals has served our stakeholders well up to this point and we have every expectation that it will into the future. As I alluded to at this earlier, there have been some governance changes associated with the private equity exit.

The Board members nominated by the private equity sponsors have resigned their duties, which means our Board has gone from nine to five members. The company is actively engaged in Board member recruitment and I am excited about the opportunity to add new and diversified experience to the group. Now I am so pleased to turn to our results for 2017.

We met or exceeded key metrics of our initial 2017 guidance as well as our increased guidance after Q2, driven by collected efforts across the entire company. Sales pace was 2.4 for the year, which was at 20% from the prior year and it played out just as we discussed earlier in the year.

Our pace in the front half of the year was higher than the back as a result of the momentum coming out of the end of 2016 and the company taking advantage of a stellar spring selling season. Sales were 8,397 for the year, which was an increase of almost 12% from 2016.

As you all know, we had a significant proportion of our markets impacted by hurricane, making this sales success that much more meaningful. Our three-year sales growth rate is over 25% and our three-year sales growth rate is just under 50%, really outstanding results in a short amount of time.

I want to also mention the pattern in sales we experienced through the fourth quarter because it is something that was unique when comparing to historical norms. Typically, we'll see sales moderate from October to December given normal seasonality and as the focus shifts more predominantly to closing.

We saw almost no moderation from October to December this past year. In fact, it was under 2%. As a comparison in 2016, there was an 11% moderation from October to December. This makes for a healthy backlog, an exciting start to 2018.

In fact, we've already seen that momentum carry into the company's strongest January yet with the pace of 2.5% that accelerated throughout the month. That pace compares to 2.3% in January of 2017, almost a 10% increase on top of a nearly 24% increase last year. Average community count for the year was 297, which was down a bit from 2016.

This was driven by pulling sales into the front half of the year, resulting in earlier closeouts and a handful of community openings experiencing land development delays in the hurricane impacted areas. We'll talk a little bit more about that shortly. Closings were 8,032 for the year or an increase of 9% from 2016.

This metric in particular exceeded our expectations that we set during our third quarter call. At that time, the hurricane impacts were still a bit of an unknown and we thought there could be moderate to significant delays caused by each of them.

As it turns out, our impacted markets rebounded much quicker than initially thought on the active production units and other areas in the company over performed. Our field team’s ability to deliver doesn’t normally surprise me, but in this case, it really did.

There were many hurdles and challenges to overcome, more than in the past and yet they still found a way to deliver. We actually ended at just above the midpoint of our pre-hurricane closings guidance, truly remarkable. Keep in mind too that our two-year closings growth rate is over 27% and our three-year closings growth rate is just under 45%.

I need to also note that while this result was extremely encouraging, it does not signal that the operational impacts of the hurricanes were diminished or that those impacts are largely over.

Even in our active production units were able to regain some normalcy around scheduling following the hurricane, our land development resulting in our construction start schedule didn’t fare quite as well. We did see a real impact to that schedule and it has resulted in some delays that will bear out in the front half of 2013.

That coupled with a tough first quarter closings comp has been contemplated in our guidance which Dave will cover in his remarks. These operational results delivered earnings before tax of $356 million, which is over 13% higher than it was in 2016. The two-year growth rate in earnings before tax is over 36%.

Those 2017 earnings drove an adjusted earnings per share of $1.98, which excludes the impact of the tax reform package that became law at the end of 2017. Dave will provide more detail on the impacts of tax reform on our 2017 financial statement and how we plan to use some of the additional cash it will generate on a go forward basis.

Our year-over-year growth when using our 2017 tax reform adjusted EPS was about 17% and the two-year growth rate was just under 45%. I believe our operational and financial performance for 2017 was remarkable, especially when you consider the unprecedented circumstances the company faced throughout the year.

It feels me with great pride as a leader to watch the organization deliver these results for our stakeholders. What may surprise you though is that there are other points of recognition that generate just as much, and in fact more meaningful sense of pride.

I've mentioned this before, but I'll go ahead and say it again, since we place great focus on getting the people part of our organization right that allows us to put our company in a position to excel.

I think it's important to acknowledge the great work of the team and over the last couple of months we've received four awards that genuinely illustrate what it means to work at Taylor Morrison. First, we received an award from Glassdoor that recognized Taylor Morrison as one of the Best Places to Work in America.

We believe we are the first home builder to ever receive this recognition. This award is based on feedback from current and former employees and shows me that we have created a positive career affirming culture at the company. While I was extremely grateful to accept the award, I wasn't overly surprised given what I see from the team on a daily basis.

I mentioned the overwhelming sense of community that's swelled up in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane and while that was a great example of our culture, brought by an unfortunate circumstance, it was just one example of many that happened consistently at Taylor Morrison.

This is a special place to work and it’s because of the diverse set of personalities, experiences and level of character that runs through the organization. I’m very thankful to be part of it. We were also named America’s Most Trusted Homebuilder for the third year in a row by Lifestory Research, a feat that also hasn’t been done before.

This is a coveted award based on the opinions of tens of thousands of home shoppers actively looking for a new home in the top housing markets in the United States. The research provide insight into how trust impacts customers’ evaluations of builder brands based on perceived quality of them and their home.

We firmly believe that relationships and trust are the foundation of our success. And I’m so proud of our teams for winning this well-deserved achievement again. I think winning both of these awards so closely together is fitting because I believe the former begets the latter.

By investing in our culture through resources, training, employee engagement, benefits and career strategies just to name a few, we enhance the experience of our team members on a daily basis and that motivates them to deliver best in class customer service. All of that leads to great operational and financial performance.

Again, a big thanks to our teams across the country. And now I’ll turn over the call to Dave for the financial review..

Thanks, Sheryl, and hello everyone. For 2017 net income on a GAAP basis was $176 million and earnings per share was $1.47. These numbers include the expenses incurred as a result of the new tax reform package passed at the end of 2017.

