Taylor Morrison Home Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Taylor Morrison Home EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $2.18
• Consensus EPS: $1.85
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.33
• One Year Ago EPS: $1.75

Taylor Morrison Home Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $1.90 billion
• Expected Revenue: $1.81 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$88.09 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +11.50%

Taylor Morrison Home Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 4/23/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

Taylor Morrison Home (NYSE:TMHC), together with its subsidiaries, operates as a public homebuilder in the United States. The company designs, builds, and sells single and multi-family detached and attached homes; and develops lifestyle and master-planned communities. It develops and constructs multi-use properties consisting of commercial space, retail, and multi-family properties under the Urban Form brand name. In addition, the company offers financial services, title insurance, and closing settlement services. It operates under the Taylor Morrison, Darling Homes Collection by Taylor Morrison, and Esplanade brand names in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North and South Carolina, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. Taylor Morrison Home Corporation was founded in 1936 and is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Taylor Morrison Home Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the Q1 twenty twenty five Taylor Morrison Home Corp. Earnings Webcast will begin shortly with your host, Mackenzie Aron. We appreciate your patience as we prepare your session today. During the call, we encourage participants to rate any questions they may have. Good morning, and welcome to Taylor Morrison's First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator]

Currently, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Any instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I'd now like to introduce Mackenzie Aron, Vice President of Investor Relations.

[Mackenzie Aron, VP, IR at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. Before we begin, let me remind you that this call, including the question and answer session, will include forward looking statements. These statements are subject to the Safe Harbor statement for forward looking information that you can review in our earnings release on the Investor Relations portion of our website at hannonmorrisone.com. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections.

[Mackenzie Aron, VP, IR at Taylor Morrison Home]

These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors identified in the release and in our filings with the SEC, and we do not undertake any obligation to update our forward looking statements. In addition, we will refer to certain non GAAP financial measures on the call, which are reconciled to GAAP figures in the release. Now I will turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Cheryl Palmer.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you, Mackenzie, and good morning, everyone. Joining me is Kirk Van Hefty, our chief financial officer and Eric Huser, our chief corporate operations officer. To begin, I would like to recognize our team's exceptional performance during the first three months of the year. Among the highlights, we delivered 3,048 homes at an average price of 600,000, producing 1,800,000,000.0 at home closings revenue, up 12% year over year, with an adjusted home closings gross margin of 24.8%, up 80 basis points year over year. Combined with 70 basis points of SG and A leverage, our adjusted earnings per diluted share increased 2516% to approximately $58.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Once again, each of our operational metrics met or exceeded our prior guidance. These strong top and bottom line results reflect the benefits of our diversified consumer and product strategy, especially in volatile market environment. This diversification is a valuable differentiator that we believe contributes to volume and margin resiliency. From a sales perspective, the slow start in January gave way to stabilization in February and modest growth in March, following the historic pattern, albeit with slightly less velocity than we would have otherwise anticipated during the early spring selling season. In total, our monthly absorption pace increased to 3.3 per community from 2.6 in the fourth quarter, but was down from the near record of 3.7 we achieved a year ago.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

As I noted on our last earnings call, we experienced exceptional sales trends in the first quarter of twenty twenty four driven by a decline in interest rates that helped unleash the demand. Alternatively, this first quarter, interest rates moved higher alongside macroeconomic and political uncertainty related to tariffs and immigration. More recently, the significant volatility in the stock market and additional policy related changes have impacted buyer's sense of urgency, causing some shoppers to move to the sidelines as we have seen before during periods of uncertainty. Despite these headwinds, it's worth highlighting that our first quarter's pace was still solidly ahead of our pre COVID historic average of 2.6 from 2013 to 2019, reflecting our strategic shift into higher pacing, larger community that is helping support our long term ROE target. It's also worth highlighting that our sales success was in part due to strong year over year improvement in conversion of online home reservation, another driver of improved efficiency.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Now appreciating the macro backdrop, our first quarter performance highlights several key drivers of our success that I believe are unique to Erin Morrison. First, even in the face of rising incentives across our industry, our diversified portfolio is relatively insulated to broader net pricing pressure due to the strength of our fire and appeal of our quality locations in desirable communities and product offerings. By Consumer Group, our first quarter orders consisted of 32% entry level, 47% move up, and 21% resort lifestyle. On a year over year basis, our resort lifestyle segment was the only to post growth with a 3% increase in net orders aided by strength in Florida, while our move up sales were down just 2% and entry level sales declined steeply down 21%. Secondly, our emphasis on personalized finance incentives, including proprietary forward commitment structures, allows us to be tactical in our use of such tools to help our consumers with their home purchase.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

42% of our first quarter closings used a forward commitment, just over half of which were first time home buyers. By using these and other incentive programs effectively, incentives on new orders increased only 20 basis points sequentially during the quarter. As we have discussed in detail, we believe our diverse consumer segmentation is critically important given varying demand sensitivity and financial profiles among different buyer groups that contribute to healthier, more resilient growth opportunities and pricing over time. To that point, we have been closely monitoring our proprietary shopper survey data for any insights into the consumer mindset of late. This information is always an important input into our marketing and incentive offers as we look to best address consumer needs.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Unsurprisingly, home prices and interest rates have been the most common theme cited by shoppers in their home buying decision. However, parsing the data by generations reveals important differences. These responses are more common for Gen z and millennial consumers than for Gen x and boomers who are instead more focused on finding their next home, floor plan, and community location as well as selling their existing home. Interestingly, across all age groups, uncertainty around tariffs was cited equally, but not as a significant factor. This data gives us confidence that demand, particularly in our second move up and resort lifestyle, will likely recover quickly as consumers regain greater clarity on the macro outlook.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

