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Date

Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 5 p.m. ET

Call participants

  • Chairman and Chief Executive Officer — Allan Merrill
  • Chief Financial Officer — David Goldberg

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Risks

  • Chief Executive Officer Merrill explicitly stated, "conversion and sales paces remain well below historical norms," indicating subdued demand levels.
  • Chief Financial Officer Goldberg guided to an adjusted gross margin of about 16% for the upcoming quarter, primarily driven by the higher level of incentive on specs and the very low share of to-be-built sales, resulting in a net loss forecast of approximately $0.50 per diluted share.
  • Allan Merrill noted that "up to 75%" of expected first-quarter sales will be spec homes, affirming an ongoing reliance on less-profitable inventory sales.

Takeaways

  • Active Community Count -- 164 average active communities, up 14%, reflecting ongoing expansion.
  • Book Value per Share -- Increased to nearly $43, attributed to profitability and share repurchases.
  • Net Debt to Net Capitalization -- Reduced below 40%, with plans to reach the low 30% range by end of fiscal 2027.
  • Fourth Quarter Closings -- 1,400 homes delivered, surpassing internal expectations.
  • Gross Margin -- 17.2% in the latest quarter, pressured by higher spec home mix and incentives.
  • SG&A Expense -- 9.6% of revenue in Q4, indicating operating leverage improvement.
  • Adjusted EBITDA -- Approximately $64 million in adjusted EBITDA in Q4, with diluted EPS of $1.02.
  • Material and Labor Cost Savings -- Achieved about $10,000 per home through rebidding, expected to fully flow through by year-end.
  • Annualized Cost Reduction -- Completed workforce reduction delivering $12 million in annual run-rate savings.
  • Asset Sales -- Sold $63 million in non-strategic assets, generating $7 million profit, with over $100 million more anticipated at or above book value in fiscal 2026.
  • Model Home Sale-Leasebacks -- 83 transactions completed to boost balance sheet efficiency.
  • Options for Land -- Increased optioned lot share to 62% from 58% of total lots controlled, supporting capital discipline.
  • First-Quarter 2026 Guidance -- Expect sales of ~900 homes, closings of ~800 at $515,000 ASP, adjusted gross margin of ~16%, SG&A spend flat, and adjusted EBITDA between breakeven and $5 million.
  • Q4 Liquidity -- Total liquidity of nearly $540 million, including $215 million unrestricted cash and an undrawn revolver.
  • Share Repurchases -- Repurchased about 1.5 million shares (~5% of company) in fiscal 2025; targeting at least the same in fiscal 2026.
  • Land Spend -- Fiscal 2025 net land spend just above $600 million, with $684 million gross spend offset by $63 million land sale proceeds.
  • Deferred Tax Assets (DTAs) -- More than $140 million, with $84 million from energy tax credits; new rights agreement authorized to protect these assets, representing over 10% of book value.
  • Margin Outlook -- Clear strategy for sequential improvement, including $10,000/unit cost savings, mix shift away from lower-priced communities, and higher-margin new communities growing to one-third of closings by year-end.
  • Texas Segment -- Quarterly sales pace improved to 1.8 (from 1.3), although full-year outlook remains "subdued" and below historical averages.

Summary

Beazer Homes (BZH 1.75%) closed the year with a higher average community count, expanded book value per share, and substantial cash liquidity, despite guiding for a challenging fiscal start. Executives forecast both a lower gross margin and a net loss in the upcoming quarter, citing continued reliance on spec homes and heightened incentives as primary drivers. Management outlined three distinct margin improvement catalysts for the coming year: capture of $10,000 per home in material and labor cost reductions; a deliberate mix shift away from lower-priced, high-incentive communities; and expanding contributions from newly opened, higher-margin communities. Capital allocation remains disciplined through increased lot options, over $100 million in non-strategic asset sales at or above book anticipated, and new or extended share repurchase plans.

  • Chief Financial Officer Goldberg said, "we want to meet or exceed our fiscal 2025 adjusted EBITDA despite beginning the year with fewer homes in backlog and lower first-quarter margins," signaling internal expectations for operational gains beyond initial headwinds.
  • Chief Executive Officer Merrill described Beazer's value proposition as offering "lower mortgage rates, through competition and elimination of the middleman, lower utility bills from dramatically more efficient homes, and lower insurance premiums," for a $3,000 per year buyer savings on recent Atlanta closings.
  • A new rights agreement to protect $140 million in deferred tax assets, with $84 million from energy efficiency credits, awaits shareholder ratification, and will expire if not approved.
  • Spec sales are expected to remain elevated. Executives anticipate closings growth will be weighted to the second half of the fiscal year, supported by ongoing community count expansion and targeted capital deployment.

Industry glossary

  • Spec Home: Home built without a specific buyer under contract, sold from inventory to facilitate quicker closings, often incentivized to drive sales pace.
  • Zero Energy Ready Home: Residential unit constructed to a high performance standard enabling net-zero annual energy consumption with renewable energy systems.
  • Sale-Leaseback: Transaction in which company sells an asset, such as a model home, and immediately leases it back from the purchaser to retain operational use while freeing capital.
  • Deferred Tax Asset (DTA): Balance sheet item representing tax benefits from prior losses or credits to offset future taxable income, subject to regulatory limitations on usage.

