Meritage Homes - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce your host, Emily Tadano, Vice President, Investor Relations and ESG. Please go ahead, Emily.

Emily Tadano (VP of Investor Relations and ESG)

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to our analyst call to discuss our first quarter 2024 results. We issued the press release yesterday after the market closed. You can find it along with the slides we'll refer to during this call on our website at investors.meritagehomes.com or by selecting the Investor Relations link at the bottom of our homepage. Please refer to slide two cautioning you that our statements during this call, as well as in the earnings release and accompanying slides, contain forward-looking statements. Those and any other projections represent the current opinions of management, which are subject to change at any time, and we assume no obligation to update them. Any forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain.

Our actual results may be materially different than our expectations due to a wide variety of risk factors, which we have identified and listed on this slide, as well as in our earnings release and most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically our 2023 annual report on Form 10-K. We have also provided a reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our earnings release as compared to their closest related GAAP measures. With us today to discuss our results are Steve Hilton, Executive Chairman, Phillippe Lord, CEO, and Hilla Sferruzza, Executive Vice President and CFO of Meritage Homes. We expect today's call to last about an hour. A replay will be available on our website later today. I'll now turn it over to Mr. Hilton. Steve?

Steve Hilton (Executive Chairman)

Thank you, Emily. Welcome to everyone listening in on our call. I will briefly discuss current market trends and our recent accomplishments. Phillippe will cover highlights of our operational performance and how our strategy is driving our success. Hilla will provide a financial overview of the first quarter and our forward-looking guidance for Q2 and full year 2024. Meritage had a remarkable start to the year. We achieved an average absorption pace of 4.9 sales per month in the first quarter of 2024, which resulted in our highest quarterly sales orders totaling 3,991 homes. Entering the spring selling season with a healthy supply of move-in-ready inventory, we were able to capitalize on strong market conditions generated by the increasing need for housing for millennials and Gen Zs, as well as the move-down baby boomers who continue to find our limited availability of resale housing supply.

In the first quarter of this year, our record backlog conversion of 138% drove 3,507 home deliveries, which led to home closing revenue of $1.5 billion. Home closing gross margin for the quarter was 25.8%, which combined with SG&A of 10.4% resulted in diluted EPS of $5.06. As of March 31st, 2024, we increased our book value per share 17% year-over-year to $129.98 and generated a return on equity of 18%. Although visibility into what interest rate and mortgage rates will do for the remainder of the year remains unclear, we believe that by satisfying homebuyers' desire to have quick closing timelines, our available inventory should position us to continue increasing our market share. Now on to slide four for our recent milestones.

It's very timely that during the month that we celebrate Earth Day, we can announce Meritage's 11th award at the EPA's ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year for Sustained Excellence for continued industry leadership in the production of energy-efficient homes. Additionally, Meritage was also named in Newsweek's 2024 America's Greenest Companies list as our commitment to sustainability is recognized even outside of our sector. I also take pride in sharing that in the first quarter of this year, Meritage received the President's Volunteer Service Award, a civil award bestowed by the U.S. President and the highest civilian honor available for volunteerism that was earned through our partnership with No Kid Hungry and the 1,100-plus hours our team members volunteered to package nearly 260,000 meals over the past two years to fight childhood hunger.

Lastly, this quarter, we were recognized as one of Forbes' 2024 most successful mid-cap companies based on sales and earnings growth, return on equity, and total stock return for the last five years. At Meritage, we believe that financial achievements must be maintained while maintaining a focus on responsible corporate citizenship, and we are honored that these accolades continue to illustrate the breadth and depth of our commitment. With that, I'll now turn it over to Phillippe.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Thank you, Steve. This quarter, we are excited to share our financial results, but I wanted to provide a bit more context behind the numbers. Nearly 50% of our quarterly deliveries were sold and closed inter-quarter, a trend that has been increasing for the last 3-4 quarters, resulting in a record backlog conversion of 138%. This conversion rate is materially north of our previous long-term target of 80%+, and notably higher than even our fourth quarter 2023 backlog conversion of 110%, helping drive improved ROE over the last several quarters. This success was the intentional result of migrating to a Move-In-Ready strategy across both our entry-level and first move-up products, allowing us to enter the year with a sufficient supply of homes available for quick close, particularly in advance of the spring selling season.

We were able to both increase prices and offer less financing incentives than we anticipated on those quick move-in closings, meaningfully improving our first quarter 2024 gross margin. With our inter-quarter sales activity representing half of the quarter's closing volume, our gross margin reflects more current market conditions in real time, and our outperformance validates that our move-in-ready strategy is the right one for Meritage and for our customers. Now turning to slide five. Demand remained solid this quarter. Our sales orders of 3,991 homes were up 14% year-over-year. The nationwide sales event we conducted in late January and into February was highly successful. We sold our highest quarterly sales order volume, which benefited from an 8% cancellation rate, significantly below our historical average in the mid-teens. Entry-level homes comprised more than 90% of the total order volume.