And lastly, because of the expertise of our local teams, we are nimble in balancing case and price at the community level as we make daily operating decisions designed to reach our targeted returns. Given our diversification and emphasis on core locations, there is not a singular approach to our pay versus price strategy, but rather an ongoing community specific process that considers each asset's unique competitive dynamics, sales momentum, and other market influences. We believe that this community by community approach is even more critical in the current environment because we are seeing significant urgency in the performance of core versus noncore locations. As Eric will elaborate, total inventory of both existing and new homes has risen sharply across the country with the vast majority of this located in noncore submarket. It is in these markets which primarily serve entry level consumers with spec offerings where discounting and incentives are the greatest.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Alternatively, prime poor communities, particularly with two people products, are generally faring better with manageable incentives and solid pricing. With this in mind, it's worth highlighting that 58% of our first quarter closings were spec homes, including a record 27% that were sold and closed each quarter, well ahead of the 21 to 24% share in the prior February. While our teams have been effective in selling and closing spec homes, finished inventory at quarter end was elevated compared to our targeted levels at 2.4 homes per community following the slower start to the spring. In response, we moderated our first quarter starts pace by 6% year over year and will remain highly selective in new starts moving forward. Additionally, we will look to move through finished specs for the remainder of the selling season to return to more normalized inventory levels resulting in a higher anticipated spend penetration in the second quarter.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

As a result, we expect incentives to rise more meaningfully in the second quarter. Given the lower margin and price associated with specs as compared to two deal homes, we expect moderation in our home closings gross margin to around 23% and in our average closing price to around $585,000 in the second quarter with approximately 3,200 deliveries. For the remainder of the year, we are assuming expenses remain at current elevated levels, although market conditions are highly fluid and dependent on mortgage rates and consumer confidence. As a result, we now expect to deliver between 13,000 to 13,500 homes this year at a home closing gross margin around 23%. Alongside this revised volume forecast, we have reduced our expected land investment this year to approximately $2,400,000,000 from 2,600,000,000.0 previously and are ensuring that new land underwriting decisions are sensitized to a wide range of pricing and pay scenarios.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

At the same time, we now expect to repurchase approximately $350,000,000 of our shares outstanding this year, the high end of our prior target. While the current environment has made it challenging to provide near term guidance with strong conviction, we remain confident in our long term trajectory on our path to 20,000 closings by 2028. The path will not be a straight line as we navigate the market with twenty twenty five now expected to represent the speed on our path there. However, we believe our disciplined underwriting and attractive product position is strongly supported by business capable of generating low to mid 20% from closing gross margin and high teen returns on equity over time. Looking further out, we continue to believe the market overall remains undersupply and demographic supportive of the strong need for new construction.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

As you heard at our Investor Day in March, we have transformed and solidified Taylor Morrison's operational capabilities through strategic rationalization and optimization of our products, community footprint, and customer segmentation. By leveraging digital sales tool and personalized finance incentives, we are driving efficiencies throughout our business from lead generation, sales conversion, and revenue opportunity. Backed by our industry leading innovation and customer experience, we are confident that we are well positioned for outsized growth in the years ahead. In aspiring to reach 20,000 closings, we will prioritize bottom line earnings and returns for our shareholders while always maintaining the health of our balance sheet. We are not interested in growth for growth's sake.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

As our strategy has proven over the last decade plus, we seek to maximize long term return potential by thoughtfully balancing both pace and price through a uniquely diversified portfolio that is well positioned to withstand housing cyclicality. With that, let me now turn the call to Eric.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thanks, Cheryl, and good morning. Beginning with our land portfolio, our owned and controlled lot inventory was 86,266 home building lots at quarter end. Based on trailing twelve month closings, this represented six point five years of supply, of which only two point seven years was owned. Of these total lots, 59% were controlled via options and off balance sheet structures, up from 53% a year ago to a new company high as we continue making progress towards our goal of controlling at least 65% of lots. The importance of being able to self develop our communities in capital efficient ways cannot be understated, and our recent survey has suggested that over 80% of our shoppers value the community and amenity options at least as much as the actual home, reinforcing our strength as a community developer.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

As Cheryl noted, we now expect our homebuilding land investment this year to be around $2,400,000,000 down from our prior expectation of approximately $2,600,000,000 driven by prudence along with the reduction in anticipated full year closings. Of course, our ultimate cash investment will be dependent on market opportunities as we maintain our disciplined underwriting guardrails. As a reminder, all previously approved transactions as well as future phases of development are re reviewed by our investment committee for final alignment or any necessary adjustments before closing. From a community count perspective, we forecast an ending outlet count of around three forty five in the second quarter and at least 355 by the end of the year. As we have discussed previously, our average underwritten outlet size and sales pace expectations have evolved over time.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

In recent years, both metrics have increased, allowing us to efficiently expand our business on a smaller community count, all in SQL. As I have shared in recent quarters, we are carefully tracking rising inventory of both resale and new home supply, which has been more pronounced in Florida and Texas. We continue to find that the majority of the supply would not be considered directly competitive to our new home communities. For example, specific to new home inventory in Texas, we have found that the submarkets in which we operate have an average month of supply that is 19% below that of our other submarkets within the respective MSA, again highlighting the benefits for our core focus. To reinforce that our emphasis on quality locations resonates with our consumers, we recently surveyed our shoppers whether they considered their Taylor Morrison community of interest core, which the overwhelming majority of respondents affirmed.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

Somewhat related, over half of the shoppers also confirmed that they were aware of the home insurance benefits associated with new construction, including superior availability and cost implications. Taken together, both of these factors helped partially insulate us from some of the headwinds currently facing our industry. We will continue to leverage our internal muscle of being able to decipher market data and to deeply engage with our shoppers and buyers in understanding their concerns, needs and wants as the cycle evolves. With that, I will turn the call to Curt.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thanks, Eric, and good morning, everyone. For the first quarter, reported net income was $213,000,000 or $2.07 per diluted share. After excluding an impairment charge, our adjusted net income was $225,000,000 or $2.18 per diluted share. This was up 25% from adjusted earnings per share of $1.75 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, driven by higher revenue due to increased closing volume, a higher adjusted home closings gross margin, healthy SG and A leverage and a lower diluted share count. Our closings volume increased 12% year over year to 3,048 homes.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

