Cavco Industries Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
January 31, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • EPS jumped 30% sequentially to $6.90, driven by improved results in both financial services and factory-built housing.
  • Financial services delivered its best quarterly profit in four years, fueled by underwriting changes, premium increases and lower weather-related claims.
  • Factory-built housing sales volume rose 3.4% quarter-to-quarter and gross margin improved by 70 basis points as plants ramped production despite seasonal headwinds.
  • Aggregate backlog remains healthy at 6–8 weeks, while seasonally adjusted industry shipments climbed to ~109,000 units versus ~93,000 a year ago.
  • The company repurchased $42 million of stock in Q3 (totaling $389 million since FY2021) and maintains $111 million of remaining authorization amid strong cash flow.
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Earnings Conference Call
Cavco Industries Q3 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the 3rd Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Cavco Industries Inc. Earnings Call Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Instructions will be given at that time. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mark Fessler, Corporate Controller and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Mark Fusler
Mark Fusler
Director of Financial Reporting & Investor Relations at Cavco Industries

Good day, and thank you for joining us for Cavco Industries' Q3 fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. During the call, you'll be hearing from Bill Bohr, President and Chief Executive Officer Alison Aden, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Paul Bigby, Chief Accounting Officer. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that comments made during this conference call by management may contain forward looking statements, including statements of expectations or assumptions about Cavco's financial and operational performance, revenues, earnings per share, cash flow or use, cost savings, operational efficiencies, current or future volatility in the credit markets or future market conditions. All forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could affect Cavco's actual results and could cause its actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward looking statements made by or on behalf of Cavco. I encourage you to review Cavco's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation, the company's most recent Forms 10 ks and 10 Q, which identify specific factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward looking statements.

Mark Fusler
Mark Fusler
Director of Financial Reporting & Investor Relations at Cavco Industries

This conference call also contains time sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the slide broadcast, Friday, January 31, 2025. Cavco undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward looking statement, whether written or oral, to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call, except as required by law. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill Boor, President and Chief Executive Officer. Bill?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Thanks, Mark. Welcome and thank you for joining us today to review our Q3 results. This quarter showed strong execution across our operations supported by continued forward momentum in the market. Sequentially, our EPS jumped 30% to $6.90 Allison will provide a more detailed breakdown over the largest drivers were improved results in both financial services and factory build housing. After a few challenging quarters, our financial services segment recorded its best quarterly profit in 4 years, driven primarily by our insurance operation.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

In insurance, the 3rd quarter is typically more profitable due to lower weather related claims costs, but the positive results were also driven by improvement efforts we discussed in previous calls. We've made significant changes to underwriting to manage claims costs and we implemented needed premium increases. In addition to the quarter to quarter financial services improvement, factory built housing showed higher volume and gross margin. Despite normal winter and holiday seasonality, we were able to increase volume sequentially by about 3.4% and gross margin improved by 70 basis points. I feel really good about the continued progress our plants are making as they ramp up production.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

It's always more operationally challenging to increase production than to pull it down in a market downturn. With a lot of focus on hiring, on boarding and training, we've been able to steadily raise production rates where the market has supported it. This ties into an important point about our backlog movement. Despite entering the seasonally slower Q3, we made the decision that where our backlogs allowed, our plants would continue ramping production in anticipation of continued market improvement in 2025. We made this decision to press forward to higher production rates knowing that that would involve utilizing some of the backlog.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Exiting the Q3 with a still very healthy aggregate backlog of 6 to 8 weeks and a higher system production rate positions us very well for the coming quarters. Of course, market uncertainty remains and if demand weakens in the coming quarters, I have full confidence in our ability to adjust accordingly. Conversely, if demand strengthens, we're a step ahead in controlling backlog growth and we will have maximized profitable operating days in Q3. While industry shipments declined from Q2, they continued to improve on a seasonally adjusted basis. December numbers are not out yet.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

However, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of HUD shipments in October November was 108,000 and 109,000 annual units respectively. This compares with about 93,000 a year ago for those months and as low as 89,000 in early 2024. So the industry trend has been decidedly positive as we head into 2025. I also want to close off on an item from last quarter's earnings call and you might remember that that was shortly after the 2 devastating hurricanes hit the Southeast. At that time, there were questions about whether the Southeast market activity would be slowed in Q3.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Industry shipment data for October November showed about 14% year over year shipment gain in the most impacted states, indicating that activity resumed quickly following the hurricanes. As the calendar year ends, it's a good time to touch on progress with our digital marketing strategy. Over the last 2 years, we've implemented a complete transformation of our digital marketing architecture, making it easier for prospective buyers to research our homes and easier to efficiently connect them with retailers. A significant part of our approach is to add value for our retailers as well. One important aspect of this rollout has been to provide dealers and communities easy to manage micro sites branded to their businesses.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Having their own Cavco supported sites integrated directly into our overall platform is proving to be a significant value add for our partners, enabling them to generate leads through their micro sites and receive leads from our pathcohomes.comdigitalplatform. As we look back on calendar year 2024, the increased traffic, lead generation and the number of independent retail businesses connecting to our platform have validated our strategy and approach. And as customer engagement and the market evolve, we'll be able to continue building on the platform in new ways. Switching gears, our cash flow generation continued to support a strong balance sheet and the ability to repurchase shares. This quarter, we repurchased $42,000,000 of stock and our quarter to quarter cash and cash equivalents remained essentially flat.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

With that, I'd like to turn it over to Allison to discuss the financial results in more detail.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

Thank you, Bill. Net revenue for the 3rd fiscal quarter of 2025 was $522,000,000 up $75,200,000 or 16.8 percent compared $446,800,000 during the prior year. Sequentially, net revenues increased $14,600,000 driven by an increase in homes sold. Within the factory build housing segment, net revenue was $500,900,000 up $74,000,000 or 17.3 percent from $426,900,000 in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily due to a 21.6% increase in homes sold, partially offset by a 3.5% decrease in average revenue per home sold.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

The decrease in average revenue per home was primarily due to a lower proportion of homes sold through our company owned stores and to a lesser extent product pricing decreases that were partially offset by more multiwides in the mix. Factor utilization for Q3 of 2025 was approximately 75% when considering all available production days. Utilization was approximately 60% in the prior year period. Financial Services segment net revenue was $21,200,000 up $1,400,000 or 6.8 percent from $19,800,000 in the prior year quarter, primarily due to higher insurance premium rates. Consolidated gross margins in the 3rd fiscal quarter as a percentage of net revenue was 24.9%, up 180 basis points from 23.1% in the same period last year.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

In the factory built housing segment, the gross profit increased 120 basis points to 23.6% in Q3 of 2025 versus 22.4 percent in Q3 of 2024 driven by lower input costs, leveraging fixed overhead and other efficiencies on increased production, partially offset by lower average selling prices. Financial services gross margin as a percentage of revenue increased to 55.5% in Q3 of 2025 from 36.8% in Q3 of 2024. The insurance division improved due to a return to normal weather patterns, the growing impact of premium increases and underwriting changes on policies. Selling, general and administrative expenses in the Q3 of 2025 were $66,000,000 or 12.6 percent of net revenue compared to $63,300,000 or 14.2 percent of net revenue during the same quarter last year. The increase in these expenses was due to a higher variable compensation based on improved earnings and greater compensation related to acquired retail locations, partially offset by a $2,000,000 reduction in legal expenses.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

Pre tax profit was $69,300,000 up $25,400,000 or 57.9 percent compared to 43 $900,000 in the prior year quarter. The effective income tax rate was 18.6% for the 3rd fiscal quarter, down 1.7% compared to 20.3% in the Q2. The decrease in the effective tax rate is primarily due to tax credits associated with higher shipments of Energy Star compliant homes. This resulted in a decrease in tax expense of approximately $1,000,000 or 1.4 percent in the Q3 of fiscal 2025. Net income was $56,500,000 up $20,500,000 compared to $36,000,000 in the same quarter of the prior year.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

And diluted earnings per share this quarter was $6.96 per share versus $4.27 per share in last year's Q3. During the quarter, we also repurchased 42,400,000 of common shares under our share repurchase program. Cumulative repurchases stand at $389,000,000 since we purchased since we began the program in the Q4 of fiscal year 2021. This leaves approximately $111,000,000 under authorization for future repurchases. Before we discuss the balance sheet, I want to address the sequential change in our earnings per share, which shows significant improvement from the Q2.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