ASP on orders this quarter of $409,000 was down 5% from prior year, but fairly in line sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2023. The ASP decrease from 2023 was due to both a larger mix of our closings coming from our Eastern markets and product mix shift, even as we increased pricing in about half of our communities and used fewer rate locks this quarter. The first quarter 2024 average absorption pace of 4.9 per month improved from 4.2 in the prior year and was well above 4 net sales per month due to the strength of the spring demand. The first quarter 2024 ending community count of 275 was up 2% sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2023 and down 1% compared to prior year. 34 new communities came online this quarter.

We are still on target for more material community count growth later in the year, ending 2024 mid- to high-single digits higher than where we started, with even greater projected growth in 2025. We already control all the lots we need for planned community openings in 2024, as well as most of our 2025 communities. We are now focused on opportunities for quick openings in 2025 as well as longer-term growth into 2026 and beyond. Moving to the regional-level trends on slide six. All of our regions generate a sales pace well above 4.0 net sales per month during the first quarter of 2024, although we do expect Q1 to be one of our strongest absorption quarters as it overlaps with the spring selling season.

The Central Region, comprising our Texas markets, had both the highest regional average absorption pace of 5.2 sales per month and a backlog conversion rate of over 150%. The economic growth in Texas fuels the positive momentum in the housing market, and with over 90% of this region's average community being entry-level, our steady supply of affordable and move-in-ready inventory has been in high demand. The West Region had an average absorption pace of 4.8 net sales per month compared to 4.5 last year. Our previously challenged markets in this region regained sales momentum this quarter, primarily in Arizona and Colorado, some of the toughest markets last year. Colorado's first quarter 2024 sales order volume increased double digits on a year-over-year basis on a reduced community count.

The East Region experienced the largest year-over-year growth at an average absorption pace of 4.7 net sales per month, up from 3.8 from last year. As we have been focused on rebalancing our land portfolio over the last couple of years, our effort in these regions is now visible, with a 10% year-over-year growth in average communities and double the prior year spec inventory, which positions us well to continue to take market share in the high-growth markets parts of this country. Now turning to Slide 7. Our quarterly starts for approximately 4,000 homes in the first quarter of 2024. We were up from about 2,500 in the prior year and are consistent with our quarterly cadence for the last three quarters. In order to ensure we have sufficient homes available for quick move-ins, we align our start pace with our expected future sales pace.

Further, as we grow community count in the later half of this year, we will start more homes to meet our targeted per-community move-in-ready supply across our growing footprint. We had approximately 6,000 spec homes in inventory as of March 31st, 2024, up 54% from about 3,900 specs as of March 31st, 2023, but only about 100 homes greater than where we started this quarter. This represents 22 specs per community this quarter, which equates to 4.5 months' supply of specs on the ground, well within our target level of four to six months of supply. Of our home closings this quarter, 93% came from previously started inventory, up from 87% in the prior year. 22% of the total specs were completed as of March 31st, 2024, as we continue to make progress toward our targeted run rate of carrying one-third move-in-ready homes.

Our ending backlog as of March 31st, 2024, totaled approximately 3,000 homes, down from about 3,900 homes in the prior year as our inter-quarter sales to closing percentage increased. With our focus on carrying more move-in-ready inventory, we would expect our backlog will continue to represent less than one quarter sales as our backlog conversion rate starts to consistently perform above 100%, improving our returns. With our backlog and specs on the ground totaling over 9,000 homes, we believe we have the optimal level of home supply to deliver on our full year results. I will now turn it over to Hilla to walk you through our financial results. Hilla?

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Phillippe. Before I cover our financial highlights, I wanted to first address the momentum we've gained with our land goals, as this has been a key pillar in our growth plan. Our land teams have been successful at sourcing deals despite the competitive land market, and through their efforts, we put nearly 6,300 net new lots under control this quarter. This led to the growth in our total lot count by nearly 10% year-over-year and up sequentially by 3% to approximately 66,400 lots. With these new deals, we're starting to increase our use of off-balance sheet financing, growing our off-book percentage to 31% this quarter from 25% in the first quarter of 2023 and 28% from Q4 of last year. We continue to be focused on accelerating our land acquisitions and looking for off-book opportunities while maintaining a healthy balance sheet.