The average closing price of these deliveries was roughly flat from a year ago at $600,000 This produced home closings revenue of $1,800,000,000 up 12%. From a production standpoint, we reduced our start pace by 6% to 3.3 per community from 3.5 a year ago, equating to total starts of 3,382 in the first quarter. This moderation is consistent with our strategy of aligning new starts with sales and carefully managing our inventory to achieve targeted levels. At quarter end, we had 8,032 homes under production, of which 3,482 were specs, including eight forty finished homes or 2.4 per community. During the quarter, our cycle times continued to improve and were down approximately twenty five days from the first quarter of twenty twenty four and more than one hundred and twenty days since the peak we experienced in the first quarter of twenty twenty three.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

The ongoing improvement in cycle times allows us to start and close a higher number of homes during the year, improving our ability to flex our growth potential as market conditions evolve. As Cheryl noted, we now expect to deliver between 13,000 to 13,500 homes this year, down from our prior guidance of 13,500 to 14,000 homes. This includes approximately 3,200 homes in the second quarter. Given a higher anticipated spec penetration in the coming months as we sell through finished inventory, we expect the average closing price to moderate sequentially to approximately $585,000 in the second quarter. However, for the full year, we continue to anticipate the average closing price to be in the range of $590,000 to $600,000 Our home closings gross margin was 24% on a reported basis and 24.8% adjusted for a $15,000,000 impairment charge.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

This compared to an adjusted home closings gross margin of 24.9% in the prior quarter and 24% a year ago. As we look into the second quarter, we anticipate our home closings gross margin to moderate to approximately 23%. This is reflective of a higher mix of spec homes, which generate lower margins than to be built homes in part due to higher competitive pressures. We're also expecting incentives to trend higher as they did throughout the first quarter as market dynamics evolve. Recognizing there are more uncertainties than is typical as we look out to the remainder of the year, we currently expect our home closings gross margin to be around 23% this year, the low end of our prior guidance range.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

This assumes land cost inflation of approximately 7%, low single digit stick and brick cost inflation and a continuation of challenged market conditions. Taking a step back, we are pleased that this year's home closings gross margin outlook remains within our long term target of the low to mid-twenty percent range despite the significant macro headwinds and competitive pressures at play. We continue to believe that our diversified consumer segmentation and mix of spec in to be built homes enhances our long term margin resiliency. Now to sales. We generated 3,374 net orders, which was down 8% from last year's exceptionally strong first quarter.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Our monthly absorption pace was 3.3 per community, down from 3.7 a year ago, while our ending outlet count was up 4% to three forty four communities. Cancellations equaled 11% of gross orders. This was consistent with long term norms as we continue to benefit from our diligent prequalification requirements and average backlog customer deposits of approximately $48,000 per home. SG and A as a percentage of home closings revenue was 9.7%, down 70 basis points from a year ago. For the year, we continue to expect our SG and A ratio to improve to the mid 9% range from 9.9% in 2024.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Financial services revenue was $51,000,000 with a gross margin of 44.7% as compared to $47,000,000 and 46.5% in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Our financial services team maintained a strong capture rate of 89%, up from 87% a year ago. During the quarter, buyers financed by Taylor Morrison Home Funding had an average credit score of 751, down payment of 22 and household income of $187,000 Turning now to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with liquidity of approximately $1,300,000,000 This included $378,000,000 of unrestricted cash and $934,000,000 of available capacity on a revolving credit facility, which was undrawn outside normal course letters of credit. Our net homebuilding debt to capitalization ratio was within targeted ranges at 20.5% at quarter end and our next senior note maturity is not until 2027.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

During the quarter, we repurchased 2,200,000.0 shares of our common stock outstanding for $135,000,000 At quarter end, our remaining repurchase authorization was $775,000,000 Having repurchased a total of approximately $1,900,000,000 of our shares outstanding since 2015, we expect to continue utilizing our healthy cash generation to repurchase our shares with programmatic and opportunistic strategies. For 2025, we are now targeting total share repurchases to be around the high end of our prior guide range at approximately $350,000,000 Inclusive of this target, we now expect our diluted shares outstanding to average approximately $101,000,000 for the full year, including 102,000,000 in the second quarter. Now I will turn the call back over to Cheryl.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you, Kurt. As we look ahead, there are more macro related uncertainties facing the business, and I can recall at almost any point in my career outside of the early days of the COVID pandemic. Consumer confidence is the most critical factor on monitoring as it will be key in determining how sales and pricing hold up for the remainder of the spring selling season. I expect we will continue to see many home shoppers taking a wait and see approach to their purchasing decisions until there is greater clarity on the economic outlook. Thankfully, I also believe with confidence that Taylor Morrison has never been in a stronger place organizationally and financially to weather any potential market volatility.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We have a strong balance sheet with well over a billion dollars in liquidity, a flexible operating model that is able to quickly flex and pivot given our expertise in both spec and to be built production, and a stronger than average customer base that is well positioned to move forward with their home buying plan as they regain confidence. As always, I want to end by thanking our team members across the country, especially in this unique market environment. You distinguish yourselves with your tenacity, dedication, and service to our homebuyers. Thank you for all you do. Now let's open the call to your questions.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Operator, please provide our participants with instructions.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. We'd now like to open the lines for Q Our first question comes from Paul Przybylski from Wolfe Research. Paul, your line is now open.

[Paul Przybylski, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I guess to start off, Cheryl, can you walk us across the various Texas and Florida markets and provide any color on any positive or negative demand changes you've seen over the past three to four months?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Of course. How are doing, Paul? Thanks for the question.

