Century Communities Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Century Communities EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.36
• Consensus EPS: $1.74
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.38
• One Year Ago EPS: $2.22

Century Communities Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $903.23 million
• Expected Revenue: $914.20 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$10.97 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: -2.10%

Century Communities Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 4/23/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Century Communities (NYSE:CCS), together with its subsidiaries, engages in the design, development, construction, marketing, and sale of single-family attached and detached homes. It is also involved in the entitlement and development of the underlying land; and provision of mortgage, title, and insurance services to its homebuyers. The company offers homes under the Century Communities and Century Complete brands. It sells homes through its sales representatives, retail studios, and internet, as well as through independent real estate brokers in 18 states in the United States. Century Communities, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

Century Communities Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Despite economic uncertainty and interest rate volatility slowing the spring selling season, Q1 deliveries were 2,284 homes (3% below YoY) with average sales price down ~1%, and net new contracts totaled 2,692 homes (6% below YoY).
• The company maintained a stable homebuilding gross margin of 20.1% excluding purchase price accounting, with direct construction costs flat sequentially and down 4% YoY, while incentives rose to ~900 bps and are expected to increase another 200 bps in Q2.
• Century implemented cost-saving measures, including workforce reductions and other programs, to lower fixed costs, with the bulk of benefits expected to materialize in Q3 and Q4 across cost of sales, SG&A, and financial services.
• The land-light strategy remains disciplined with ~80,000 owned and controlled lots (55% controlled) secured by $71 million of nonrefundable deposits, and community count at 318 (up 26% YoY) with mid-single-digit growth expected by year-end ’25.
• Full-year delivery guidance was reduced to 10,400–11,000 homes and home sales revenue to $4.0–4.2 billion (assuming a 2.8 absorption pace); balance sheet strength is highlighted by $788 million liquidity, a 12% dividend increase, and $56 million of share repurchases.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Century Communities Inc. First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Langton, SVP of Investor Relations.

[Operator]

Please go ahead.

[Tyler Langton, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations at Century Communities]

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for Century Communities earnings conference call for the first quarter twenty twenty five. Before the call begins, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described or implied in the forward looking statements. Certain of these risks and uncertainties can be found under the heading Risk Factors in the company's latest 10 ks as supplemented by our latest 10 Q and other SEC filings.

[Tyler Langton, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations at Century Communities]

We undertake no duty to update our forward looking statements. Additionally, certain non GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. The company's presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Hosting the call today are Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman Rob Francescon, Chief Executive Officer and President and Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer. Following today's prepared remarks, we will open up the lines for questions.

[Tyler Langton, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations at Century Communities]

With that, I'll turn the call over to Dale.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

Thank you, Tyler, and good afternoon, everyone. Over the past few months, we have seen an increase in economic uncertainty, interest rate volatility and eroding consumer confidence, which have contributed to a slower than typical spring selling season. Our absorption rate in the first quarter was weaker than we had expected heading into the year as these economic concerns coupled with constraints on affordability have led to elongated sales cycles and caused some homebuyers to pause. That said, we still firmly believe there is underlying demand for affordable new homes supported by solid demographic trends. Despite the current headwinds, our deliveries of 2,284 homes were only 3% below year ago levels, while our average sales price declined by approximately 1% on a year over year basis.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

During the quarter, we focused on balancing pace and price while managing our direct construction costs and incentive levels. As a result, we were able to maintain relatively stable homebuilding gross margins of 20.1% excluding purchase price accounting in the first quarter, which eased by only 80 basis points on a sequential basis. Our first quarter net new contracts totaled 2,692 homes, a 6% decline versus the healthy levels we saw in the year ago quarter and a 33% increase over first quarter twenty twenty three levels. Our absorption pace averaged 2.8 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five and increased sequentially in both February and March likely benefiting from both seasonality and the decline in mortgage rates over much of the first quarter. So far in April, our absorption rate is trending below first quarter twenty twenty five.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

As we mentioned last quarter, given our lot pipeline and community count, we have the ability to grow our deliveries by approximately 10% annually over the next several years. That said, we are not focused on growth for the sake of growth alone and we'll look to balance pace and price at the community level to optimize our returns. We continue to target our sales efforts and incentives on monetizing completing and completing combs while matching our start pace with our current and anticipated sales pace to maintain an appropriate level of spec inventory within our communities. I also wanted to briefly address the topic of tariffs. While the situation is obviously fluid at this time, we are not expecting to see any meaningful increase in our direct costs in the near term.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