As Sheryl mentioned in her remarks, when excluding the impact of tax reform, we finished the year with $238 million in net income and $1.98 in earnings per share. Total revenues for the year were $3.9 billion, including homebuilding revenues of $3.8 billion or about a 11% higher than in 2016.

Home closings gross margin inclusive of capitalized interest was 18.6%, representing an increase of 40 basis points when compared to last year. The year-over-year improvement is driven by product mix shifts across the organization, operational enhancements that offset rising costs and lower capitalized interest.

On a gross margin basis, we came in at 19% and down just a bit year-over-year, which as I mentioned in last quarter's call, is driven by a higher margin land sales that happened in Q3 of 2016. As you may recall, we sold these long-term strategic assets as the tax holding period expired allowing for favorable monetization.

Moving to financial services, we generated just over $69 million in revenue for the year, representing growth of more than 15% over the prior year. Gross profit was about $27.5 million with a margin rate of nearly 40%. Our mortgage company capture rate for the year came in at 75% and we continue to focus on ways to drive this metric higher.

I think it's important to acknowledge this team's effort throughout the year, which was highlighted at year end when they supported the business seamlessly even with the highest volume that we've ever seen in our company history. SG&A as a percentage of home closings revenue came in at 10.3% or 30 basis points better than 2016.

This is another example of the tremendous year-end driven by our teams. We were able to take advantage of leverage generated by higher closings volume but also benefited from our focus on cost control which has been and will continue to be a staple of DNA moving forward.

We’ve spoken about investments we’ve made back into the business over the last many months in people processes and tools and we continue to see benefits from those decisions. We remain focused on striking the optimal balance for operational efficiency to generate the most value for our stakeholders.

We feel that our 2017 rate allowed us to find that balance and we’re again targeting to be in that range for 2018. Our earnings before income taxes were $356 million for 2017, a growth rate of over 13%. Income taxes totaled about $179 million for the year representing an effective rate of 50.3% due to expenses related to the new tax laws.

First, we took a $57.4 million non-cash charge as a result of the remeasurement of our deferred tax assets to reflect the new lower corporate tax rate. In addition, we took a $3.6 million charge payable over eight years related to the mandatory deemed repatriation of proceeds from the strategic sale of our Canadian business in 2015.

Excluding the impact of tax reform our effective tax rate was 33.2% which would represent a 110-basis point improvement compared to the effective tax rate in 2016. Moving forward the new tax law is going to create additional investment opportunity for us.

First, I’m excited to say that we do plan to return a portion of the incremental cash to our employees through enhanced benefits, including a higher match to our 401(k) program, we then tend to put our team members and their families in a position for a better future as well as other initiatives around employee skill development.

Aside from these employee benefits we’re going to handle the extra cash in the same way we’d handle more earnings generated from operations. We’ll employ our capital allocation philosophy to determine the best use.

We’ll look to invest organically as appropriate, then turn to inorganic growth opportunities through M&A, followed by strengthening our balance sheet if needed. And we will complete the valuation by looking at opportunities to return cash to our shareholders.

Our recent involvement in buying shares during the last two equity offerings shows our willingness once again to utilize all parts for capital allocation philosophy.

In each of the last few offerings, we bought roughly $100 million in shares for a total cash outlay of about $200 million, representing a total reduction of just under 7.6 million shares. This made sense for us in many ways. First, we have the cash on our balance sheet to make this investment.

That’s a result of our success in generating cash from operations over the last few years, and our discipline and how we invest. Second, organic investment is secure and earmarked and perhaps just as important. We’re out at of preferred land inventory levels at this point in the cycle.

Third, we believe there is still held the runway left for the industry, and in this economic cycle. Lastly, we believe in our company and think we are positioned to continue to drive great results for our stakeholders. In short, we like betting on ourselves.

For the year, we spent roughly $950 million in land purchases and development, which was in the range of the $1 billion we planned to spend at the beginning of 2017.

Throughout the year, there were areas in which we focused our investments such as our Darling brands, because they operate on a finish line basis and carry a low land supply and in our newer businesses in the Carolinas and Georgia, where we continue to enhance the scale. At the end of the year, we had approximately 38,000 lots owned and controlled.

The percentage of lots owned was about 69% with the remainder under control. On average, our land bank had approximately 4.7 years of supply at quarter end based on a trailing 12 months of closings, which is within the four to five-year range we're targeting at this point.

Our strategy of core-only assets continues to be the focus throughout the organization and will continue to be in 2018. At the end of the year, we had 3,496 units on our backlog with a sales value of over $1.7 billion.

Compared to last year at the same time, this represents an increase of nearly 12% in units and an increase of 11% in sales value for those units. As Cheryl mentioned, we're happy with how our backlog ended for the year and what it means to the start of 2018. In addition, we had 1,433 total specs, which includes 222 finished specs.

On a per community basis, we had under five total specs and less than one finished spec per community as we head into the peak spring selling season.

We continue to deploy spec strategically within communities where quick moving demand exists and we anticipate our finished spec inventory to pick up just a bit early in 2018, in preparation for the spring selling season.

We ended the quarter with over $1 billion in liquidity, $574 million of that liquidity included cash on hand and the rest was comprised of our recent extended $500 million unsecured revolving credit facility.

While we don't have any outstanding borrowings on our credit facility, we will plan to use it for normal working capital requirements in 2018 and expect it to be paid off well before year end. Our net debt to capital ratio was 25.8% at the end of 2017.

Our balance sheet continues to be a point of significant strength and a tool that provides flexibility when developing our near-term and long-term strategies. As I’ve said before, our balance sheet is the foundation of our financial health and a true indicator of our bright future.

Inventory management has further increased the strength of our balance sheet, which I’ve made a point to mention on our calls throughout the year. By the end of 2017, our asset turns improved 7%, when compared to the last year. This means we’ve seen year-over-year improvement in that metric for eight consecutive quarters.

This feeds directly into our focus on enhancing returns. We’ve targeted specific actions at creating near-term pickup and returns, while also laying the foundation for accretive results moving forward.