[Paul Przybylski, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Good.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Absolutely. When I think about Florida, and I'm sure we'll spend some time, and I'll probably ask Eric to chime in on the resell market because I think we have some good data. But as you saw, our sales were up year over year in Florida. It was actually one of our strongest year over year beats. I would tell you Orlando continues to be a strong first time market, first time buyer market for us.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We had very good year over year growth despite the market headwinds. It is one of our lowest ASPs in the company. We had some good community openings. I think sales were up. Community count were was up.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Closings were a bit flat. But that was probably at the cost of a little bit of margin given the first time penetration. When I look across the rest of the state, Nabels also had some strong community count growth and good sales growth. One of the strong continues to be one of the strongest margins in the company along with Sarasota. I would tell you the Esplanade brand, as we talked about in the last quarter call, we had a lot of new openings that are coming to market with our resort lifestyle.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We have a lot of new amenities opening, and we saw good traffic with that consumer. Having said that, certainly not at the highs that we would have historically expected. If I were to move to Texas, let me start with Austin. You know, despite the market turbulence we've seen there, probably now, Paul, for, you know, going on two years, I think the team did a tremendous job, you know, really found some traction. Our TAM rate was down year over year, which I consider to be a really good signal of how the market is responding.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We closed out of some, I would say, tough competitive community that you're in. Our discounts were generally flat there. There's this market mystique around Austin, so I have high confidence that the market is coming back, and we're starting to see some some good traction. Dallas holding on to high margin. It's really a whole new business.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

It's almost hard to compare Dallas to the prior years. We have outsized growth there this year and in the coming years with really that business doubling in size. Excited given the size and strength of the Dallas market to see us really show up there in a new differentiated way. And then I'd wrap up Texas with Houston. You know, another great story.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We've talked a lot about the repositioning of that market to self develop ASP down. So as a new consumer set, I mean, almost a hundred thousand dollars, pace is up, but discounts down. So all in all, holding their own. But, Eric, maybe some resell color would will be helpful.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. Sure. And hi, Paul. Yeah. Just to round out a couple those thoughts, you know, as we've shared over time, as we think about positioning relative to resale, we've kinda done that study to really understand diving into Florida and Texas specifically in terms of, you know, how many homes would be truly competitive in the consumer's eyes.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

And that's been floating kind of 17% to 20%, which we find attractive and competitive. Relative to Texas, as I shared in the prepared comments, the core locations of our portfolio is really helping us out as we think about being having lower exposure to inventory levels on a new home level. And then maybe bouncing back to Florida briefly, I would just say just taking a look at the recent updates of March resale inventory, the months of supply have gone down from January, February to March. So that's encouraging. We're continuing to watch it.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

But the average months of supply for our markets in Florida has a five handle on it. So that is still okay. It's elevated in the most recent quarters, and so we'll continue to watch it.

[Paul Przybylski, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Okay. Next question. Any thoughts on M and A in the current environment? What are you seeing with regard to deal flow? And we've all seen what's happened to the public builder valuations.

[Paul Przybylski, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Are you seeing the the private builders and and what they're asking, you know, becoming more rational? And and as a follow on, just how is the Indianapolis integration coming along?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. Good couple questions there, Paul. You know, on the m and a front, interestingly enough, I would say the amount of packages have probably picked up. And it it makes sense if you think about just some of the market challenges. I think you're seeing some smaller private.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

I think it's about time. You know, are we seeing kind of some rational differences between the bid ask? I think getting better, probably not exactly where it needs to be. So we'll continue to look at packages. And, you know, as we've always said, we have a very high bar on expectations.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

But, yeah, I think it's been interesting to see some of the package activity pick

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. I think that valuation wise, maybe expectations calibrated to kind of fourth quarter of last year, but maybe not necessarily completely recalibrated.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Not quite there yet. I think those are gonna be deal by deal kind of negotiations to see if any of those start to make sense, but we'll see. As far as Indy, integration's done for the most part. I think we're still you know, from a system standpoint, there's probably just some of the last plans that are making its way to the system. Honestly, really excited about what we're seeing there.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

I think I know I don't I know that we had our best sales quarter in the first quarter. I'd say that was, you know, well in line with our expectations. And as we've talked about before, Paul, you know, we're really looking forward to growing that business in more core markets. ASPs under 400,000 this year. It's just a really important new position for the company.

[Paul Przybylski, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Great. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Michael Rehaut of JPMorgan. Michael, your line is now open.

[Michael Rehaut, Executive Director at JP Morgan]

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. First, I'd love to get, if possible, a little bit of better sense of cadence of order trends through the first quarter and April specifically in terms of sales pace? And also to the extent that there has been some volatility obviously in the marketplace, what your approach has been to incentives and discounts and perhaps how those have trended as well throughout the first four months of the year?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. Hey there, Michael. You know, as far as sales cadence, I'll be honest. A little surprised how consistent the first quarter was. We saw a 10% increase in February over January.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We saw in March another 13% over February. I think in the last call, we articulated that we came out the gates in January a little slower. When I look at that compared to last year, which was a stellar first quarter for us, you know, last year, February was down and March was flat. So all in all, I'm very, very pleased with the first quarter sales results. As far as what we look like in April, we expected April to probably be the sales peak month of the year.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Obviously, we're not done yet. I'm not sure that will be the case. You know, it's it's actually day by day, week by week. I I look at the April results, Mike, and, you know, we definitely saw the impact of the Liberation Day announcement. And the first week, that could, I think you know, I think that had put some folks on the sidelines.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We've seen pickup each week since then. Too early to say how we'll finish the month. I'm thinking it's probably closer to first quarter averages. But right now, like you said, we're looking We're looking at incentives.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We're looking at our offering, not on a weekly or monthly, but probably on a daily basis because the consumers are responding to daily news with everything that's going on in the macro marketplace.

[Michael Rehaut, Executive Director at JP Morgan]

Okay. No. No. No. Appreciate that, Sheryl.

[Michael Rehaut, Executive Director at JP Morgan]

I I guess the second question just kind of focusing a little bit on the back half of the year. I guess the guidance points to roughly a, 22.5% gross margin. And I think prior comments you pointed to a few different drivers of that land inflation, maybe a little bit of construction cost inflation, maybe a little bit higher incentives, if I heard that right. I was wondering if you kind of coming off of 3Q I'm sorry, 2Q gross margin guidance of 23% even, I would assume it's a little bit of each. I was wondering if there was also any estimated impact from tariffs as far as you can early as far as you can tell or estimate so far?