The majority of the products that we purchase are either made in The U. S. Or are currently exempt from tariffs under the USMCA agreement. We also have price protection agreements with our preferred supplier partners for many of the non commodity products that we purchase and believe that with our relationships, we will be able to work with our suppliers to mitigate the impact of any potential increased costs that could occur throughout their supply chains. In closing, I want to highlight that Century was recently selected to Newsweek's list of America's most trustworthy companies for the third year in a row.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

We believe our inclusion on this list is a testament to the dedication of our team members and trade partners, which allows us to execute on our mission of consistently delivering a home for every dream, and we want to thank them for their efforts. I'll now turn the call over to Rob to discuss our operations and land position in more detail.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Thank you, Dale, and good afternoon, everyone. As expected, our incentives on closed homes increased to approximately 900 basis points in the first quarter twenty twenty five, up from roughly 800 basis points in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four. Our incentives on new orders in the first quarter also averaged approximately 900 basis points.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Looking forward, we continue to expect incentive levels to be the largest driver of changes to our gross margins in the near term and anticipate second quarter incentives to increase by up to another 200 basis points due to the current conditions that are weighing on order activity. We had continued success in controlling our costs in the first quarter with both our direct construction and finished lot costs on the homes we delivered roughly flat on a sequential basis. On a year over year basis, our direct construction costs declined by 4%. During the first quarter, our cycle times remained at approximately four months, and we have not seen any impacts from immigration reform on our labor base so far. While we are performing well on the cost side, we are still taking actions to further streamline our cost structure.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Given the slower than expected spring selling season, in mid April, we made the difficult decision to right size our workforce along with implementing other cost savings programs to lower our fixed costs. The savings from these initiatives will flow through cost of home sales, SG and A and financial services, and we would expect to see more of a benefit in the third and fourth quarters of this year compared to the second quarter. We ended the first quarter with a community count of three eighteen, up 26% on a year over year basis. While it is still early and also recognizing the 28% growth in our community count in 2024, we currently expect our year end 2025 community count to further increase in the mid single digit percentage range, which will provide a strong base to execute from over the next couple of years. In the first quarter, we started 2,211 homes and similar to last quarter continued our focus on maintaining an appropriate level of spec home inventory.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Turning to land. We ended the first quarter with close to 80,000 owned and controlled lots, with our controlled lots accounting for 55% of our total lot count. Both our owned and total lot count have remained consistent since the third quarter of last year, and we have continued to be disciplined on the land front and underwrite deals to current market assumptions. Before turning the call over to Scott, I want to provide an overview of our land strategy. While we are involved in land banking agreements in a handful of our current communities, our low risk, land light business strategy is primarily based on what I would describe as more traditional option agreements with individual landowners and third party land developers that require lower levels of deposits and offer a greater transfer of risk.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

To highlight this point, at the end of the first quarter, our 43,000 controlled lots were secured by nonrefundable deposits that totaled only $71,000,000 While there is clearly uncertainty in the market, we are proactively managing our costs, targeting incentives to drive incremental sales, remaining disciplined on starts at inventory levels, but still continuing to position the company for growth in the years ahead while mitigating risk. I'll now turn the call over to Scott to discuss our financial results in more detail.

[J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer at Century Communities]

Thank you, Rob. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, pretax income was $53,000,000 and net income was $39,000,000 or $1.26 per diluted share. Adjusted net income was $42,000,000 or $1.36 per diluted share.

[J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer at Century Communities]

EBITDA for the quarter was $73,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA was $76,000,000 Home sales revenues for the first quarter were $884,000,000 down 4% versus the prior year quarter on lower deliveries and average sales price. Our first quarter average sales price of $387,000 decreased by 1% on a year over year basis, primarily due to a higher level of incentives. Our deliveries of 2,284 homes in the first quarter declined by 3% on a year over year basis and were impacted by our decision to manage our starts at a lower level over the past two quarters, with elevated mortgage rates and economic uncertainty also weighing on order activity. For the second quarter twenty twenty five, we expect our deliveries to range from 2,300 to 2,500 homes, assuming an absorption pace similar to first quarter twenty twenty five levels of 2.8. Looking out to the back half of the year, we would expect further sequential increases in our deliveries in both the third and fourth quarters of twenty twenty five.