Now let's turn to slide 8 and cover our Q1 financial results in more detail. First quarter 2024 home closing revenue was $1.5 billion, reflecting 21% higher home closing volume year-over-year that was partially offset by 4% lower ASP due to a shift in product mix. On a sequential basis, ASP on closings increased in the first quarter of 2024, with reduced utilization of rate locks and targeted price increases reflected in our inter-quarter sales and closings as the market improved over the last 90 days. Assuming interest rates hold steady or improve, ASP for the rest of the year is expected to be fairly consistent, with some reductions from geographic mix and new entry-level communities opening with lower prices will be balanced by reduced financing incentive costs and price increases where the markets can absorb them.

While the utilization of rate locks has slowed from 2022 and 2023, our online discounts are still running at an elevated level, and we expect to continue to utilize rate locks and buy-downs to mitigate concerns around rate volatility. Home closing gross margin increased 340 basis points to 25.8% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 22.4% in the prior year. This improvement was a combination of several factors. First, the reduced utilization of rate lock financing incentives that we've discussed. Next, the greater leverage of fixed costs on higher revenue. And finally, improvements in our direct costs, as last year's first quarter marked the highest per square footage direct costs for us since the start of COVID. These savings were partially offset by higher lot costs. We want to take a minute and cover the trends we're seeing in our direct costs.

Our team has been leveraging our spec strategy and increasing volume, allowing us to deepen our relationships with our vendors. We're proud of the reductions achieved to date, and we expect that we'll be able to hold the line to keep costs steady and find offsets to the recent lumber increases. On the labor front, capacity has held fairly steady, perhaps as multifamily construction has pulled back a bit, creating a stable environment for residential construction at the moment. Our cycle time has settled in at around 140 calendar days over the last three quarters. We remain disciplined in our starts, cadence, and are only selling homes later in the construction process to have the necessary inventory for quick move-in closings. Our goal is to turn our assets three times a year.

To get there, additional capacity will likely be needed for both trade labor and local government staffing for permitting and inspections. When we review the composition of our gross margin, the only known variable is lot cost since the land acquisition and development dollars have already been spent. Elevated land development costs that impacted the entire industry over the past 3 years are now fully flowing through our financials, as almost all of our land is now from post-COVID acquisitions. Our current guidance reflects the elevated lot cost, and we do not expect an additional pullback on margins beyond 2024 as go-forward lot costs have a similar land development composition component. Over the past 4-6 quarters, our long-term gross margin target has been at least 22%.

Structurally, we believe our target has changed as we continue to dial in our relationships with national vendors and further streamline our operations. The goal of these efforts is to improve cycle times and reduce costs. We've been operating under extreme environments for the past several years, highly favorable and then very challenging. As the markets are stabilizing, we are gaining a clearer understanding of our capabilities in a normalized environment and expect to share our higher internal targets with you over the next several quarters. Turning to SG&A. SG&A was 10.4% of home closing revenue in the first quarter of 2024, which was fairly in line with 10.3% for the first quarter of 2023. Higher commissions this quarter offset the incremental leverage achieved on higher home closing revenue.

We are still comfortable with our full year SG&A goal of 10% or under and expect quarterly SG&A to improve throughout the year. Given our anticipated volume growth over the next few years, our longer-term SG&A target is 9.5%. In the first quarter of 2024, the financial services loss of approximately $700,000 included $5.8 million in write-offs related to rate lock unwind costs. This compares to financial services profit of $2.9 million in the first quarter of 2023 that had $1.9 million in similar write-offs. We anticipate potentially incurring another several million dollars of rate lock unwind costs in the second quarter, which is included in our guidance. Excluding these charges, the profitability of our financial services has held in line with our historical averages.

The first quarter's effective income tax rate was 20.5% this year, essentially flat to prior year, with both periods benefiting from energy tax credits on qualifying homes under the Inflation Reduction Act. Overall, higher home closing revenue and gross profit, with flat SG&A leverage and tax rates, led to a 43% year-over-year increase in first quarter 2024 diluted EPS to $5.06 from $3.54 in 2023. Before we move to the balance sheet, I wanted to cover our Q1 2024 customers' credit metrics. As expected, our buyer profile remained relatively consistent with our historical averages, with FICO scores near 740 and DTIs around 41 or 42. LTVs were still in the mid-80s, and about 80% of our buyers in Q1 received some sort of financing incentive consistent with our mortgage company capture rate. Now turning to slide nine. Our balance sheet, returns, and liquidity management are a core focus for us.

We have nothing drawn under a credit facility, cash of $905 million, and net debt to cap of 2% at March 31st, 2024. Our net debt to cap ceiling target is in the mid-20s, leveraging our improving backlog conversion. We also generated $82 million in operating cash flow for the first quarter of 2024. Our overarching capital spend philosophy looks to generate long-term shareholder value expansion through both growth in the business and returning capital to shareholders. Since early 2023, we have been accelerating our investment in organic growth. This quarter, we spent $430 million on land acquisition and development, which was up 39% from prior year. We expect our go-forward trend for full year 2024 and beyond to total $2 billion-$2.5 billion of land spend.