The largest increase is due to the performance of the Financial Services segment. In Q2 of 2025, the segment was at a pre tax loss of nearly $1,000,000 compared to pre tax income in Q3 of 2025 of $6,200,000 a swing of over $7,000,000 The Q3 2025 performance improved significantly due to higher premiums earned, lower claim volume from fewer weather events and changes in underwriting. The 2nd largest impact is from improved factory build housing sales volume and improved margins on those homes sold due to efficiencies on higher production levels. The 3rd largest impact relates to our 170 basis points lower tax rate compared to 20.3% in the sequential quarter. The decrease in the effective tax rate is due primarily to higher shipments of Energy Star compliant homes.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

The remaining is the benefit of our share repurchase program. In Q3 of 2025, we repurchased 98,000 shares further reducing our shares outstanding. Now I'll turn it over to Paul to discuss the balance sheet.

Paul Bigbee
Paul Bigbee
Chief Accounting Officer at Cavco Industries

Thanks, Allison. In the Q3, we saw a decline in cash and restricted cash of $7,600,000 bringing our balance to 378,600,000 Cash flow from operating activities was $37,800,000 despite being impacted by an increase in our working capital. Cash used in investing activities was $3,000,000 net and cash used in financing activities was $42,400,000 primarily due to share repurchases. Now moving on from the quarter and comparing the December 28, 20 24 balance sheet to March 30, 2024, increase in accounts receivable is primarily related to organic growth we have experienced in the factory built housing segment. The increase in short term consumer loans receivable is due to higher originations of loans held for sale in excess of actual sales.

Paul Bigbee
Paul Bigbee
Chief Accounting Officer at Cavco Industries

The balance of commercial loans in total remained relatively stable. The decrease in short term commercial loans receivable is primarily due to pay downs on floor plan lending and a shift to longer term loans. Current liabilities are up from increased compensation and bonus accruals on higher earnings, increased insurance loss reserves for previous storms and higher customer deposits. Finally, treasury stock increased due to buybacks executed in the 1st 3 quarters of fiscal 2025. Now with that, I'll turn it back to Bill.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Thank you, Paul. It's been very satisfying to see the strong execution of our operating plans across the business segment this quarter. In addition to posting strong results, we feel we effectively use the Q3 to set ourselves up for continued momentum in the coming quarters. So with that, Michelle, would you please open the line for questions?

Operator

Our first question comes from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Your line is open.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon, I should say, Bill, Allison, Paul. Thanks for taking the questions. Hi, Dan. Obviously, feeling pretty good about the trajectory of business and order rates and demand, given the decision to continue to increase production this past quarter in a seasonally light period.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

What can you tell us about your discussions with customers across various end markets and the cadence of order rates through the quarter and what you're seeing thus far in fiscal Q4? Just trying to get a sense, are you hearing from customers their expectations that things are going to pick up? Is it more of an anticipation of the stronger spring selling season? Anything you can tell us kind of across markets would be really helpful.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Yes. Dan, let me hit a couple of points and shoot it back to me if you had some questions or some areas or aspects I didn't touch on. We always this call always comes at an interesting time in the year, right, because we've finished the seasonally slower holiday quarter and winter quarter. And then we're still a little too early to really have strong conclusions around how the spring selling season is going to materialize. But obviously, we watch some things.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

I commented at some length in my opening remarks about just watching industry shipments on the seasonally adjusted rate and how they have continued to trend upward. So at a high level, that's been encouraging. Traffic really said this for a few quarters now, traffic in retail and dealers has been pretty healthy and has remained healthy even when the interest rates shot up. So we know people are out there trying to figure out if they can buy homes. And I think some of what we really saw this past year was the adjustment that prospective buyers made to higher interest rates.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

If you need a home and the rates go up on you, you can't afford maybe as much home as you were looking at previously. At some point, you make that adjustment and you buy what you can afford. And I think that psychological shift on the consumer side has been something we've watched. We see it in things like if you assume traffic is pretty healthy as I described, you see it in conversion rates picking up and that's something we've seen in our stores and we've talked to independents about. The other factor that got a lot of airtime last year and I think we tried to say, it's not a big story now, but when you look at it over several quarters, the community is getting their inventories under control.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