[J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer at Century Communities]

At quarter end, our backlog of sold homes was twelve fifty eight, valued at $521,000,000 with an average price of 414,000 While the average price of our first quarter backlog was above the average sales price of our first quarter deliveries, this difference is largely due to mix, including the percentage of Century Complete homes. In the first quarter, adjusted homebuilding gross margin was 21.6% compared to twenty two point nine percent in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four. And GAAP homebuilding gross margin was 19.9% versus 20.6% in the prior quarter. Additionally, purchase price accounting associated with our two acquisitions in 2024 reduced our first quarter twenty twenty five gross margin by 20 basis points. We would expect purchase price accounting to have a similar impact on our homebuilding gross margin in the second quarter of twenty twenty five.

[J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer at Century Communities]

For the second quarter twenty twenty five, both our direct construction and finished lot costs should be roughly flat quarter over quarter as we continue to successfully manage our costs. However, we expect homebuilding gross margin to ease on a sequential basis due to higher levels of incentives. SG and A as a percentage of home sales revenue was 13.7% in the first quarter. Assuming the midpoint of our full year home sales revenue guidance, which I'll detail shortly, we would expect our SG and A as a percent of home sales revenue to be roughly 12.5%. Also, so that people can better model our SG and A, we would expect roughly 70% of our SG and A to be fixed and 30% variable for the full year 2025.

[J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer at Century Communities]

For the second quarter twenty twenty five, we expect our SG and A as a percent of home sales revenue to be approximately 13.5%. Revenues from financial services were 18,500,000 in the first quarter, and the business generated pretax income of $2,400,000 We would expect a similar margin profile from our Financial Services business for the remaining three quarters of this year. Our tax rate was 25% in the first quarter twenty twenty five. We continue to expect our full year tax rate for 2025 to be in the range of 25% to 26% with the increase over our full year 2024 tax rate of 24.1%, primarily driven by a reduced number of homes expected to qualify for 45L credits. Our first quarter twenty twenty five net homebuilding debt to net capital ratio equaled 30.1% and compared to fourth quarter of twenty twenty four levels of 27.4%.

[J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer at Century Communities]

Our homebuilding debt to capital ratio equaled 32.4% in the first quarter and compared to fourth quarter twenty twenty four levels of 30.3%. During the quarter, we increased our quarterly cash dividend by 12% to $0.29 per share and have consistently grown our dividend on an annual basis since its initiation in 2021. In the first quarter, we also repurchased 753,000 shares of our common stock for $56,000,000 at an average share price of $73.76 or a 13% discount to our book value per share of $84.41 as of the end of the first quarter. We ended the quarter with $2,600,000,000 in stockholders' equity and $788,000,000 of liquidity. Additionally, in mid April, we increased the capacity of our senior unsecured credit facility to $1,000,000,000 from $900,000,000 We also have no senior debt maturities until June of twenty twenty seven, providing us ample flexibility with our leverage management.

[J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer at Century Communities]

Turning to guidance. With the ongoing economic uncertainty, interest rate volatility and declining consumer confidence impacting our order activity, we are reducing our full year home delivery guidance to be in the range of 10,400 to 11,000 homes and home sales revenue to be in the range of $4 to $4,200,000,000 Our full year home delivery guidance assumes an average absorption rate of approximately 2.8 for the full year 2025. In closing, we are taking the necessary steps to address the headwinds facing the market, including reducing our costs, remaining disciplined on the land front and maintaining appropriate level of spec home inventory by matching our starts with our sales. At the same time, subject to market demand, we have the ability to grow our deliveries by approximately 10% annually over the next several years given our lot pipeline, community count and strong balance sheet. With that, I'll open the line for questions.

[J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer at Century Communities]

Operator?

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question.

[Operator]

Your first question comes from Carl Reichard of BTIG. Your line is already open.

[Carl Reichardt, Managing Director - Equity Research at BTIG]

Great. Thanks. Hi, guys. Nice to talk to you. Thanks for taking the question.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Hi, Carl.

[Carl Reichardt, Managing Director - Equity Research at BTIG]

So I'm I'm I'm looking at your absorption rate between communities and complete. And complete was up, I think if I've got it right, 4%. But the core businesses, the regionals were down 38% during the quarter. And I'm wondering if you'd like to talk about why that difference was so stark if the macro has kind of impacted everything the same. Is that a function of the aggressiveness of some of your entry level peers in their pricing and incentive structures?