[Michael Rehaut, Executive Director at JP Morgan]

And what are kind of the bigger if you have the kind of rank order the drivers of back half guidance versus 2Q, what might those be?

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Mike, thanks for the question. There's a lot there. So let me just kind of start, I think. Yes, from a margin guide for the rest of the year, in our prepared comments, we talked a lot about higher spec penetration to a certain extent in some of the quarters, especially as we're looking at Q2. We also have, as we've stated even back in the prior call from Q1, we've got lot cost inflation over the course of the year that we're dealing with as well.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

So when we look at kind of the rest of the year, I think a lot of our quarters are going to be hovering around that 23% level, given the course based on the fact of how many to be built we can still sell and close for the year, whether it's late Q3 or even throughout Q4, and then the mix of specs as it balances against that. So again, we're going to hover around that 23% probably for the rest of the year. As for tariffs, lots of discussion, a lot of noise in the media relative to it. And as we're kind of looking at that and its impact on the year, we've kind of, again, guided to some low single digit house cost inflation for the year. And so we're starting to see some increases mainly from kind of the metals and aluminum tariff and the 10% kind of blanket tariff.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

But for the most part, it's all impacting today kind of the metal side or the aluminum side, which is HVAC, which is firebox fireplace boxes, post tension cable, so along the lines, a lot of the metals that are in our products. So we we are seeing that. But, again, that will not come through until q four because there are recent kind of increases that'll that'll be going into some of our upcoming starts.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

And well covered in our and our earlier again,

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

the guide that we have out there from a low single digits perspective. The lumber kind of tariff noise, that's on pause. If that comes to fruition, we see that mainly as a 2026 kind of event for us as we kinda look beyond.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

And we say that about balance of the tariffs too. Right, Kurt? I mean, we're not prepared to articulate what kind of impact we might see in '26. Mike, It's good news that '25, to Kurt's point, is gonna be relatively modest. Until we see how these negotiations with different parts of the world really go, I think it's a little early.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

So we can talk about that hopefully next quarter. And then the only other comment I would throw on on top of Kurt's comments on the margin profile, like I said, interest rates really are the name of the game on what what is impacting our incentive line. We see a direct correlation as incentive as rates go up, it costs us a little bit more for those commitments. If rates moderate, you know, we'll see if we end up with a cut or two, and that has a direct impact on the cost of, once again, these forward commitments if rates go down.

[Michael Rehaut, Executive Director at JP Morgan]

Great. No. Thanks for all the detail. Appreciate it.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you. Have a great day.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Alan Ratner of Zelman and Associates. Alan, your line is now open.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Guys. Good morning. Thanks for all the details so and nice job in a tough market environment. Good morning, Cheryl. First question on the pricing environment.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

I know your guide assumes a tick up in incentives just to clear through some of that spec inventory. I'm just curious if you think the elasticity is still as high today as it was a year or two ago in terms of are the incremental incentives having the same impact on pulling buyers off the fence? Or are there certain situations where maybe base price adjustments are more in the cards in order to get that buyer to the finish line?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. It's a really interesting question, Alan. I think it's almost hard to answer that on a broad base. I would tell you in certain communities, I'm talking to our sales team now that we get get prepared for this call on our cash calls. We hear a little bit of that.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

I would tell you there's certain communities where the consumer doesn't believe they're gonna hold the mortgage for long or it's about price. We have wonderful tools, as you know, in our toolbox. We recognize the impact on the monthly mortgage payment by using finance incentives. So, generally, we will always lean in there. Our TMHF team is tremendous about really personalizing to the individual customer's needs.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

I would tell you the price, you know, adjustment would be the very last thing we would look at. In some communities, we've seen flex dollars where folks can be a little bit more discerning on what's important to them to work, but I would tell you priority one would be using mortgage incentives. When I think about overall price elasticity, once again, very dependent on customer. Obviously, with our move up, our active adult that as Eric mentioned in the prepared remarks, the impact of community Is it I think it was in your prepared remarks.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Okay. Was this important as the home itself? And so then we do have some levers to pull with the the value of that home site. We actually even had one or two communities across the portfolio in the quarter where we saw, you know, a little bidding action on the home site. So once again, I'd be it'd be really dangerous to make broad comments across the portfolio because of the diversity we see in our customer set.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Makes sense. No. I I appreciate that, and and thank you for for the thoughts there. Second question, you know, on the land spend guidance reduction and just kind of thinking through the 20,000 closings target by 28,000. How should we think about the multiyear impact of spending less on land this year?

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Did that kind of push the envelope on 26 land spend in order to achieve that? Are you assuming, you know, maybe some loosening in the land market either in terms of pricing or just, you know, kind of more ability to to option or bank land, the better terms that will get you to the 20 k? Because I imagine it's not a zero sum game. If you're spending less on land or tying up less land, that probably does have some type of impact on the multiyear growth trajectory.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

Alan. It's Eric. Hi. How are doing? So I I would start with we're we're well subscribed.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

Right? So as you think about 2026, less than a 2% pull in the business plan in terms of the land we need. And if you go out to '27, it's above 12%. So those are very normal numbers. If we're sitting here next year and kind of really slowed at this time, then then it's a it's a pretty relevant topic.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

But certainly not concerned today, as we said, that six and a half years of supply and and still finding ways to elevate that percent control. Those tools are available. So I would say when you think about the access to to financing tools as well as kind of balancing a little bit of the patience I just mentioned with some opportunism, What's really interesting, as you think about the deals that have come through our investment committee to date this year, 66% of the lots have come through with takedown or option structures, and 27% have been finished. And those are not normal numbers for us, to be honest with you. I think the percent takedowns have really gravitated in prior years more around 25%, and the percent of finished lots available for us is more like 15%.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

So we are finding some I wouldn't say them truly distressed deals, but there's ways to negotiate deals that have beneficial structures to us as we think about feeding the out here. So we're kind of balancing that patience and opportunity.

[Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC]

Great. Thank you so much.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

You bet.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Matthew Bouley of Barclays. Matthew, your line is now open.

[Elizabeth Langan, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Good morning. You have Elizabeth Lange on for Matt today. Thank you for taking the questions. I wanted to or kind of continue that conversation around land. Would you offer any thoughts on, like, what you're actually seeing in the market today in terms of, you know, deals that you're looking at right now?

[Elizabeth Langan, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

You know, are you seeing changes for what developers are offering given the uncertainty? Or is it kind of you're not seeing too many changes at the time?

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

I would suggest what we've seen to date is the opportunity to negotiate terms, more favorable terms, that really allow us all to kind of look at what's transacting today in the market and what we project over the coming months. And so like I said, not an extreme level of distress, but a little bit lower demand or froth in the market, which is just enabling the ability to negotiate terms and make sure that we're insulating ourselves against anything that we don't foresee in the coming months. So really, terms would be the short term answer.

[Elizabeth Langan, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Okay.

[Elizabeth Langan, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Touching on gross margins, I know that you kind of mentioned that you're expecting to kind of sit around 23% through the second half. Would you mind talking a little bit about what you're expecting from your spec to be built mix? Are you kind of expecting the spec to kind

[Elizabeth Langan, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

of peak a little bit

[Elizabeth Langan, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

more in 2Q and then taper off? Or any color you can offer around that would be helpful.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. Hello, Elizabeth. Yeah. I think we had said that, I think, in q one, our spec closings were roughly 58%. And I think we also alluded to that our spec penetration would be higher in q two as well.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

So we're seeing just with our spec inventory that we have available and some of the, you know, the pressures from a competitive perspective out there, the need to lean in a little bit on some some of the specs that we have out there. And so we the the penetration for q two will continue to be probably in that upper fifties, kind of 60% kind of range as we sit here today.

[Elizabeth Langan, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank Thank

[Operator]

you very much. Our next question comes from Mike Dahl of RBC. Mike, your line is now open.

[Mike Dahl, Managing Director - Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets]

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First question, I want to follow-up on the gross margin cadence because the step down from the strong performance in 1Q to 2Q in particular is pretty meaningful. So this is a follow-up to a prior question, but just trying to pin down a little bit more on what the magnitude of the increase in incentives is that you've already seen over the course of the last couple of months versus in that 2Q and beyond guide, how much is anticipatory in terms of what you haven't yet seen but expect to have to do to close those homes?

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yes, Mike. Good question, and thanks. Yes, as we kind of alluded to, the margin in Q2 coming down relative to kind of where we've been in large part due to the increased penetration of our stocks. And what I would say, and based on the market that what we're experiencing today, as Cheryl alluded to, we had to lean in a little bit more heavily on on the incentive line to kind of help monetize or to help transact those homes. You know, we were again, we haven't necessarily given the exact kind of discount per se, but I would for Q2, that's the underlying assumption is that it's a higher penetration of additional specs coupled with the fact that we'd have a couple of townhome communities that we have an increased penetration on the lower margin as well that are coming in there.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

The other thing that I would allude to relative to the second quarter is we did have some pull forward from some to be builts that we were anticipating closing in Q2 that eventually closed in Q1, which is part of that beat in Q1. And I would also say that from a sell to close perspective for Q1, we ended up the mix of that change from what we thought from our original guide where we closed and sold more higher margin spec units in Q1, which is a natural fallout now for Q2.

[Mike Dahl, Managing Director - Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets]

Got it. Okay.

[Mike Dahl, Managing Director - Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets]

All

[Mike Dahl, Managing Director - Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets]

right. I appreciate that, Kurt. And then the second question, Cheryl, maybe just also following up on your April comments and want to make sure that we're clear. It sounded like you know, your your your comments on April, not sure if it will be better than March and previously assumed it would be peak, but then you said something about maybe it's close to the averages for 1Q. Maybe just a little more clarification.

[Mike Dahl, Managing Director - Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets]

Should we think about April as then being literally just if you sold a little over 3,000 homes in 1Q, April's lining up something around 1,000. And then seasonally, I think you know, you'd normally still come down off that. So just how how you're thinking about the the seasonality dynamic.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. We'll see how the the month ends, Mike. But, yeah, you you have it right. I said that given the volatility coming out of the beginning of the month, and then you saw some interest rate volatility. There's there's a mix, but a choppy month.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

There's no denying it now. In the room with us today is our division president from Atlanta. They just came off their best week for the year. So we have quite a bit of, you know, range across the business, but I would tell you that where we saw this kind of consistent rise through the quarter, week over week, month over month, April's been choppier. No real surprise given the headlines.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

And the further we get away from a kind of a macro event, like week one, we see maybe see things pick up. I expect after last night, maybe there's a calming influence on the market, and we'll finish strong. I just until the month is done, I don't know exactly how we're gonna finish, but I if I were to predict, I would say it'd be close to the average of.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Okay. Makes sense. Thank you.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Karl Reichardt of BTIG. Karl, your line is now open.

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

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Nice to talk to you. Thanks for taking my questions. So Charlie, you mentioned that you hadn't seen this environment like this in your career, which is kind of funny.

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

I wanted to try to pin down the sort of what you're seeing the lack of urgency is and the buyers moving to the sidelines. Do you think this is more related to worries about job than income, more worried consumers more worried about costs, what goes out the door, living expenses or something more related to investments, savings, worry about the nest egg for the future? If you had to sort of pin down the concerns among those who are who have lost their urgency, where would you where would you stick the pin?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

So I say yes to all of you above. You know, Carl, it's interesting. I was actually quite encouraged when I was meeting with the teams last week, kind of going through our pre calls. Encouraged upon the feedback of traffic as there's folks kind of hanging around the hoop. And, clearly, there's aspiration for homeownership across all of the consumer set.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

But as you look across each of the demographics, it is different. When you take those first timers, it's absolutely, you know, can we afford it? And it's a it's a monthly payment against their their expenses. And life has just gotten more expensive no matter what category you wanna talk about. As we move up the food chain, you know, we're just dealing with a little bit more sophisticated buyer, and they all the noise that's going on, if it's inflation, stagnation, are we going into a recession?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

I mean, what's happening to rates? It's just it's a lot. And so they're just trying to understand how it impacts them. The good news with the diversity of our product offerings, our communities, I think when they find the right house and lot, as Eric discussed in his prepared remarks, I think we get them there. So and, by the way, I think when they get some level of stability, we we're gonna see a big ramp up because they're they're still showing up.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

There's still lots of interest, but I just think it's just taking a lot it's just taking a little bit longer to actually find the dotted line, but I would put all of your categories in the mix.