That's something that kind of happened late in the year. And so that's a bit of a tailwind for overall demand as communities kind of take their proportion of orders again in 2025 and that's what we expect to see. So yes, I'm rattling off quite a few things with some of these are leading indicators, some of them are just watching the trend in the seasonally adjusted rate. But I think they all you never give you certainty. As I was careful to say, there is always economic uncertainty.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

We'll know more as this quarter starts to unfold because we really haven't hit that improved weather in the time when we see activity seasonally pick up, but we obviously are feeling fairly confident about it. And also, as I said, part of our operating decision to prepare ourselves for stronger quarters ahead is made because we know our plants are really good at adjusting if we need to adjust. So, we feel it was the right move to continue to build production.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

Yes, that's good color, really helpful. Are you as we think about sort of sequentially from Q3 to Q4 maintaining similar rate of production, is there holidays or other things we should sort of think about that would create a favorable or maybe slightly less favorable shipping comparison on a sequential basis?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Nothing really that I would say would be less favorable. I mean, the biggest thing is you got more operating days in the Q4 than we had in the Q3. And even though we talk at a high level in these calls by necessity, the plant decisions of how rapidly they ramp up or if they're even able to ramp up are really unique to their backlogs. So I guess what I'm saying is if the market continues to support us as we've been going, then there is more upside to production and downside at this point. I realize as Allison was talking and I don't think I missed it in the script there, but that I usually talk about capacity utilization.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

We were around 75% in the Q3. So we still have some room to keep expanding up.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

That's really helpful. Maybe one more and I'll shift hand it back off. In terms of Financial Services, great color, obviously had an exceptional quarter. Maybe talk about what some of the changes that you've made. I think you described kind of 3 things, the rates being 1, lower claims instances, which is sort of out of your control, but seasonally lighter.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

And then the changes to underwriting, maybe talk about the changes to underwriting, number 1. And number 2, how do we think about like an appropriate sort of long term average range for whether it be gross margins or operating margins for that business? Because it's obviously all over the board based on seasonality and other factors?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Yes, we've made it tough on you guys because we really swung from 2 quarters that were pretty rough to one that was very strong historically. So the first thing and I'll just go back through them again because I think it's important to be as clear as we can. First thing is we would always expect the Q3 to be stronger than the first and second. That's just based on weather. We kind of use historical data to predict the number of major storms we'll have.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

And as you'd expect, the Q3 is really the time when you want to make sure you're making good money because sometimes the first and second can be rough. So absolutely part of the change quarter to quarter is just due to lower claims cost had we done nothing else. But having said that, I do think we're having a significant impact. On the premium side, probably taking you through too much detail or more than you want, but on the premium side, the process is really working with actuarials to figure out what we need to charge for a policy order to get the proper risk adjusted return. And we've just been really diligent, making sure that we're you got to go to the state regulators making sure that we're getting those premiums in place as increases.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

And I think that's important on the revenue side. And then you were asking about underwriting. We've had to make some tough decisions. We've had to non renew policyholders where we needed to thin out our exposure in certain areas. We've had to actually make like lower coverage decisions on the policies that we do renew, but we needed to make sure that every policy was profitable on a risk adjusted basis.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

So I will give you one example and there's many of them just to give you a flavor for it. You can write an underwriting, you can write a policy for roof damage that's full replacement cost or you can write a policy for roof damage that pays for the depreciated value of the roof based on its age and condition. We've made those kind of changes over the past year fairly aggressively because we knew we needed to make sure that risk reward was in place. You asked, I think the follow-up was how do you what guidance or help can we give you on further quarters? Excuse me.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

It's tough. I'll tell you that my only the only thing I think I could say is the seasonality is a big factor. So looking back at past years and rolling that forward quarter to quarter, year over year is probably the best chance you have of being pretty close. And it's a volatile business as I said a quarter or 2 when we were talking about the poor returns, but it's a business that over time we've gotten pretty strong return on investments. So we think it's a good business.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

Yes, not quarterly, but going back several years, it was a business that earned 50% gross margins on average annually plus. Is that where you think it should be, not necessarily on a quarterly basis, but overall?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Financial service segment typically will be significantly above the factory and built housing segment on a gross margin basis. So I'd agree with that. I don't think I could endpoint a particular number for you though.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

That's helpful. Lastly, and I'll jump out. Tax rate, Allison, you pointed out dipped lower. Year to date, it's about 20% and that's below what we had modeled previously. What are your expectations?