Another example is our focus on production cadence by scheduling and planning activities in a way that not only promotes a more efficient delivery model across the organization, but assists our trade base with needed visibility and there’s a very constrained labor environment.

In both examples, the goal is clear drive consistent year-over-year accretion to return on equity. Part of the effort will be balance sheet management and another part will be earnings enhancement through scale and leverage. We remain laser focused on driving accretion to returns and fully expected to happen again in 2018.

As a part of our announcement, when we conducted the recent equity offerings and equity repurchases from our sponsors, we noted that our existing stock repurchase program remains in place with $100 million of capacity still available through December 31 of 2018.

This program has been and will continue to be a complementary piece to our broader capital allocation strategy. We’ll be opportunistic in our execution within this program and layer that evaluation into all future strategic decisions around investment. And with that, I’d like to share our guidance for 2018.

For the full year, we anticipate closings to be between 8,400 and 8,800. Our community count will be flat to last year. Our 2018 monthly absorption pace will be between 2.4 and 2.5. GAAP home closings margin including capitalized interest is expected to be accretive to 2017 in the mid-to-high 18% range.

Our SG&A as a percentage of homebuilding revenue is expected to be in the low 10% range, JV income is expected to be between $8 million and 410 million and we anticipate an effective tax rate between 25% and 27%.

Land and development spend is expected to be approximately $1.1 billion for the year, also due to the volume of our share buybacks, we are going to provide diluted share count as a point of guidance. We expect our diluted share count for the year to be around $140 million.

While we anticipate solid full year growth, we head into the first quarter facing tough growth rate comparisons from 2017. As an example, we'll anniversary a first quarter 2017 closings volume that drove more than 17% growth over 2016. It will be important to keep these comparisons in mind as you model 2018.

Closings for the first quarter are planned to be between 1,550 and 1,650, and our community count will be around 285 to 290. GAAP home closings margin including capitalized interest is expected to be accretive to last year in the mid-18% range. Thanks, and I will now turn the call back over to Sheryl..

Thank you, Dave. Let me emphasize something Dave mentioned near the end of his remarks. For the last few quarters, we've talked about our shift in focus to really drive returns and that remains the ultimate goal for 2018.

Over the last many years, we’ve engaged in a multi-phase journey to put our company in the best position possible for our stakeholders. During that time, we’ve been methodical in our approach, vision and expectations. We started by reconfiguring our footprint by opportunistically selling our Canadian business for purposes of growing our U.S. presence.

We then aggressively pursued markets that made sense for us and adjusted the structure of the organization to meet those new demands.

Next, we made investments in the organization that allowed us to responsibly assimilate our impressive growth as evidenced in the multi-year growth rates I sighted earlier and develop a new normal in standards of execution. Now we find ourselves in a place where we can take advantage of this point in the cycle and continue to drive returns.

In short, we’ve achieved outsized growth and have been able to digest that growth with a mindfulness to returns. This balanced approach will serve us well as we progress through the cycle and continued to pursue strategic growth.

In order to ensure the entire organization is on the same page, I kicked off 2018 with a company-wide communication outlining our three priorities for this year. I’d like to take some time and share those priorities with you. First, we’re going to pursue smart strategic growth to deliver benefits of scale.

We have seen this pay dividends for us on a first-hand basis in our markets where we have strategically advantageous scale. For those markets where we do have that lead, we’ll continue to invest to stay at those levels. And in the markets where we may not be there yet, we’ll look for ways to get to that point quickly.

Addition to growing strategically, we will expand on and where necessary cultivate capabilities that promote enhanced operational excellence to drive company-wide efficiencies. Some of the strategies started to take route in 2017 and I expect they will continue to gain traction in 2018.

Lastly, we’re going to doggedly pursue more ways to differentiate our customer experience. We’ve been successful in creating a trustworthy relationship with our customers as evidenced by the three pieces I mentioned earlier. But we need to build on that by developing a holistic customer experience that is best-in-class.

It starts with our people and is further enhanced with our improved processes and tools. These three priorities strategic growth, operational excellence, and a differentiated customer experience will be our guidepost for the year.

That last guidepost around a differentiated customer experience will undoubtedly involve our mortgage operations team as they represent a critical piece in their puzzle. Taylor Morrison Home funding provides great insight as a facilitator to both the customer and to the business for the life of the transaction.

They continue to provide great perspective on our customers and the makeup of that group in each market we operate. In aggregate, we continue to see a very strong borrower profile in the fourth quarter with an average credit score 747. Our average borrower had an LTV of 75%, but the debt income ratio of 37% on a loan amount around $343,000.

Our strong borrower profile is a reflection of the customers we do attract and the overall health of the country’s economy. Most macroeconomic indicators remain positive in various forecasts reflecting our economic health appear to be encouraging. Consumer confidence is still healthy with assessments regarding current conditions trending positively.

This speaks to the overall business end and increasing stability around jobs. Employment levels are good with the unemployment rate still well below 5%. And real estate values continued to strengthen on personal balance sheet with an increase of 10% nationally from the same period last year.

Specific to our industry, we continue to believe we're in a productive part of the cycle and that they remains promising runway in front of us. Supply levels are historically low in both new and existing homes and that has created the favorable demand proposition for us.

The supply of existing homes continues to create opportunity in the new home space as constraints in that metric push customers in our direction.

We shouldn't underestimate the strength of the certain demographic tailwinds such as the more than 24 million millennials still living at home with the large group of that cohort entering into the expected homeownership age range in the next 24 months to 36 months.

Although, we've seen extreme volatility in the markets, the current lending environment is rooted in mortgage rates that are still historically low and it continues to produce attractive terms for most customers and especially those with the strong balance sheets that we have seen.

I'm going to close with one more thank you to all of our team members. Our success is driven by doing what we've said we would do and delivering results each quarter as we have since our IPO. We should be proud of what we've accomplished and excited about our future.