Given confidence in our business model and our ability to deliver strong and stable financial performance, during the first quarter of 2024, we meaningfully enhanced our shareholder returns directive as well. In February, we instituted a formal programmatic share repurchase plan with a minimum buyback commitment of $15 million in each quarter to provide consistency and predictability to our share repurchase activity. During the first quarter of 2024, we went beyond the systematic $15 million commitment and opportunistically bought back an additional $41 million. We repurchased over 360,000 shares, or 1% of common stock outstanding at December 31st, 2023, for $56 million this quarter. $129 million remained available under our authorization program. One year after initiating our dividend policy, we nearly tripled our quarterly cash dividend to $0.75 per share this quarter from $0.27 per share, providing another avenue for us to improve our ROE.

This resulted in total spend of about $27 million on dividends in the first quarter this year. Rounding out our capital plan for the year, we're also evaluating near-term opportunities to address the senior debt that's coming due in early 2025. Onto slide 10. In the first quarter of 2024, we were able to find and secure land deals that meet our underwriting standards in the majority of our markets, meaningfully putting more lots under control than home starts. The nearly 6,300 net new lots under control this quarter represent an estimated 43 future communities. We put about 200 net new lots under control in the first quarter of 2023 as we were only starting to ramp up from the pullback in late 2022 that quarter.

As of March 31st, 2024, we owned or controlled a total of about 66,400 lots, equating to 4.6-year supply of lots in line with our target of a 4-5-year supply. Our land financing strategy focuses on managing our capital while being mindful of balance sheet metrics and margin goals. We've been able to utilize our healthy balance sheet to replenish our land portfolio while minimizing the gross margin impact from option land deals for the past several years. As we mentioned earlier, we've recently been utilizing more option financing for our land purchases. About 69% of total lot inventory at March 31st, 2024, was owned and 31% optioned, compared to prior year where we had a 75% owned inventory and a 25% option lot position.

We believe that off-balance sheet financing will allow us to control more land and increase our year supply of lots beyond what we like our balance sheet to absorb. Our intent is to accelerate our growth into 2025 and onward, and we're currently working on some land financing opportunities that we hope to be able to share with you in the next several quarters. Finally, I'll direct you to slide 11 for our guidance. Given the robust market conditions and our supply of move-in ready homes, we've revised our projections upward for full year 2024 to the following: total closings between 14,500 and 15,000 units, home closing revenue of $6 billion-$6.2 billion, home closing gross margin of around 24.5%-25%, an effective tax rate of about 22.5%, and diluted EPS in the range of $19.20-$20.70.

As for Q2 2024, we are projecting total closings between 3,600 and 3,800 units, home closing revenue of $1.5 billion-$1.6 billion, home closing gross margin of 24.5%-25%, an effective tax rate of about 22.5%, and diluted EPS in the range of $4.70-$5.30. Both Q2 and full year guidance assume current market conditions and interest rates. We will continue to refine our guidance as additional clarity around interest rates becomes available later in the year. With that, I'll turn it back over to Phillippe.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Thank you, Hilla. To summarize on slide 12, our first quarter 2024 results demonstrate that our ample spec home supply for quick closings and our focus on pace over price allowed us to plus up and exceed not only our volume targets but also our gross margin guidance. As we increase our community count in the second half of this year, we believe we're positioned to continue growing our market share. Further, our acceleration on both land spend as well as share repurchases and dividends demonstrates our confidence in our business model. We are committed to balancing growth in the business and returning cash to shareholders in order to continue creating long-term value. With that, I will now turn the call over to the operator for instructions on the Q&A. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We're now conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We ask you, please ask one question and one follow-up, then return to the queue. If you'd like to remove your question from the queue, please press star two. Once again, that's star one to be placed in the question queue, and we ask you, please ask one question and one follow-up, then return to the queue. Our first question is coming from Stephen Kim from Evercore ISI. Your line is now live.

Stephen Kim (Analyst)

Thanks very much, guys. Really impressive results. Thanks for all the guidance and color. Question for you regarding the backlog turnover ratio. This is something that we've chatted a lot about over the last year. It sounds like you're clearly now saying that you've arrived at a point now with your business model where you feel comfortable guiding to a turnover ratio of triple digits. I was curious as to whether you think that what you see this year in terms of how you're planning to operate, whether this is a level of backlog turnover ratio that you also think can continue sort of as you progress towards whatever your long-term normalized level is. Is this the new normal, or do you see 2024 as maybe being a little higher than normal?

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

I would say that it's pretty much going to be the new normal. As we think about the rest of this year, we're modeling a similar backlog conversion for the remaining quarters. Some of it's just predicated on cycle time stability, which currently we have. The production capacity is really, really good. So as long as that remains in the same state, this is going to be the new normal for us.