[Carl Reichardt, Managing Director - Equity Research at BTIG]

And and if so, how do you combat that as you get further into the spring and into the summer?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Yes, Carl. Great question. I appreciate it. So a lot of dynamics that obviously are interplaying between our Century brand as well as our Century Complete. I think one of the benefits that we've always had on the Century Complete brand that I think you're seeing run through some of those numbers is just the fact that we are playing in some markets where there, quite frankly, is not as much direct competition from other builders.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

And I think that's really played itself through in a little bit more of a stable absorption profile here in the first quarter. More specifically, Carl, just real quick, when we look at it though on the community side, Texas really had the lowest performance at 2.1 absorption. And part of that is some things that we're working on fixing, of course, but that was really one of the outliers that dropped things down as well.

[Carl Reichardt, Managing Director - Equity Research at BTIG]

Okay. And when you're thinking about moving product going forward just to maintain the pace that you've got, and I think you said April is slower than Q1 already. Are you looking more aggressively at direct price cuts on finished units or near finished units versus incentives or versus like interest rate buy downs and other kinds of non base price cut incentives? And maybe you can talk about if that mix is shifting. Thanks.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Well, homes that are complete that are unsold, we're definitely moving both with interest rate buy downs as well as price reductions. So that's why we've messaged here that our margins could be off in Q2 based on another 200 up to another 200 basis points in incentives to move that product. So yes, those are being discounted higher if they're complete and unsold.

[Carl Reichardt, Managing Director - Equity Research at BTIG]

Great. I appreciate it. Thanks, fellows.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Absolutely.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Jay McCanless of Wedbush. Your line is already open.

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. So I'm just trying

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

to walk through the closing guidance math here. Dollars 22.85 closings, I think, for this quarter, and then

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

you're talking roughly somewhere between 2,400 for

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

the second quarter and then a pretty big jump I guess in your cadence in the back half of the year. I mean normally you would see closings go up in the back half, but you're seeing this much headwind, what makes you think that's going to happen? Is it going

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

to be community growth or something else? Guess just kind

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

of walk us through how you're thinking about the back half from a volume perspective.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Sure. Jay, I think you actually hit the nail on the head. The majority of our community count growth will really come online here in the second and the third quarter. From sales perspective. That's when we're counting a new community come online, which would really support the higher closings in the back half of the year, even with kind of generally flat absorptions embedded within our guide.

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

And then did you and I apologize if you said this already, but did you quantify what type of SG and A savings you think you might get from some of the layoffs that have happened?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

So the savings from the various cost reduction activities, which are, of course, not just specific to the reduction in force, We'll flow through a handful of different line items, including cost of sales, SG and A as well as the financial services line items. From an SG and A perspective, those cost savings are incorporated in the guide for the full year of SG and A that we provided.

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

Then

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

just go ahead.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

No. Go ahead, Jay. Sorry.

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

No.

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

I was just gonna ask in terms of of

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

pricing, I guess, any any help you

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

can give us there in terms of of some of the

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

the level of the price cuts you're having to make and and also with the buy downs that you all are doing that you talked about. I guess, is it still 5 and a half to 5 and 3 quarters? Is that kind of the the sweet spot where people get interested? Or are you having to buy it down even further right now, just given some of the other affordability challenges that are out there?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

So generally speaking, for the first quarter, average rate that we were buying down to has been pretty consistent in the mid-5s. Now as we move forward, and obviously, with the volatility that's occurred in rates here, that cost could obviously continue to increase. I think generally speaking, from an incentive standpoint, we've been running kind of 55 price, 45 incentive or excuse me, mortgage. And I think you'll see that generally continue to play itself out over that additional 200 basis points that we currently see with how April itself has played itself out.

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

Okay, great.

[Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities]

Thanks so much. Thanks for taking my questions.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Absolutely. Thanks, Jay.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Alan Ratner of Zelman and Associates. Your line is already open.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Hi, Allison.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Hey, I was hoping just to better understand a little bit the timing of the incentive increase.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

You mentioned second quarter kind of expecting it to be up about 200 basis points. On the other hand, it sounds like April has been a softer month from an order perspective. So were these incentive increases done kind of more recently in recent days in response to the continued softness in sales? Or were they done earlier in the month and we still haven't seen a response, I guess, or at least an acceleration from that?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Yes.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Alan, I

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

think the easiest way to kind of articulate it is, obviously, there's been a change here that we've seen in the consumer profile, at least at the volatility post March, right, into early April. So certain volatility that's been in the market has caused the consumer to pause. And so where we're at currently, we believe we're anticipating some additional incentives that we've recently put in place in order to achieve the absorptions that we're looking for into Q2.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Got it. So it's more of a prospective look based on kind of the continued volatility, I guess, in the market. So I guess that kind of somewhat answers my next question, but it sounds like for your full year absorption guide of 2.8, that's in line with your average in the first quarter, maybe even a bit above year to date if you include April's softness in there. So is that's counter seasonal. I mean, normally, we would see absorptions a bit lower, certainly in the fourth quarter.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

So is that stability, just based on your expectation or your, I guess, strategy, if you will, to, do what you need to do from an incentive standpoint to kind of hit that type of absorption level?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Yes. Think that is fair, Alan. Yes.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Okay. Perfect. All right. And then finally, just on the tariffs, I know you mentioned kind of no significant cost impact. I'm just curious, is there any potential?