We've received recent affirmation that we are trusted in providing an experience in a product that represents the biggest purchase most of our customers will ever make. In addition to that, we have created a culture that represents one of the best places to work and I know you take great pride in this and work to protect it each and every day.

There's a powerful dynamic at play between now positive work environment and delivering for our customers that creates an enviable value proposition for our stakeholders. We’ll continue to have the courage to stay true to our vision and strategy and to believe in each other all in a concerted effort to drive value for the company.

With that, I would like to open the call to questions. Operator, please provide our participants with instructions..

Thank you, ma'am. [Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from the line of Nishu Sood from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open..

Hey, this is actually Tim Daley on for Nishu. Thanks for the question. So, I just wanted to first touch on the share count guidance and the discussion around the buybacks. So, the $100 million repurchase program would imply basically on yesterday's closing price that that's kind of where you're guiding to for the share count.

So, are you guys basically using the $100 million as a, I guess the way I'm trying to ask it is basically, are you -- is that $100 million are you thinking of maybe getting that increased if you were to hit that? Is the share count guidance based off of some sort of share price assumption and would that change if this -- you were to see some sort of rally or strength in the stock price? Thank you..

Hey Tim. Yeah, let me let me clarify. So, the diluted share count guidance that contemplates the share repurchase, the $200 million or the $7.6 million that we did in early January.

So that is -- we’re just trying to give you guys the number since that's coming through in the first quarter and it's a big number to give you for the diluted share count for the year.

As far as the $100 million that's remaining, that's just the authorization for any future purchases that we may or may not make predicated on market conditions and that authorization is good until the end of 2018..

All right. That's helpful. And then I guess, the second question quickly is the West – the communities in the West were down a lot year-over-year, you guys talked about early sell outs and delays from the hurricanes.

So, was the West where most sell outs were kind of focused this quarter? And then as well, Sheryl you mentioned, the core pillars including kind of balancing pace first price.

So just trying to think about the Western gross margins year-over-year, would you maybe – is that why the there’d be a bit of not as great of gains in the absorption pace this year trying to kind of stabilize gross margins in the face of cost inflation? Thank you..

Yeah. No problem, Tim. Let me make sure I get both questions there for you. As far as community count, you're absolutely right. We saw the greatest decline in our West community count. We've talked about that in the last couple of quarters, couple of things at play. One was really the pull forward from early in the year.

Second was the opening of new communities, most of that is actually happening in our Southern California markets, that's probably really seeing a reduction in community count. As I look forward on the investments we've made in the last 18 months, you'll see that start to move its way up.

From a margin standpoint, I just want to make sure we get the question, probably flip back to you Dave..

Yeah. Maybe one other thing on the order if you look at the pace for the West, in the fourth quarter year-over-year, that was up in the mid-20% range, so I think more to that pull forward of closing out communities early, it's just such a strong pace..

It's really our highest pace right, in the company..

Yes. And then Tim from a margin perspective, we're looking at guidance for the 2018 year. I'm going to kind of lump them all together, but we're leaning towards a mid to high 18% range as we said which would be a creative year-over-year.

We have strong visibility into our margins through Q2 be our backlog and we expect to see some improvement across the board just some modest benefits from our strategic procurement and construction efficiency and initiatives.

In addition, lower capitalized interest, our debt levels will remain in the same, but we have more units to spread that cap interest over. And then we continue to believe pricing will stay ahead of cost. From a pressure standpoint, we're going to have some higher land costs rolling through as the lower land basis continues to burn off.

We'll continue to see some labor pressures and obviously commodities will play a factor and then not particular to the west, but the probably the hurricane impacts, some of those costs may linger a little bit in the Central region. So overall, we're guiding to you in a creative margin.

I think what you might see throughout the year where it will kind of go up and down a little bit, it’s going to be more mix driven and California will play a heavy role in that. Depending on the level of penetration in California that does play a factor in the overall mix..

Yeah..

Great. Thank you so much..

Thank you..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Ivy Zelman with Zelman Associates. Your line is now open..

Thank you and congratulations on a strong quarter and strong year..

Thanks Ivy..

Sheryl, so you spoke about the strategic initiative to both grow organically and inorganic and talked about leveraging scale and with 38,000, I believe you said lots in total under control.

When you think about what we've seen in the industry is really that same strategy to build scale, what's your appetite and what do you think the industry's appetite is right now for further consolidation, post the Lennar CalAtlantic deal? And do you think there's likely for continued public to public M&A or would you say that your inorganic is going to be more geared to smaller sort of bolt on acquisitions?.

Good question, Ivy, I think especially when you look at the condition of our balance sheet. I think we’ve put ourselves in a position of readiness for the right opportunities. I don't know that anything is dramatically changed from the prior conversations we've had.

I think when we look at M&A, we look at the best use of cash and you know that we spend a lot of time as a management team and a board really reviewing those opportunities and the values around acquisition. When you use acquisitions versus that organic growth.

I think we look at all those opportunities we look all those opportunities, we look at new markets, we look at the depth within existing market. We studied the dynamics for what's really best market by market for our long-term success.

I think it's a long way of saying you should expect to see both from us, we're absolutely going to continue to grow the company organically. And if the right opportunities exist for M&A, you can plan on seeing those.

We've been very patient, we look at opportunities every year, I can take you back to three years where we did three in a very short time. And then a couple of years candidly we didn't see the opportunities.

As we look forward most holistically, I do think there will likely be some more public to public, but I don’t think it’s going to be a lot, but I think those opportunities do exist, and I think they exist because of your point around the scale, certainly the ability to leverage production and scale in today's environment is key when we look at the infrastructure we have from a from a labor standpoint.

And I also think when you think about the cycle and where we are, and the runway we have in front of us, I think I have a strong vote of confidence in what's ahead. And if the right opportunity is there, we will take advantage of them..

Thank you. And my second question relates to the portfolio and the mix of price points, you talked about sticking to your strategy core growth – growth in the core markets.