Stephen Kim (Analyst)

Yeah. And that's really great. And I assume the same thing could probably be said for absorption rates, perhaps per community, but maybe you can update us on that. I know historically, I think you've talked about 3-4. And then as a follow-on to that, you talked about your gross margin now pretty much for this year incorporating a fully adjusted land cost. You don't have that pre-pandemic unusual land effect. So that would seem to suggest that your gross margins have potentially some upside from here. I know you're going to give us more on that later. But you had talked in the past about how a higher level of volume translates very directly for you into a higher level of profitability, not just on the SG&A but the gross margin.

I was wondering if you could remind me again about the sensitivity of higher volume to your gross margin as well as updating us on your absorption rate longer term.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. I'll take the absorption question, and then I'll hand it over to Hilla on the margin guidance. We obviously believe we're going to sell more houses in the front half of the year than the back half of the year just due to seasonal trends. But we are reevaluating our overall absorption targets specifically for our entry-level business. We've often said that our target is around 4-5 for entry-level and somewhere between 3 and 4 for 1MU. And the affordable part of the market is extremely strong. We're finding really strong land positions out there to support that affordable price point, and we are evaluating whether we can do better than that 4-5. But stay tuned on that, and I'll let Hilla talk about the margin guidance.

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

Sure. So historically, when we had longer cycle times and lower sales to closing times, it could be up to 100 basis points pickup in the SG&A component of gross margin between Q1 and Q4 due to the incremental volume. Now, that's a little bit different these days because we're spec-selling homes and closing some of those spec homes in the same quarter. But increased volume for us, even 4,500 incremental units in a quarter, can have up to 100 basis points improvement in our gross margin, not just SG&A leverage.

Stephen Kim (Analyst)

Great. That's really helpful. Thanks, Hilla. Thanks, Phillippe. Appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Thank you. Next question today is coming from Alan Ratner from Zelman & Associates. Your line is now live.

Alan Ratner (Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good morning. Congrats on the great quarter. First question, gross margin. So if I look at your full year guide, I think the biggest adjustment was to the margin range. And if I think back to three months ago when you gave that, I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, obviously higher land costs flowing through was kind of the main headwind as far as your expectation for some pressure through the year. But I think you probably also had some assumption on incentives embedded within that as well. And clearly, the first quarter came in better than, I guess, you guys were expecting. But when you think about the macro environment today versus back then, rates are higher and continuing to move higher. So what is actually embedded in that guide for the remainder of the year as far as incentives?

Do you expect to kind of continue the improvement you've seen in the first quarter, or are you baking in any potential for having to increase incentives as you get to the back half, softer seasonal time of the year?

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

We're still in an elevated level of incentives compared to where we were pre-2022. So we're maintaining that level. There was a decent amount, even with the pullback in improved market conditions in Q1, there was still a decent amount of incentives that are being used. But something that's really important to consider when you're selling and closing intra-quarter, even though you're offering an incentive, you can offer it much less expensively. If you're offering a 45-day interest rate lock, it's much cheaper than trying to buy a forward commitment. So we're still planning on using the tools that we have in our toolkit through rate lock buy-downs and rate locks just in general. But the cost to those is going to be less expensive because of our ability to sell and close so quickly.

We're modeling current market conditions, including what we're seeing in April, which includes the uptick in the guidance that we provided to you.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. I'll give you an extra question here because people are going to ask me about April. We're not needing to go out and increase our rate lock costs to acquire the customers for April. That's included in our guidance. Even in these elevated rate environments, we're able to move people into our move-in ready inventory at about similar costs than we were in Q1. So it's all baked into our guidance.

Alan Ratner (Analyst)

Got it. That's really helpful. Thank you for that added color. Second question, I guess just pointing to your slide 10 where you show the lot acquisition activity, which is very helpful to see. So I know this is not a smooth number by any means, but first quarter looks like it was down a little bit from the last couple of quarters in terms of dollars spent on both development and acquisition. It looks like the community, I guess, acquisition was relatively steady. But you're tracking, I guess, below the $2 billion-$2.5 billion target for land spend year to date. So is that just a timing function, or is it getting harder to find deals to pencil? How should we think about that? Because I know, obviously, your 25 community count growth is somewhat dependent on hitting that target.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. Everything's going as planned. It's really just a timing thing. I think you'll see that timing reverse out here in Q2 and Q3, but none of it indicates anything around our ability to go acquire the lots we need for 2026 and beyond. And we're also finding deals for 2025. So it's really all just timing.