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

Is that a sort of a good range blended with some of the ENERGY STAR production credits? How do we think about going forward?

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

Yes. Thanks for the question. I think the way that we look at it is this was an unusually good quarter for the tax credits as we talked about. If you look back to say our Q4 of 2024, our Q1 of this year 2025 and Q2 2025, kind of take an average of those to me that would be more representative of what we would expect to be kind of a normalized rate.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

Got it. That's helpful. I'll jump back and make follow ups. Thank you again.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Thanks, Dan.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Danny Eggers with Craig Hallum Capital Group. Your line is open.

Danny Eggerichs
Equity Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Yes, thanks. On for Greg Palm today. I guess just more broadly speaking, demand from a geography perspective, I guess any pockets of strength or geographies that are still kind of lagging or maybe were lagging and are starting to boost up a little bit that you'd want to call it specifically?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Yes. I might have commented on this last quarter and so you repeating myself, which is useful to kind of update the view. I can't remember exactly what I said last quarter, but it's been interesting. I mean, this has been a market improvement over a number of quarters, right? It hasn't been a rocket ship, it's been nice and steady over some quarters.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

And you might remember that when that trend started, we kind of pointed to the Southeast and Texas as being the first ones to show some renewed strength and they continue to be pretty strong. The laggards have been Florida, absolutely Florida has been very tough and it continues to be tough. And then the Southwest, I think has been slower and less dramatic in its increases, but it is improving there. So there have been some lingering differences regionally. I don't think there's a lot to read into that.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

It's just an observation. But if I had to say one area that is kind of concerning and we're hoping we'll see some strengthening here in the future, it would be Florida. And it's interesting because the Southeast, that's not true. It's just it's the Southeast minus Florida.

Danny Eggerichs
Equity Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Got it. That's helpful. Maybe just circling back to I know you gave some color on both retail and community channels, but maybe more specifically on REIT, it sounds like activity is still going good. And the past couple of years, we had the inventory problem and kind of the rate problem. But just now in kind of the current rate environment, is there any worry that some of these communities might start tempering it back a little bit or I guess what are you hearing out there?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

I think you kind of have to separate their demand into categories of filling out existing communities and replacements and things like that, which we expect to be pretty strong versus doing new projects, which might be more influenced by their cost of capital. If they've already got a community and they've got the opportunity to get incremental revenue by leasing an additional lot, then they're going to be all about that. And we expect overall, I mean, my view is, and talking to our partners on the community side, is that this should be a pretty solid year for them. The inventory is finally behind them and their growth plans for just filling out existing communities are pretty strong. So that translates into wholesale orders.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

So I take your point and I think if they were looking at a new development, which is very hard to get done anyway in today's environment, very few of those have gotten entitled and permitted, then the cost of capital is obviously more of a barrier than it has been in the past. But the majority of their volume really comes from the other side where they're replacing and building out communities.

Danny Eggerichs
Equity Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Okay. Makes sense. Maybe just one more quick one. Any update on builder developer channel? I know last couple of quarters, it's been a bright spot.

Danny Eggerichs
Equity Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

I don't know if you mentioned it in your prepared, but anything any color there?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Yes, I don't think I separated it out. I'd say we've been watching kind of the trending of say those 3 groups, right? Dealers, communities and builder developers over the last year. Builder developer is the smallest of the 3. In fact, Danny, you know that in the past we tended to just lump them together with communities because they're very similar from a customer perspective.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

But we do watch all 3 separately and absolutely both communities and builder developers continue to trend up for us on a percentage of total business basis. So they're tracking pretty much along like the community operators themselves.

Danny Eggerichs
Equity Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

Okay. I'll leave it there. Thanks everyone.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Thanks, Danny.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jay McCanless with Wedbush. Your line is open.

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Hey, everyone. Hope you guys are doing well. Hey, hey. Thanks. So first question, with sadly a lot of disasters happening around the country, haven't really heard much in terms of FEMA orders or anything's going on there.