Maybe you could just talk about where and if there is any markets where you're seeing the overall absorptions below where you'd like them to be? There has been some note of more competition and to move up product, and maybe remind everyone sort of your exposure to the first time and first time move up, etcetera.

So that's a lot, but I'd appreciate any color on the markets and your overall thoughts there? Thanks so much..

Thanks, Ivy. Okay, there's a lot. So, let me hit it from a couple different fronts. Let me just start on most globally the sales front. In my prepared comments, we talked a lot about January, and how strong January was, but I probably neglected to mention and show that how strong February has started out.

In fact, last week was one of the company's all-time record weeks, I think it's a top three weeks for the company. When I think about that, given what traditionally we would see around Super Bowl, generally we start to see that demand move up, it's strong. So, I feel very good about just globally how the markets are feeling.

When I think about kind of generational demand and as I also said, I think we're at a point where at the 55 plus piece of our portfolio, we are very encouraged, we're seeing strong demand even generally a little sooner in the season than we would.

When we're looking at the traffic, when we're looking at actually what they're buying and we're looking at the margin of those with the 55 plus, feel very, very strong – very good about the condition of this consumer group, their balance sheets are strong.

And I think if I look out over the next many years, they probably have the greatest likelihood to buy than any other cohort. When I think about the affordable segment, it's about a third of our sales, Ivy, obviously that's very market specific for us.

Our greatest penetrations and the first-time buyer are in Sacramento Chicago, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh and we're starting to see some growth there in the -- on Texas markets as well. We've talked a lot over the last many years and articulated our strategy around the consistency of protecting the business through core locations.

I think you'll continue to see us have a very balanced approach with core locations and where it makes sense and the land is available that yields affordable housing will be all over it.

We can debate A, B, C, locations, but I think as long as we stay in the path of growth and focus on where there is truly emerging submarket and ones that won't screech to a halt, when the market shows sign of weakness, I think we'll continue to operate that way.

Simply, when I look at just the overall demographic trends, I think you should expect to see us stay balanced in that third first time buyer, third – first second time move up buyer, third for second time move up buyer, and third that 50 plus buyer. If I were to do a....

So….

Yeah..

Go ahead. Sorry..

No. Go ahead, Ivy..

No. I was just going to say obviously the demographics are very strong across all of the various age groups that you mentioned. Would you say that when your sales people meet with prospective customers that the reason there they feel confident about their personnel balance sheet and overall employment.

And how much of the inflow of demand could be just people jumping off the fence because they're worried about interest rates and therefore concerned it might be a short lived – short-lived temporary bump.

So just understanding, are they there because they feel good and confident and its lifestyle driven versus they talk about, hey, I want to jump in because rates are moving higher in that various segments that you mentioned?.

Yeah..

And I promise, no more questions..

Okay. No problem. I'll hit that one, and then, I'll just give a quick tour around the country, Ivy. I’d say it's a little bit of both. Obviously, whenever there is discussion around mortgage around interest rate movement, it's going to create some traffic and some demand in the business. And I think that's really, really good.

At the same time, we're seeing that consumer confidence and what we're hearing in our sales office is completely different than the volatility we're seeing in the market over these last couple weeks.

I would say since tax reform, at the -- I mean, I go back 12 months, I go back since tax reform, consumer confidence is continuing to build and that's actually more important as certainly amongst our consumer group than actual interest rates slight movement.

We've seen about 50 basis points of movement since December, and it hasn't impacted the buyer group really one bit. Interestingly enough and we've talked about this before, but we test our markets every quarter, and we look at our customers’ qualification ability.

And we see today that our customers on average can probably handle somewhere in the range of 400 bps of an increase in rates before within any way affect their ability to qualify, and actually that would be your FHA customers, or conforming customers, or even in a better place than that.

So specifically, to the question, Ivy, I think it's a little bit of both, I think people want it are wondering. I think people believe rates aren't going down anymore, and so that will move some folks off the sidelines.

But most important, I think generally confidence around the economy around their personal balance sheets around their jobs is very, very strong..

And I think even with the last couple of days of volatility, specifically we've seen in the market, we've been very pleased with both the traffic and sales results that we're seeing. So….

Particular..

Yeah. The matter of the cause if it's just a lifestyle change or the fear of rates, we are seeing a fair amount of activity..

And then I think the last -- the last question just for thoroughness was just how are we feeling around the market. I'll spend two minutes and run around the country. Phoenix is consistent with what we've told you in the past quarters, it's very, very strong, it's running our strongest paces in the company.

We've heard a lot of people described the strength at lower price points. Quite honestly, we're seeing it across all consumer groups. Location matters and we feel very good about our land positions. If you look at the overall market, closings are up at nearly 20% year-over-year, inventories very low, we've been very aggressive on the land side.

Making progress on construction cycle times compared to last year, although workforce development is still a significant issue in Arizona. California, all three markets continue to demonstrate very strong demand characteristics continued to demonstrate very strong demand characteristics, ridiculously low supply both new and resale is very tight.

As I mentioned earlier, our issue is really store count in Southern California. And that’s really the greatest impact on your-over-your west paces. We’ve had some delays getting a couple of stores open there, but I do think we’ll see some movement in the back half of 2018 in preparation for 2019.

And the Bay continues, sales continued to be very impressive. Denver strong across all metrics, all market dynamics remained strong. We’ve talked about labor pressures, they are I think particularly difficult. And I would expect to see appreciation moderate with the pace we’ve seen for the last year there.

I think only about a quarter of the new home starts in Denver are priced under $400,000. So, I think we’re going to see pricing moderate there. Texas, I think we’re pleased with success across the state. Our Austin business had a record year in sales and closings. The overall market is up 10%.

The demand environment and sentiment feels very good and supply is tight. Houston has really stabilized since the hurricanes. I mean clearly there is a lot to do. It’s difficult to talk about the market without recognizing. We still have you know 150,000 plus houses that are impacted and that is having some implications on labor inventory.