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

I'll add one more point, Alan. This is a disclosure that comes out in the 10-Q, so you'll see it, but we'll just give you guys a sneak peek. You guys know that at the end of last year, we had about 28,000 lots that some level of due diligence was still ongoing, but were not counted in our actual lot totals because we hadn't committed. That number had actually increased from 28,000 to 34,000 just in the quarter while we grew our community count. So the ability to find land that pencils is definitely not the issue. It's just timing of when deals were closing.

Alan Ratner (Analyst)

Great. That's really helpful. Thanks a lot, guys. Good luck.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Michael Rehaut from JPMorgan. Your line is now live.

Michael Rehaut (Analyst)

Great. Thanks very much. Congrats on the results. So first question just around gross margins. Would love to just get a sense, and I apologize if I kind of missed some of this earlier in the call, but just what drove the actual upside in the first quarter versus prior guidance? I think part of the review that was earlier was more just focused on year-over-year, but was more interested in kind of zeroing in the upside in the first quarter results versus your guidance and how that also flows through to the higher guidance for the full year. And then also on the gross margins, I believe I heard correctly that you expect 2025 gross margins to, at minimum, be similar to 2024. And I just wanted to make sure that I heard that correctly as well.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. I'll let Hilla take the second part. As we came into Q1 and guided to our Q1, we didn't have real visibility into the strength of the spring selling season. It was early into January, and obviously, the spring selling season has been very, very strong. As you can see from our backlog conversion rate, we were able to convert a lot more move-in ready inventory than we had initially assumed. The demand for that move-in ready inventory was really strong, so we were able to take pricing. We didn't need to use as much of the rate lock dollars we had in our assumptions to get people into those mortgages and those homes. We obviously had assumed that rate locks were still going to be heavily utilized coming into the year, and they were much less utilized.

Between backlog conversion and more leverage, ASP improvement, and then less incentive utilization, obviously, we had a beat on our margin guide. And then I'll let Hilla talk about the guidance for 2025.

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. So we're not providing guidance yet for 2025. We just wanted to clarify. We heard that there was maybe some confusion about the composition of our lot cost that's flowing through the financials in 2024, if it was going to be a little bit of the noise from the higher land development cost in 2024 and some also coming in 2025. And we just wanted to clarify that pretty much everything that's running through our financials these days is fully baked in at the higher land development spend. We don't have any more pre-COVID land. So for us, the level of lot cost as a percentage of revenue that you're seeing in our numbers in 2024, that's the new run rate until land development costs come down. So there's not another shoot of drop with another reduction to gross margin from land.

We've not given guidance on any other component of gross margin to 2025 just quite yet.

Michael Rehaut (Analyst)

Okay. No, no, no. I appreciate that. And I guess maybe just also looking forward, you kind of talked consistently about an accelerated rate of growth in 2025 and beyond. You're obviously looking for mid to high single digits this year. Without getting into too many details, I mean, my impression of higher growth would be something more in the low double-digit range at minimum. And I'm just curious if that's the right way to think about that, or could it even be something in the teens? Just trying to get a degree of magnitude when you talk about accelerated growth.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

You're talking about for 2025?

Michael Rehaut (Analyst)

Correct. Yep.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. I mean, we're obviously not prepared to give any guidance on 2025, but we're buying a lot of land. Anything less than 10% isn't really what we're targeting either, but we're just not prepared to guide to that at this point.

Michael Rehaut (Analyst)

Okay. Fair enough. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from John Lovallo from UBS. Your line is now live.

John Lovallo (Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is not to get nitpicky, but if we look at the midpoint of the 2024 delivery outlook, it's 14,750 homes. And if we back out the first quarter deliveries of 3,507 and then the second quarter midpoint, sorry, of 3,700, it would imply sort of average deliveries in the third quarter and the fourth quarter around 3,771. So I guess, is the lack of sequential step-up in delivery more a function of the business becoming a bit more even flow from a production standpoint? Is it sort of a lack of available homes in the pipeline, or is there something else that may be kind of leveling that growth off?

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. So that's a great point. I'm glad that you made it. Thanks, John. So I think we alluded to it a little bit, but maybe we'll just put a fine point on it. I'll start, and Phillippe can take us from there. When you're selling and closing homes in the same period, the spring selling season results get pulled up. So before Q4 was kind of our huge quarter where what we were selling through May got delivered 2.5 quarters later, because we're now buying or because we're now selling and closing intra-quarter, you're seeing that same fantastic volume just come up earlier into the year. It's still going to be a good Q4, but it's not really reflecting the spring selling season homes anymore. I'll let Phillippe jump in as well.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. That's right. I mean, we expect that we will now see Q2 and Q3 being our biggest volume quarters, with Q4 being a little more modest and then Q1 just depending on the spring selling season. So that's going to be kind of the new cadence of our business, unlike what it was before where usually Q3 and Q4 were our biggest quarters.