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Or are you at all kind of concerned about the potential for some supply chain disruptions from all of this noise? Just kind of thinking like if builders were to try to move around some of their suppliers to try to mitigate some of these potential cost headwinds, could that cause any stress on some domestic suppliers or distributors or any bottlenecks? Have you had any conversations with trades alluding to that at all?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Yes. I mean, we've obviously been cognizant that, that could be a result going forward. We haven't seen anything to date, of course, but we're fully aware that, that could happen and working toward, if it did, how we would mitigate that. But again, nothing today. It's still very fluid as things are moving around, but it is a possibility.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Michael Rehaut of JPMorgan. Your line is already open.

[Andrew Azzi, Vice President at JP Morgan Chase & Co]

Hi, everyone. This is Andrew Ozzi on for Mike. Appreciate you taking my questions. Just wanted

[Andrew Azzi, Vice President at JP Morgan Chase & Co]

to drill down hey.

[Andrew Azzi, Vice President at JP Morgan Chase & Co]

I'm not sure if you covered this. I joined a bit late, but if possible, I wanted to drill down a bit into the demand trends over the last couple of months within the quarter. Obviously, we know April was pretty volatile, but, yeah.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Yeah. You know, what we really saw in the first quarter was, you know, with very typical seasonality, albeit albeit muted from the very, very strong 2024 that we experienced in the first quarter. So sequentially, demand, absorption, traffic, etcetera, were up as we move through the quarter. With March being a fairly typical March and kind of the 3.5% from an absorption standpoint. And really, most recent change has been that we want to make sure is articulated here in the materials is certainly the volatility in April has caused our consumer to pause.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

But again, from a February orders perspective, very typical seasonality, albeit a little bit more muted than 2024, a little bit more on pace with 2023.

[Andrew Azzi, Vice President at JP Morgan Chase & Co]

Got it. And then maybe a bigger picture question on kind of the long term 10% growth. What do you envision that to look like from a community count perspective versus, let's say, like, a normalized sales pace when when you when you give that number of 10%?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Yeah. It it you know, difficult to to obviously foresee where absorptions are gonna be. We as we got into, you know, mid, mid last year with the two acquisitions that we did and the efforts that we provided on the land front, the focus was really getting on the additional store count from which to drive volume from. That really hasn't changed as we sit here today. So we anticipate year over year that we'll be up in the mid single digits from a community count standpoint.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

So from a position from growth, I think we continue to be in a very good position to drive incremental leverage and G and A over the long term out of our community counts. We continue to review upcoming communities under today's market assumptions to ensure that they're underwriting with the environment that we're in. But we certainly feel optimistic about long term demand with our consumer profile of the product that we're providing. And so I

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

think we

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

are very optimistic in achieving that growth over a longer period of time. Certainly, the market dynamics of the first quarter and then really recently here in April have slowed down on the absorption side, but we'll continue to work towards getting additional community count open to leverage the infrastructure that we have.

[Andrew Azzi, Vice President at JP Morgan Chase & Co]

Really appreciate all the color. That's helpful. I'll pass

[Andrew Azzi, Vice President at JP Morgan Chase & Co]

it on. Thank you so much.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Ken Zener of Seaport Research Partners. Your line is already open.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Afternoon, everybody.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Good afternoon, Ken.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Appreciate the transparency around the delta and incentives. That's very useful. Now do did you see it occur you know, if that's your general shift in incentives, did it occur more in the Century Complete product line, or was it more just kinda regional in nature, or was it price point in nature? I'm trying to discern how the different buyers might be demanding incentives.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

You know, Tim, a handful of dynamics that are running through the various different regions on incentives. I think from a mortgage incentive side, you see it very consistently across our buyer profile. Our Century Complete brand, as you're aware, is a little bit more of direct in terms of the pricing, not a ton of additional options that are that are available within the spec homes. And so you don't see as many just direct price reductions within that brand just just as a normal course. Right.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