But volumes are strong, employment is filling better, I think it’s going to continue to be a key market for the company for years to come. Dallas, honestly a little better than I expected given some of the bumpiness we saw through the year. Market felt good. We saw 15% year-over-year growth in the market on starts.

So, I think it’s going to continue to be a healthy market for us. And I think the little nervousness that we saw early in the year has played well in the land market. Southeast, I think, we're feeling pretty good about each of our newer markets.

As Dave mentioned, we're investing in each of the Carolinas and Atlanta heavily really to build scale in the Carolinas. Atlanta is ground to be one of our largest markets as I looked at based on sign ups. Another great example of how an entry level affordable market has done well with us, but it has done well with above average margin performance.

We've seen a pretty good resurgence in Charlotte and Raleigh. So, I think you'll see all three of those markets ramp up for the company. Florida, market conditions remain very strong. We saw robust pace sales and closings were meaningfully up year-over-year in all of our Florida market.

We saw strength across all consumer groups, 55 plus remarkably strong, but equally impressive was the first-time buyer in Tampa and the family buyer in Orlando. And I'll finish with Chicago, really holding its own. I think it's going to do very well this year.

We've seen some good light balance sheet land opportunities and still a difficult market all in all, but we've seen some nice growth in our business there..

Great, Sheryl. Good luck. Thanks, guys..

Thank you, Ivy..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Stephen East with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open..

Thank you, and good morning and congratulations Sheryl and Dave..

Thank you..

I guess I'll start with returns. You all mentioned you're focusing on asset turnover trying to drive that further.

Could you elaborate maybe a little bit more on what you all are trying to do? How you're changing the way you run your business there? And then any targets and timeline that you might be willing to share with us?.

Yeah, Stephen, a couple of things. We’re obviously, trying to drive both the numerator and denominator of the equation and it’s really the things we’ve been doing over the last couple of years, so starting with getting the balance sheet right, getting our debt profile in a place that we were comfortable with.

And then moving on inventory terms, so a lot of the investments we’ve made over the last 18 months have really been to – we focused on pace through enhancing CRM or our strategic procurement capabilities or just around production efficiency, so putting all that together we’re trying to drive the top line of the equation.

From my guidance perspective, we don’t have specific targets that we’re necessarily sharing externally, but we kind of remained the same. We’re very focused on driving accretion year-over-year. We feel like we have room to continue to grow this. A lot of the investments that we’ve made they’re paying off right now.

We saw that through margin accretion in 2017. As we said we expect to see margin accretion in 2018, so it’s going to come together and I think you should expect to see us be accretive year-over-year for the next few years..

Okay.

And one other question on that, just your owned versus optioned, we’re seeing a fair number of builders starting to option more, is that in your thought process there? And then going back to the capital allocation and you’ve already got close to $600 million on the balance sheet, a lot more than you normally carry, you are ramping up your land a bit, but it looks like you’re still going to be absent in acquisition, you're still going to have a significant amount of cash as we get to the end of the year.

So, wondering how you feel about sitting on cash like that and along with that, Sheryl, I guess I would ask you, you've talked about looking at trying to gain scale with now Horton and Leonard, both in a lot of markets controlling anywhere from probably 15% to 40% of market share.

Does that change the way you all think about markets or do you think it changes the way competitors go to market against those two?.

Well, that was one great very large question Stephen. Maybe….

I'll do my best..

And then I'll turn it over Dave for the balance sheet..

Yeah..

So, on the land, yeah, you're seeing our option at a higher level than you've seen in the last many years and certainly that's always our priority and where we can get sellers to carry, that's going to be our first preference. I mean that's a little bit specific to markets and very driven in certain parts of the country.

But yeah, if we could stay in this 65%, 35%, that would be our preference. I think equally important, Stephen is, just the kind of land we're buying and how the structure of our deals is different and the size of the deals is different. If I look at our acquisition spend in 2017 over 2016, our acquisition spend was up about 80%.

And if you guys, if you recall going back to 2016, we underspend as we relate and find the opportunities. So, our acquisition spend is up 80%, but the duration of the types of land deals we're buying is down about 22%. And so, we're buying more smaller deals and obviously that's to complement some of the Dave's comments earlier on our returns.

So yeah, we certainly have dry powder on the balance sheet because as we said our expectations is to spend about 1.1 all-in in 2018. As far as the scale, Stephen, has it changed our strategy? No, not at all.

I mean we compete, we like the way we compete in each of those -- in each of our markets, we tend to carry a top 10 market share and in many of our markets, the top five and you really look at what you’re trying to achieve at a scale and it’s are we getting to look at the right land deals for us, and we are. We’re getting a first look.

Are we attracting and retaining good people? And I’d say we are. And do we have the scale to make hay with our trade base? And we are and we’re making progress each and every day. You also have to look at this – our market share amongst our price point.

And even when you look at Horton or Lennar and the way we compete with them, we actually don’t go head-to-head with someone like Horton very often based on our price point. And when we look at Lennar, our strategy is quite different.

I’m very happy to compete with anyone that has a different inclusion, for example, on using their EI, their value proposition would be very different than at our price point than ours, so they’re both good, they’re just different. So, the short answer is, no, it really hasn’t changed our strategy..

And then lastly, Stephen, on the cash, I’d start with the $575 million, I’d start with that number and just remind everyone that we spent $200 million of that within the first two weeks on the share repurchase, so that number is automatically lower.

And then as we move through the year, we’ll be using that cash to invest back into the business through land and development and we as I mentioned on the call, the prepared remarks.

We’ll probably be on the revolver at some point, so the cash balance will probably be more at a minimal level, but we will build that up as we get towards the end of the year. And our philosophy is going to stay the same around capital allocation, we’ll look to be opportunistic in growing our existing markets, that Sheryl discovered on the M&A side.

And then we’ll always maintain that ability to return excess cash to shareholders. Our ultimate goal here is driving ROE and that that plays a factor..

And I think you've seen us be able to use all of this tactic..

All right. Thank you. I appreciate it..