John Lovallo (Analyst)

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. And then you guys returned $83 million back to shareholders in the first quarter, generated a similar level of cash from operations. I mean, as we move forward here, can we sort of think of matching cash flow with repos and dividends over the next few quarters, particularly considering no real debt due until 2025?

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. I don't think that it's exactly a function of cash. Like Phillippe mentioned earlier, the timing of land development acquisitions is kind of just based on when deals are closing. So it's not necessarily a function of operating cash flow, but it is a function of prior year profitability. So if you look at it, we're on target to do in the 20s of last year's net income and return to shareholders, return of capital to shareholders. That's kind of more of our target rather than the timing of when a deal is closing on the land side.

John Lovallo (Analyst)

Understood. Thanks very much, guys.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Susan Maklari from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.

Susan Maklari (Analyst)

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My first question is, you've commented on the target of taking the ASP down over time. And the guide does imply that sequentially, we will see a bit of a slowdown in there. But I guess when you think about that relative to the pricing power and the level of demand that you talk to on the ground, how are you thinking about those two factors coming together? And any thoughts on how that ASP will come through over the longer term?

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. Our forward-looking ASP guidance is predicated on the land we're buying. So for buying less expensive lots that can allow us to position our product in a more affordable part of the market long term, which is what our core strategy is, that's driving the ASP decline. But that doesn't mean we're not taking pricing when the market is elastic in that affordable segment of the market, which it has been and was very strong in Q1. So they're two different concepts. One is the land we're buying, and the other is what the market allows us to do.

Susan Maklari (Analyst)

Okay. All right. That makes sense. And then I guess, can you just comment a bit on what you're seeing in terms of just overall cycle times and input costs in terms of some of the sticks and bricks and anything there as we think about the forward quarters?

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. As Hilla said in her opening comments, cycle times are the best they've been in a long time. We're kind of where our target is. Production capacity is really stable. We're hitting our timelines. I'm not sure how much more there is, but capacity is real strong. So if there's more to take out of our cycle times, we will. And then direct costs are also really quite stable. Given the size of our business at this point, we have really strong relationships that are producing great cost structure for us. Lumber's ticked up a little bit, but we've been able to offset that in other areas and categories of the business. So as we look out into 2024, we're modeling stable cycle times and stable direct costs.

Susan Maklari (Analyst)

Okay. All right. That's great color. Thank you. Good luck with everything.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Alex Barron from Housing Research Center. Your line is now live.

Alex Barron (Analyst)

Yes. Thank you. I was hoping you guys could elaborate a little bit on your average buyer. Well, first of all, what percentage of the buyers are actually first-time buyers? And what does that average entry-level buyer look like? What's their FICO? What's their down payment? What's their average income? That type of thing.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Hilla's pulling up some more details for you, so just give us one second. I'll kind of reiterate what Hilla said earlier. Our FICO scores, our DTIs, everything's pretty much the same as it was. It's been the same for a long time. We're obviously targeting a more qualified entry-level buyer. For the most part, these are their first homes. But they have really high income levels, and they're looking for as nice a home as they can buy in a certain price point. Hang on one second, and Hilla will tell you the exact metrics.

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. Our first-time buyer so they don't declare themselves as a first-time buyer. We can only look at back data and back into whether they're a first-time buyer or not. But our first-time buyer is about two-thirds of our business right now.

Alex Barron (Analyst)

Okay. I was kind of interested just to see what type of income level do these people have?

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. I don't know for sharing the income, but you can probably back into it because the DTIs are averaging 41, 42. And we're sharing that the LTV is in the mid-80s. So if you kind of take our ASP back into what the loan amount is, with an 85% LTV, you can probably back into their average monthly income.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

But we're not seeing our particular consumer not be able to qualify and afford our home. We don't have to do rate buy-downs and rate locks to qualify them. It's more of a psychological, "We want a lower rate on a third-year mix." It's an incentive versus a qualification.

Alex Barron (Analyst)

Got it. And then if you can elaborate on a comment you made about the cost of incentives being lower than a forward commitment if it was a short close, if you can elaborate on that. Because my thought was that the forward commitment was supposed to be the lower form.

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

So, a forward commitment. There's lots we don't need to get into all the dynamics of how a forward commitment works. We can talk about that offline. But there's a lot of benefits using a forward commitment. You can bulk buy and get some locked-in rate. It gives you an advantage that if rates are moving on you during that period of time, you have that amount locked in. You're not trying to lock it in based on today's date. The way that we choose to do rate locks, it also disregards your LLPA, the loan-level price adjustment. So it's agnostic to what your own creditworthiness is. However, if you're doing something spot rate for a short period of time, if you have good credit, that's going to be cheaper.

We have an opportunity because our sale-to-close cycle time is so short, we have an opportunity for certain customers to just go out into the market if the rate is favorable that day and just buy a rate lock and/or buy-down for them at that point of sale. That could be cheaper than a forward commitment.