The within the regions of of Century Complete, I think or excuse me, of the Century brand, we are seeing a little bit of a higher incentive level within likely our Texas region as opposed to our other regions. I don't know that I would necessarily slice it between any other price point. In general, the West has probably held up the strongest amongst all of our regions. But as you know, we're pretty focused on the first time homebuyers. So generally speaking, the turns on incentives have have been consistent across our across our regions.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Right. Appreciate that. And then, so when you guys gave guidance at the January, obviously, a few things have happened, to put them mildly. But what I'm interested in is your kind of process of thinking about it. So if your starts, I think you said twenty two eleven.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

It starts this quarter and you did about point 700 orders.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

And did we lose you?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Build up Operator, are you still there?

[Operator]

Yes. I think we lost the signals of Ken. I'll proceed to the next

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

oh. Oh, Okay. Great. Yeah.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

But we couldn't we heard we we heard just the first part of it, and then and then apologies. We could not hear the rest of the question.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

That's alright. I had stopped talking, which is surprising. What I'm asking is you obviously decelerated starts. So if I match your, you know, starts to your orders, that gives us a fair indication about, you know, your closing range. But do you have to do any destocking?

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

A homebuilder today mentioned that they're actually just gonna be, right, lowering their inventory because they want to reduce their spec count. Is that a situation where you are? Or do you see kind of orders and starts, in theory, walking hand in hand through the rest of the year?

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

Yeah. Ken, if you if you were to go back a couple a couple quarters into into early last year, we were, as the market was more robust, we certainly had a higher starts level. Really since the back half of last year, third quarter and really into the fourth quarter, we've moderated those starts such that we feel like we're in appropriate position from an inventory level for which to move forward on.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Okay. Good. And I know I've asked this before, but like many of the builders report inventory and should give us useful insight into that start number and inventory and stuff. But thank you very much, and I do appreciate your clarity. Thank you.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Alex Barron of Housing Research Center. Your line is already open.

[Alex Barron, President & Founder at Housing Research Center, LLC]

Thank you. Good afternoon, gentlemen.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Hi, Alex.

[Alex Barron, President & Founder at Housing Research Center, LLC]

I wanted to hi there. I wanted to understand, how you guys are thinking about using cash flow that comes back as you close homes to buy incremental land versus stepping up on the share buyback given the discount to book value?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Yes. Alex, great question. I think from a high level, a capital allocation perspective, no changes than kind of what we've previously discussed broadly over the last eighteen months or so. I think our first priority is to reinvest in the business while keeping our leverage generally where you've been seeing it run, which, call it, percent to 35% at various different points by the end of the year, likely down into that 30% debt to cap range. Last year, we did over $100,000,000 of returning capital to our shareholders, both through our dividends as well as through share repurchases.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

And certainly, the $55,000,000 of share repurchases that we did here during the first quarter, we're certainly well on our pace to hit or exceed that number next year. As we certainly look at continue to look at our land pipeline and underwrite to the current market conditions, we certainly will be opportunistic when we think it makes sense to redeploy some of that capital to share buybacks.

[Alex Barron, President & Founder at Housing Research Center, LLC]

Got it. And, as far as the decision, you know, whether to increase rate buy down versus, cut prices maybe in response to what your competitors are doing? How are you guys making that that decision? You know, what what drives it?

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

I mean, it's really a balancing act, and it goes down to the individual subdivision in house, Alex. And, a lot of it depends on that particular market, what some of the competitors are doing. Candidly, we're all doing a lot of the same thing in that regard. But it really just depends on the particular market and the subdivision within that market. It's not just general across the board that one size fits all.

[Alex Barron, President & Founder at Housing Research Center, LLC]

Okay. Well, best of luck for this year. Thank you.

[Robert Francescon, CEO & President at Century Communities]

Thank you. Absolutely.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

Thank you.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Dale Franceskin for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

[Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman at Century Communities]

Thank you, operator. To everyone on the call, thank you for your time today and interest in Century Communities. To our team members, thank you for your hard work, dedication to Century and commitment to our valued homebuyers.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Tyler Langton, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
• Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman
• Robert Francescon, CEO & President
• J. Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

• Carl Reichardt, Managing Director - Equity Research at BTIG
• Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities
• Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC
• Andrew Azzi, Vice President at JP Morgan Chase & Co
• Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners
• Alex Barron, President & Founder at Housing Research Center, LLC