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

All right. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. And then you talked a bit before about Florida and Texas. I wanted to ask about the West where the orders were down, I think, 25.

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

I know stores were down 10%. I know the comp was tough. I'm assuming there's more concentration of entry level product in the West. But can you talk a little bit about why those trends were softer than the other two markets? Again, I'm assuming mix is part of it, but maybe just give us some detail there.

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

Thanks.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. No. It's a fair question, so thanks for the question. I think, first of all, the year over year compares in the West, really, really tough. We had some really strong, strong months last year.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

If I look at Phoenix, you know, q one, except for q one last year, was actually the best quarter, but slightly down year over year with a nice margin beat. So I think they did a really nice job of kind of managing the pace of price discussion. And and we moved to California. You know? Generally, inventory has not been as large a concern, but we have seen some inventory buildup.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

And I think you just have a buyer there that's wanting to negotiate. Sales were still up year over year. Some of that was community count growth. SAC, and that would be more the bay. Sorry.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

SAC, I would tell you sales were slightly down, you know, modest disc discounts modestly up. Margin was up year over year. But the overall market in SAC was off depending on the month somewhere between 1015%. I think some of that was just those, the federal layoffs kinda looming, hanging over folks' head. Southern California, minimal resell competition.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Traffic, not bad, but we have seen aggressive new home incentives in the market. Some hesitation, Carl, there was a cultural buyer, but then I looked at Orange County, still very, very strong. If I were to round out kind of our markets, just to be thorough, I would say Denver was a little bit more impacted by inventory. And I would put Denver and probably Portland as our two most rate sensitive markets. You can almost see it to the day.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Having said that, I was really encouraged by the recent traction in Denver. Outlets for our sales were significant gap, and we have good margin. They get very steady. Excited about the Esplanade community coming to the marketplace. That will happen later this year.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Discounts flat. Very different business for us. ASP profile, very, very good compared to what we were doing last year, so the mix of communities is good. But if I look at the kind of the Las Vegas Strip Worker today, I think in this environment, tougher to get them financed. We talked a little bit about Indy.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

I'd rounded up with the Southeast. Charlotte, Raleigh, strong community count growth. Sales and closings up. Low can rates. Discount's flat to slightly up.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Charlotte enjoys one of our division's highest margins across the business, evolving land strategy. Atlanta, well, we've really positioned repositioned that business, the strong community count growth and unit growth. I expect that one to be one of our more consistent markets as I look at each quarter across the year. So hopefully, that helps.

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

That is great color. Thank you so much, Sheryl. Thanks, everyone.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Jay McCanless from Wedbush. Jay, your line is now open.

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

Hey, good morning, everyone. Just one question for me. Sheryl, thank you for the color around sales pace thus far in April, but could you talk about cancellations? I know cancellations for one q were up a little versus last year, but be interested to see how they've trended so far in April.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. You know, it's an it's a really interesting question, Jay. It's hard to to be completely accurate here, and I'll explain why. I mean, I would tell you that once again around the liberation day with stuff happening, we did see a slight tick up in cans, but we always do at the beginning of a new quarter. So I don't wanna and I say slight tick up in cans.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

So I don't wanna overrespond. My instincts are it's gonna level out like it does throughout the balance of the quarter. But, you know, I think you always have this strong push to the finish at the end of every quarter, and kinda saw that here. And but if I were to tell you the absolute numbers today, they're up slightly.

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

Okay. That's all I had. Thank you for taking my question.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank

[Operator]

you very much. Our next question comes from Buck Horne from Raymond James. Buck, your line is now open.

[Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial]

Hey, thanks again. Good morning. Congratulations. Quick one for me. Have you guys seen any immigration enforcement actions, recently that has either affected, your communities directly or or indirectly?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yes. But not to our communities directly. But, I think the first one we heard about was in Alabama. The second one well, we don't build there. The second one we heard about was in Atlanta.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

I think there was a morning where there was, you know, probably a good half dozen communities impacted. None of them have been ours. So to date, I can't talk about what the future brings, but today, Tim Morrison hasn't had any impact in any of our communities.

[Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial]

Gotcha. Appreciate that color. Thank you so much for that. And also just thinking through the next couple weeks ahead, student loan debt collections are poised to resume here in May and kind of coincides with your push to clear out some of your finished specs, which are, I presume, maybe more entry level weighted. How are you thinking through potential pressures on entry level consumers?

[Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial]

Or have you thought about the student loan issue? Potentially, you know, how that how that affects your incentive levels, you know, to clear out those finished specs.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. No. It's it's an interesting question. We're always tracking it. Obviously, this isn't the first time we've seen this noise in the system.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

We've never really had issues with student loan debt on any of our customers. Obviously, when we look at our first time buyers, they're just in a little bit different place than I would say true for the most part, a true entry level. When I look at the room that they have but you might recall that over the years, we've talked a fair amount about the room that our customers have between what they qualify for, what they've got, what their rate is versus what they could qualify for. We have, over the years, seen a little bit of compression, obviously, as rates have moved up with our customers. But when I look across both our conventional, we're still over 400 basis points of room for our conventional buyers and just under 200 basis points of room with our FHA buyers.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

So that's a little tighter. So it would be naive to say that some of them might not recognize an impact, but I would tell you, to date, we've really not seen it, and I still think that the consumers kind of, you know, not stretching theirselves to the max. And so that's why we're still seeing some room even with the FHA buyer.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

Cheryl, back to our surveys. You know, when when we ask people, you know, if you're hesitating, why might you be hesitating? And back to, you know, one of your first questions in terms of nonpermanent residents, only 1% of our shoppers said that that's something to contemplate. So not not jumping off the page. Didn't see anybody say student that specifically was a concern or hesitation.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

And what else I found fascinating is that in March, when you look at consumer confidence, the Gen z is actually up.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. Which is so interesting more than any other group. Right? Yeah.

[Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial]

Very helpful color. Appreciate the, thoughts. Thanks again, and congrats. Good luck.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you so much.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Ken Zena of Seaport Research Partners. Ken, your line is now open.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Good morning, everybody. I'm you could comment hello. If you could comment on what you think your year end units in production and community count is going to be like, obviously, it's down a little bit now. You're clearing out some specs. I'm just interested in how that cadence how you're thinking about that, the year end units under production?

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yes. I can. Sure. Thanks for the question. Yes.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

As we sit here today, we're at 8,032 units. And with the continued cycle time kind of focus of our teams and clearing out some of our anticipated specs over the course of the year, we would expect that number to probably moderate down a little bit further. I don't really have an exact number per se for you, but I would say it's going to continue to moderate down further based on the cycle time reductions and our focus on making sure our balance sheet is in the right position relative to speculative inventory.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Appreciate that. And I guess the

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

path

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

to whatever that number is, it's not right a targeted number yet. I'm trying to think about your decisions around what you see in orders given Sheryl's comments about a lack of clarity, high volatility consistent with the stocks. But really how you're going to be measuring your starts versus your orders as you're declining spec units? Because usually, you take up starts first quarters in the second quarter. But it seems there's a couple of different moving parts.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

You pretty much get to tie your starts to orders going forward. Is that what you're thinking about?

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yes, Ken. Normally, what we kind of articulate pretty much every quarter is that we're going to align starts to our sales pace. Now we may lean in at certain times of the year relative to when we expect those deliveries to come off, so to speak, I. E, like in the spring selling season time period. But we will carefully kind of manage kind of the starts relative to what we're seeing kind of sales kind of pace, sales velocity perspective.

[Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Thank you very much.

[Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO at Taylor Morrison Home]

All right. You have a good one.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Thank you. Take care.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Alex Barron of Housing Research Center. Alex, your line is now open.

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

Yes. Thank you, everybody.

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

My first question is around the topic of price cuts, just your general philosophy. Is it more in response to what other builders do? Is it more in terms of, you know, finished specs that maybe haven't sold for so many days? Is it mainly on specs and not on bill to order? Like, what is your general approach to price cuts?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. It's hard to ignore what's happening in the market around you. But as we discussed, Alex, we'll always lean in with our mortgage incentives, and that would be inclusive of forward commitments for maybe finished inventory as for the proprietary program that we discussed in the past for to be built stuff that might not deliver for a few months. So we'll always start there. But once again, I think one of our differentiators is our ability to work with each customer and understand, personalize, understand their needs.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Obviously, when you start cutting prices, you're having an impact on your backlog, and, you know, we look at ways to get keep equity to homeowners versus take take it away. But we've talked about in the past that, you know, there's a there's a real difference that we would never consider. Can't imagine we would consider price cuts on our TV bills because that's generally where you'll see, our greatest margin and and greatest strength. But there is a tighter range of spec performance, and I would say that those are generally impacted by what we're seeing in the competitive set. And the further out that you move in the marketplace out to more fringe, I would say the more competitive pressure and the higher the incentive side.

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

Got it. Thank you. And then, on a brighter note, I really like the, esplanade and what you guys are doing and what you explained to us in the investor day. So can you talk about how many communities are currently, you know, open and what the outlook is for that over the next twelve months, let's say, and versus a year ago just to kind of see the growth pattern there?

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Yeah. I mean, as we talked about at the Investor Day, when you look at the actual closings as we expect when we get out to 2028, we expect our actual closings to almost double. Now that would be a percent you know, that's obviously based on the the penetration, but we'll see the whole move the whole business move. But in but, specifically, we'll see the active adult double in total volume. Honestly, when we look around the portfolio, we have a number of new communities that are coming to market this year.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

It just come to market. We have a lot of new amenities that are under construction. So we are equally excited, Alex, so I appreciate your enthusiasm. It's a key part of the overall business. And I think you'll continue to watch us when it's open in in part you know, all parts of the country.

[Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer at Taylor Morrison Home]

I think, Cheryl, in order of magnitude, what we shared is we've about 35 or so outlets open and about 80 some bus in the pipeline that are incubating. So that's the order of magnitude that Cheryl's referencing.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Got it. Great numbers.

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

It. Well, best of luck, everybody. Thank you.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

You so much. Take care.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. We currently have no further questions, so I'd like to hand back to Cheryl Palmer for any further remarks.

[Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO at Taylor Morrison Home]

Well, thank you all for joining us on our q one call. We will look very forward to speaking to you at the end of the second quarter. Take care.

[Operator]

As we conclude today's call, we'd like to thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

Participants

Executives

• Mackenzie Aron, VP, IR
• Sheryl Palmer, Chairman & CEO
• Erik Heuser, Chief Corporate Operations Officer
• Curt VanHyfte, Executive VP & CFO

Analysts

• Paul Przybylski, Analyst at Wolfe Research
• Michael Rehaut, Executive Director at JP Morgan
• Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman Partners LLC
• Elizabeth Langan, Analyst at Barclays Capital
• Mike Dahl, Managing Director - Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets
• Carl Reichardt, Managing Director - Equity Research at BTIG
• Jay McCanless, SVP - Equity Research at Wedbush Securities
• Buck Horne, Managing Director - Equity Research at Raymond James Financial
• Kenneth Zener, Senior Analyst at Seaport Research Partners
• Alex Barron, President & Founder at Housing Research Center, LLC