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

So could you guys give us an update on what if anything you're hearing from FEMA in terms of temporary housing relief?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Yes, it's been interesting because I kind of echo your feelings. We obviously keep our ears close to the ground as we can on not only FEMA, but also state and local efforts to provide relief. And I'll just comment on that real quickly that I don't know what the value of the comment for the group. But from my perspective, we see and hear a lot of state and local government and all others talk about providing disaster relief without FEMA because of how challenging it can be to work through them and the time delays that they run into. Let me touch on FEMA real quick.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

We it so I got struggled in how to convey this effectively, but everything seems to point to there should be some FEMA orders. I mean, there's been a reference even on past calls, there was a call the second half of last calendar year that was pretty open between FEMA and manufactured housing, kind of just seemingly to set the stage that they were going to have some orders coming. So far they haven't materialized and I don't think that's necessarily an indication they won't. It feels like they should. We think that they lost some inventory in some of the hurricanes in fact.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

And so I don't have a lot to give you except kind of an agreement that it's been strangely quiet. And we're keeping our eyes open because I guess we won't know there's an off bid being put out until it happens. And I'd say the state and local on the LA fires, I'm trying to get closer to this. I don't feel like I'm an expert on what's going on so soon after this fires happened. But we are hearing there a lot of state and local folks talking about not relying on the federal assistance so much.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

But I'd also say that there's still a bit of lack of clarity about how they're going to organize to provide the relief themselves. So it's frustrating because I think and I'm not just saying this from a Cavco perspective, I think our industry stands ready to try to do everything we can to provide homes for these situations and we just haven't seen anything break loose at this point.

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Got it. If you think about the plant based bill, Cavco's plant base, I guess, how much and just even rough terms would be great. How much of your existing plant base do you think would be in a position to ship to it? Yale's headquarters is in Phoenix, of course, but I would think you've got some other plants in the California market, etcetera. So just have you guys thought about what percent of your plant base might ship into that area if they do get it together and start ordering homes?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Yes, to provide relief for Southern California specifically, Jay?

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Yes.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Yes. I mean, we've got including Glendale, which is a park model facility that can make ADUs pretty readily. We've got 3 plants in the Phoenix area that could all reach there pretty readily. And then we've got the Riverside, California plant that's really close by. So pretty straightforward to have those 4 plants provide or be part of providing homes for the area.

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Okay. And if we could talk about what you're seeing on chattel rates?

Mark Fusler
Mark Fusler
Director of Financial Reporting & Investor Relations at Cavco Industries

Yes.

Mark Fusler
Mark Fusler
Director of Financial Reporting & Investor Relations at Cavco Industries

So they picked up a little bit. So right now, there's a range of 8.6 to about 9.6 in the market right now.

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

How much up is that? That's just a small increase, right?

Mark Fusler
Mark Fusler
Director of Financial Reporting & Investor Relations at Cavco Industries

Yes, small increase from last quarter.

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

And then I guess, and probably way too early to tell, but anything with this new administration that either you guys are looking forward to or you think might be a headwind, anything worth calling out that you've already seen from the Trump administration?

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Not a lot that we've already seen impact anything. I mean, there's a lot of discussion about tariffs and we're just going to have to kind of watch and be ready that that could be inflationary on some of our input costs for sure. But it's hard to tell the magnitude of that because we don't know exactly where the administration will land on some of those tariffs. And then the labor force for quite a while now has been we've been able to hire people pretty readily. So attracting people into our operations has not been difficult.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

And there again, I'm not trying to overstate it as a risk, but I guess it's conceivable immigration or that the immigration policies could impact just general labor availability, but it seems like a relatively low risk that that would be a significant impact on us. So we're still in the mode of just trying to watch and pay attention and make sure we're ready to deal with whatever comes our way. I think this is me being a little bit optimistic. I think the regulatory environment in general, I think we've talked about things like the DOE, energy rules that really were not well designed for our industry. We've been fighting that as at an industry level for quite a while now with some success.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

I think optimistically it would be great if we could see a regulatory regime that kind of listens and works with us a little bit better there and identifies HUD as our sole regulators in industry. So there's some upside in my opinion over time on the regulatory side.