Alex Barron (Analyst)

Got it. Okay. Thanks a lot.

Steve Hilton (Executive Chairman)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Jay McCanless from Wedbush Securities. Your line is now live.

Jay McCanless (Analyst)

Hey. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to clarify what you were saying earlier, Phillippe, are you guys seeing kind of the slowdown in April foot traffic and demand that some of your competitors have talked about?

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

No.

Jay McCanless (Analyst)

Okay. And then in terms of pricing power, where do you think you're getting better pricing power right now? Is it on the entry level, first move up? How has that been trending? And I guess also, how has that been trending thus far in April?

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

No, Jay, we're mostly entry-level at this point, although we're trying to source some more what we call 1MU land, which we're having some success doing. So primarily, we're entry-level. So obviously, the pricing power we experienced in Q1 was entry-level pricing power. I would say, to give you some more information, it's more geographical and community by community. Certain communities, certain markets are really strong, and there's a lot of pricing power. And then other markets that are more price-sensitive, we don't have as much.

Jay McCanless (Analyst)

And then just the last question I had, with the pretty large increase that the board put in with the dividend, maybe walk me through that from a capital allocation standpoint because that seems like a pretty big burden to put on the company, especially with a cyclical industry. So maybe some of the thought process and why make such a big increase right now, especially with rates, at this point not having affected your business, but they might in the future.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

So we talked a lot about this throughout our organization as well as with our board and Steve here, our Chairman. But at the end of the day, we felt that there was a benefit to returning shareholder equity in two different ways, not just buying back shares where we have a limited float, but also providing a dividend. We think the dividend signals to the street that we have tremendous conviction in the cash flow of our business. Our operating model has dramatically changed from where it was seven years ago. You can see our backlog conversion. We're generating a much stronger cash flow quarter to quarter. And so we felt strongly that that was the signal we needed to send to the street, that we believe our operating model, our business, is less cyclical than it was before.

There's been a lot of conversations about the industry being rerated because our balance sheets are stronger. Well, we think paying a dividend tells you exactly how strong our balance sheet is.

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

I think it's important to note that dollars, while it's a very impressive increase, we just reiterated our $2.2 billion-$2.5 billion annual land spend commitment. Our dividends are around $100 million a year. So I think just to put everything in perspective, that's a pretty small portion and a pretty small commitment for us to be making of the entire capital outflow for the company.

Jay McCanless (Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Thanks, Jay. Appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Ken Zener from Seaport Research Partners. Your line is now live.

Ken Zener (Analyst)

Good morning, everybody.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Morning.

Ken Zener (Analyst)

I wonder if you could go into look, the beat was very good, both the units and the margins. I'm just trying to understand a little more specifically. Backlog, I assume, converted at the margins you offered at the end of January. And there's a certain spread there. Could you kind of talk about that applied spread? I think I could do the math if half your units were backlogged, half were closings. So I'm trying to understand that initial spread.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Yeah. Honestly, you know what we guided to and then what we delivered. So if we came into the quarter with a backlog, that's generally what we guided to. But then we closed 148% of that backlog. So we closed an extra 2,000 houses in the quarter than we were expecting. That's for spread.

Ken Zener (Analyst)

So it seems like, was it the spread on the implied margins for the spec actually improved quite a bit, versus what you expected, plus the units, correct?

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Absolutely. As we came into January, our ability and the demand for Move-In-Ready inventory that we were able to close inter-quarter was really strong, which allowed us to increase the pricing of that product as well as use less incentives on that product.

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

The shared fact that we closed as many homes allowed us to leverage and gain incremental benefit in the margins. It's a combination of all of those coming together that drove the margins.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

So when we guide, we're going to guide to what we know. But if there's a big inter-quarter movement like we saw in the spring selling season, it's either going to benefit us or maybe not.

Ken Zener (Analyst)

Yeah. And the reason I ask is I think where you have I prefer looking at inventory, so your backlog plus your spec units. But the math, it seems like you're doing like 27% gross margin on your backlog units, and it applies roughly 300 basis points lower on your spec. Is that something that you would be willing to comment on?

Hilla Sferruzza (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. I think we're getting really granular, so we're just going to pull back from there. I think that kind of what we said a couple of times in the Q&A, I think we're really comfortable with what we guided. That was what we knew. The incremental volume and the inter-quarter improvement is what you're seeing come through in our actuals.

Ken Zener (Analyst)

Right. No, I think it's good. I'm just trying to.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

We do too.

Did you have another question?

Thank you. Operator, is that it?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Phillippe for any further or closing comments.

Phillippe Lord (CEO)

Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone who joined this call today for your continued interest in Meritage Homes. We hope you have a great rest of your day and a great weekend. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.