Thanks, Stephen..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Mike Dahl with Barclays. Your line is now open..

Hi. This is Matthew Belay on for Mike today. Thank you for taking my questions. I just wanted to follow up on some of the early commentary that you made on the strength of your sales pace through January and here into February. Obviously, we have your guidance for pace and communities into 2018.

So, I just -- I guess with pace I guess improving to these levels, so what are your updated thoughts on managing that pace through the year and really kind of the resulting cadence of community openings and closings through 2018?.

So obviously in first quarter, you should expect to see a stronger pace from us and as we mentioned on the call, we have very difficult comps when we look at 2017. So, if we can end the first quarter approaching anything near flat, I would say that would be a tremendous feat.

Dave gave community count guidance for 2018 and basically, we plan on being flat, but I think what we equally important is as I look at the trajectory of how our communities open through the year, and we really do see that ramp up.

And when I look at active communities at the end of the year compared to the end of 2017, I expect that we'll be up high-single digits. And so even though our average community counts kind of be flat for the year, you're going to see that continue to pick up as we move through the year and in preparation for 2019.

We guided to a 2.4 to 2.5 pace for 2018 that's coming off of a 2.4 in 2017. It's early in the year, so I couldn't be more pleased with how we've started. And you know, I think as we move through the first quarter as you've seen us do in the past, if the market stays strong as we expect then you'll see us update them in the next quarter..

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. Second question is just on the SG&A side. The guidance, you know, implies, you know, I guess a relatively modest level of leverage in 2018. But just a question on and is there conservatism baked into that number or kind of what are the puts and takes on the SG&A side? Thank you..

I think some of it is just where we are, it's February, it's a long year. It is in line with our closing guidance. As far as the puts and takes, we do think we're going to be able to leverage, that leverage is going to come through top-line growth.

We run a pretty lean organization, so we don't necessarily out costs that we can continue to pull out of the business. In fact, we're going to continue to invest back into the business to ensure that we have the capabilities in place to continue to grow in the most efficient way possible..

Got it. Thank you very much..

Thank you..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Michael Rehaut with JPMorgan. Your line is now open..

Thanks. Excuse me, good morning everyone and nice quarter. Looking at, I think you know the previous questions kind of hit on this a little bit in terms of perhaps, you know potentially a little bit of conservatism in sales pace guidance obviously, you’re getting off to a strong point so far in the year, but obviously a lot to go.

And you also mentioned the community count accelerating as you know off of the first quarter guidance would imply -- would imply the up high-single digits as you noted earlier Sheryl. So, when you think about the 5% to 10% guidance in closings growth. And the increased land spend that you expect to do this year.

I mean is a mid to high single-digit volume growth for the next two or three years, something that we should be expecting particularly given your comments before about increasing scale in certain markets, perhaps enhancing in others?.

So good questions, Michael. I guess I say a couple of things. First of all, you know it’s a little early for us to give guidance you know beyond 2018. I think most specially, I’m happy to say that where we are in the cycle and how we feel. We feel very optimistic.

So, you know the opportunity certainly seems to be there, to settle in to something to mid to high single-digit growth. I mean that doesn’t in anyway concern me, but obviously, there is a, you know we’re talking a few we're talking a few years out, so we need to see what the macro market feel, but generally, I would agree with that.

As far as the conservatism in our guidance, I'll say it again Michael, it's very early in the year. We are off to a very strong start and then we came out of December with a very strong start, and we need a strong start given our difficult comps.

We did have some wind to our face with the hurricanes with closing out of communities sooner than expected, and we can't underestimate the impact of the labor environment and really what it takes to get communities open. When I look at our community openings for 2018, we're going to open about 135 communities.

The timing of it though is making sure they all hit appropriately is probably the hardest piece of guidance we can give I think for the industry, because there's so much out of our control.

So, if it's conservative, then I think we'll be back to you next quarter and if things are lining up and there is an opportunity to increase that we absolutely are, we absolutely will. And as I said here today, I can't with confidence give you anything, but I'm not 100% certain we can deliver on..

No, that's fair. And I think I was more focusing on maybe strategically or conceptually 2019 and 2020 on the volume growth. So, I appreciate your comments there Sheryl. On the -- on the gross margin and SG&A front, maybe it's -- maybe this is perhaps more a question for Dave.

But the gross margins you said accretive to 2017 is 18.6%, you also said mid-to-high 18% range, so it would seem almost equal that, perhaps you're targeting slightly towards the high end of that mid-to-high, but I was just perhaps you're targeting slightly towards the high-end of that mid-to-high.

But I was just interested in you know, I think you alluded to perhaps getting a little bit more leverage on the interest amortization, I don't know if that's 10 bps or 20 bps, would that be the entirety of the driver of the gross margin expansion or are there any things pre-interest that would also allow the pre-interest gross margin to drift up? And then I just have one quick one on SG&A..

Yeah, Michael. You're definitely going to see gap interests providing a benefit, it’s hard to say from a – it is going to be 50%, 40% whatever that is.

But we're also going to see what we anticipate on the rate side again to reiterate some of the things that we've been working around are working on related to strategic procurement and construction, those investments are starting to pay off for us. So, we actually think that we have rate benefit there all things being equal in the market..

Okay. I guess then just lastly on SG&A, you mentioned, your guidance has a low 10% type number, you did 10.3% in 2017 and you did mention it's obviously in some ways dependent on revenue leverage, but you're also doing some investments, continued investments in the platform as well.

I mean is it 10% number kind of a steady state number for you guys or typically we think about incremental SG&A or the variable piece something in the 6% to 8% range.

So, if the investment kind of stabilizes and I know that there's been a lot of work there in the last couple of years, all else equal, could we see or should we see that number go you know the next year or two below 10% as revenues continue to grow?.

Well, we’re going to kind of hold to the 2018 guidance right now, as Sheryl said 2019, 2020 a little bit harder, but what I would suggest from a modeling perspective, what I feel works is if you take total SG&A and take half that and grow it by call it 3% to 3.5%, while you take the other 50%, and put that up against homebuilding revenue as a variable cost.