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

That's great. And then the last question I had, just thinking about input prices and maybe some hints towards gross margin in the Q4. We've seen OSB prices come down pretty dramatically the last 3 weeks. Looks like drywall is up a little, framing lumber is up a little, but it seems like not only are you guys getting a good volume tailwind into the spring season, but maybe from a cost perspective things are looking a little better. So Allison or Bill, if you all could talk about what you're seeing there and maybe direction where you think gross margin trends might go in 4Q?

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

Sure. Thank you. So on gross margins, we a couple of items that we look at very closely, right? First, of course, is the average selling price, which we did see a little bit of pressure in Q3, downward pressure. But for the last several quarters, it has been fairly consistent.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

And to your point, the second component is cost, right? And more specifically, material costs. And we like all the builders, right, to depend on lumber and buoyant and stand board. So you're right, what you see in the commodities market, we stay very close to it, will play through in our cost of goods sold during the next 60 to 90 days. So as you can see, it has drifted lower a little bit on the OSB and we just stay very close to it.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

And that's it's a way that you could see publicly also how the commodity markets are moving and just consider they'll make their way through our caustic goods and therefore our gross margin in about 60 to 90 days.

Jay McCanless
SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Okay. All right. Great. That's all I had. Thanks guys. Appreciate it.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Thanks Jay.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Your line is open.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

Yes, thanks again. Just maybe one more on kind of the capital allocation and cash flow. You bought back over $40,000,000 each of the past two quarters. Cash balances sort of leveled off, buying back in sort of a lockstep with cash flow and the share count is down by my math over 8% over the last 2 years. So is that likely the plan going forward?

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

How are you thinking about managing cash balances and putting sort of that incremental cash flow to work?

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

Yes, I think that's yes, I appreciate that. It gives us a chance just to high level talk about our capital allocation. And really our focus is on expanding our capacity, right, for our plant network. So the way we think about it is, if we had a dollar to spend, we probably would spend that dollar growing our existing plant capacity. And we've had a number of projects that we've been able to invest in over the last couple of years, we continue to vet those on a regular basis.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

And in fact, we were able to do that as our network grows. And then second, we're always actively vetting our pipeline of M and A opportunities that also help us fill strategic areas of our market and also to continue to grow our capacity. And you can see that over time, we've been active and imagine that we will continue to be active in that space. We also look and continue to look at shadow lending opportunities for our lending operations and that is an important part of our strategic plan. And lastly, as you mentioned, we use the share buybacks as a way to responsibly manage our balance sheet as we work through our capital allocation priorities.

Allison Aden
Allison Aden
Chief Financial Officer at Cavco Industries

So you can look at history and the level of our cash flows, which are pretty strong because of the business model is strong and the way we manage it for a variable cost factor. And while sometimes we ebb and flow as far as our share repurchases in the quarter depending on activity around the M and A, but it is a good indicator of what to look forward, our history to what you can look forward to in the future.

Daniel Moore
Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities

Very helpful. Thank you again.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Thanks, Dan.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Bill Boor for closing remarks.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

Yes, I think just very consistent with the discussion we've had today, we've seen steady improvement in the market for a number of quarters now. And with the channel inventory issues behind us, we've got a backlog that at a macro level. On an aggregate basis, we're very happy with. So that's well positioned and we're continuing to ramp up our throughput. So we feel really well positioned for the coming quarters and we're not taking anything for granted.

William Boor
William Boor
President & CEO at Cavco Industries

We understand the ever present economic uncertainties, but we're optimistic about continued steady improvement. So I really want to thank everyone for joining us today and for your interest in Cavco and we look forward to keeping you updated. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you for your participation. This does conclude the program and you may now disconnect. Good day.

Executives
    • Mark Fusler
      Mark Fusler
      Director of Financial Reporting & Investor Relations
    • William Boor
      William Boor
      President & CEO
    • Allison Aden
      Allison Aden
      Chief Financial Officer
    • Paul Bigbee
      Paul Bigbee
      Chief Accounting Officer
Analysts
    • Daniel Moore
      Partner - Director of Research at CJS Securities
    • Danny Eggerichs
      Equity Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC
    • Jay McCanless
      SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities
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