If you put in your top-line assumptions, that will drive you to the SG&A leverage..

And I think, the only other comment I’d add Michael is when we talked a lot about scale and taking our smaller businesses and scaling them up. Obviously, it’s a quicker we do that, the more leverage we get, that will help the overall business..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Will Randow with Citi. Your line is now open..

Hey, good morning and congratulations on the progress..

Thank you, Will..

This has been touched on a few different ways, but I would just like to circle back on specifically some of the comments you made suggested where your year-over-year community count being somewhat flattish was more of a strategic decision. And I guess looking beyond 2018, you talked about a ramping through 2018.

Is there longer-term goal to grow the footprint of the business or is it ultimately if the returns aren’t there, stop growth and focus on things like buying back stock, optimizing the balance sheet et cetera?.

So, I don’t want to be redundant, but let me try to hit it from a different angle. If you guys go back to our 2016 land spend, where we underspent probably $350 million from what we had planned, we working force land into the business 350 million from what we have planned to be more on a foreign land into business.

We knew at that point that that was going to moderate our community count growth, as we looked into 2018 and 2019. In 2017, we turned around and we actually I think did a very nice job on the acquisition side. And so, when I look forward to 2019 and the fact that we're almost already bought out for 2019, and making here on 2020, I feel very good.

So, yes, it was a strategic decision to moderate, as we weren’t going to put land on the books that we didn't feel would be creative to the business. But I wouldn't look too much further beyond that. Obviously, we're always going to look at the markets and the best use of cash, as we've talked about with our focus on returns.

And we'll continue to drive the operational piece of the business as well to make us more efficient. So, I don't think you should really expect to see anything change there unless we see real differences in the market..

Thanks for that. And then also circling back on the gross margin guidance for 2018, it sounded like you guys implied pricing net of inflation could add a bit, I don't know if that's 50 basis points or 100 basis points to margin in terms of your assumption.

Could you also mention what’s your expectation for lumber prices is for 2018 and any other related drivers we should be thinking about for the gross margin guide?.

Yeah. From a cost perspective, as we're looking out into 2018, I think, a couple of things. One, we anticipate some continued increases probably on the labor front. As Sheryl mentioned, labor still tight out there. Lumber could play a factor. We've taken that into account from a guidance perspective.

But we do believe ASP growth can keep pace in many of our markets. So, it's a combination of things. One on the ASP side, and then there are things that we're doing on the cost side to at least help offset some of the rising costs.

So, it's just -- it's not one lever will, it's several things that gives us the confidence around our guidance for margin..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Jack Micenko. [Operator Instructions] Mr. Micenko, your line is now open..

Hi, good morning. Dave, you had mentioned in the prepared comments your 26% net debt to cap as a position of strengthening. I guess, so that incremental focus on returns, where do we see that number going? I mean, I guess you could argue it both ways.

Some of your peers are deleveraging aggressively, some are taking of your hay, some leverage is good on the return side. And maybe in the Q&A came out maybe you're going to grow a little bit more prospectively.

How do we think about debt levels going forward?.

I would say all things being equal as there is not necessarily favorable growth conditions, that number obviously will continue to decline. For us, we see that basically as this powder for us, for the right growth opportunity and then it is on the right growth opportunity.

So, we're going to be patient, we're going to deploy that capital in a way that we think is going to drive the best long-term shareholder value and if the opportunity is not there, then we are going to see that number go down a little bit..

Yeah. So, we’re also not worried to see it gallop a little bit from the right opportunities as we have stated our long-term goals are much more in the 30s. So, for the right opportunities you will see that move up. So that will take us a little time on that..

That’s helpful. And then I guess the tax rate guide came in a little higher than we were thinking.

I think Arizona came in from almost 7% to a 4.9%, is there something else in your tax rate that would push it to that 26%, 27% range?.

Only nuance to us is we still have a Canadian entity, and that creates a little bit of a drag, but again we're guiding to 25% to 27%. The bills brand new, so there are some still some things that we want to see how it plays out. So, could the real opportunity there, maybe, but I'm comfortable with the 25% to 27%..

Okay. Great. Thank you..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Carl Reichardt with BTIG. Your line is now open..

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Could you talk maybe Dave or Sheryl about what you see is the lowest hanging fruit from a vertical cost -- constructions perspective, and you've been working hard on whether it's rationalizing plans or looking using less material per house.

I'm just trying to get a sense beyond the input costs, land costs, et cetera, what can help drive the gross margin inherently lower over time from a vertical class construction perspective?.

Yeah. We certainly can, I mean obviously as we have talked about for the last 18 months, two years, we've spent a lot of time on really the efficiency of our plans making sure that we're value engineering our plans, our shared costings, we challenge ourselves every day to explore more efficient options.

And I'm actually pretty pleased with the work the teams have done on both the national purchasing, the supply chain, value engineering. There's a lot of discussion right now around prefab walls, steel construction, manufactured efficiencies. And we are doing some of that work in some of our markets, it's very market specific.

But I would tell you that there's not one silver bullet there. I think so far, our success to date has really been around the scheduling, the product efficiency, truly planned production and partnering with our suppliers in trades, and getting efficiency in the field, one trade at a time.

But I would say all of that collectively is going to be more impactful than any one trade enhancement..

Okay. Thanks.

And just second, just looking at the community count guide for 2018, can you maybe mention what openings versus closings would be to get to that that flat overall number, Dave?.

It's about 135 new openings, and communities I think is going to be somewhere in one -- mid-115 to 120 range..

That’s right..

Once again timing of those is not -- it's definitely an art not a science..

Of course. Thanks..

Okay. Well, thank you for sticking with us so long today. I appreciate everyone joining our call and wish you a very good day and nice week. See you next quarter..

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation on today's conference. This does conclude the program, and we may all disconnect. Everybody have a wonderful day..