Full Conference Call Transcript

David Goldberg: Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Beazer Homes conference call discussing our results for 2025. Before we begin, you should be aware that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors described in our SEC filings which may cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date the statement is made. We do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. New factors emerge from time to time, and it's simply not possible to predict all such factors.

Joining me today is Allan Merrill, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. On our call today, Allan will discuss highlights from the full year, the current operating environment including the discussion of both our operational response and our strategic positioning, and the progress we're making towards our multiyear goals. I will then provide some highlights from our fourth quarter results, guidance for our first fiscal quarter fiscal 2026 results, and some commentary on how we're thinking about full-year fiscal 2026 expectations. Updates on our balance sheet and liquidity, including our outlook for capital allocation and land spend, and finish with a discussion about our shareholder rights agreement.

Allan will conclude with a wrap-up, after which we will take any questions in the remaining time. I will now turn the call over to Allan.

Allan Merrill: Thank you, Dave, and thank you for joining us on our call this afternoon. Fiscal 2025 was a productive but challenging year, highlighted by both community count growth and prudent balance sheet management as we operated in a very difficult new home sales environment. In the fourth quarter, we were able to improve our sales pace, including in Texas, and exceed our expectations for home closings and profitability. For the full year, we were able to make continued progress on our multiyear goals. Specifically, we finished fiscal 2025 with an average active community count of 164, up 14% from last year.

We reduced our net debt to net cap below 40% and we grew book value per share to nearly $43 from a combination of profitability and the impact of share repurchases. It is certainly the case that fiscal 2025 didn't go exactly like we expected at this time last year. But I'm very proud of the resilience our team demonstrated. We effectively responded to the environment allowing us to remain on track to achieve our multiyear goals, for community count growth, deleveraging, and book value per share accretion by the end of fiscal 2027. By this time in the quarterly reporting cycle, you've already heard from our peers that the macro environment remains quite challenging.

As consumers grapple with both confidence and affordability, and builders work through excess inventory. For now, conversion and sales paces remain well below historical norms, and aggressive incentives, and move-in-ready specs are still required to sell homes. However, we are encouraged by the recent decrease in month's supply of new homes and the improvement in affordability arising from wage growth and lower mortgage rates. If these trends persist, we should see better selling conditions over the next year. But rather than waiting for the environment to improve, we are taking actions to enhance returns and capitalize on our differentiated strategy. Over the course of fiscal 2025, we took steps to improve both profitability and balance sheet efficiency.

Relative to profitability, we rebid our material and labor costs which has resulted in savings of about $10,000 per home. So far. These savings should be fully realized in our closings by the fourth quarter and we continue to pursue additional opportunities. In the fourth quarter, we completed a reduction in force. A painful but necessary reflection of the current environment. Which resulted in run rate savings of about $12 million per year. And we made product and sales leadership changes in several divisions including Houston and San Antonio. Our Texas pace improved to 1.8 in the quarter up from 1.3 last quarter.

To enhance balance sheet efficiency, we re-underwrote our portfolio to identify assets that were not a strong fit with our strategy. This led to asset sales of $63 million and a profit contribution of about $7 million. This portfolio realignment will continue in fiscal 2026 with non-strategic asset sales likely to generate more than $100 million in capital for reinvestment and likely to occur at or above book value. In the aggregate, we increased the share of our lot position controlled by options from 58% to 62%, and we completed a sale-leaseback of about 80 of our model homes to free up cash for higher return uses. Our entire industry seems to use some version of the same affordability playbook.

Higher purchase incentives, smaller square footage, and fewer features all help buyers attain homeownership. They don't excite homebuyers. And they don't address all of the costs that are straining affordability. At Beazer, we are focused on the total cost of homeownership. By offering lower mortgage rates, through competition and elimination of the middleman, lower utility bills from dramatically more efficient homes, and lower insurance premiums through competition and advanced building practices. On this slide, we've shown these savings for a recent closing here in Atlanta. This example demonstrates savings of about $3,000 per year versus comparable new homes. That represents nearly $50,000 in buying power, or additional value for our buyers.

And this is demonstrative of what we can do for every home buyer. We think that's an incredibly compelling value proposition in a housing market hampered by affordability constraints. The next step in our journey and likely the most important one for our shareholders, is to ensure that homebuyers and realtors in our market know what we have created. Last month, we introduced Enjoy the Great Indoors, our campaign to increase brand awareness and help our sales team explain the many benefits of owning a Beazer home. Strategically, we believe we are uniquely well-positioned to offer homebuyers solutions that address affordability concerns. Both our operational responses and our differentiated strategy are designed to help us achieve our multiyear goals.

For growth, deleveraging, and book value per share accretion. With 169 active communities at year-end, and nearly 25,000 active lots under control, we are confident we can reach our greater than 200 community count goal over the next two years. In fiscal 2025, we were able to deleverage to just under 40%, an important milestone on our progression. We anticipate decreasing net leverage by several points in fiscal 2026, and our goal remains to reach a net debt to net capitalization ratio in the low 30% range by the end of fiscal 2027. Finally, we grew book value per share to nearly $43. Extending our track record for strong book value growth.

Our goal is to generate a double-digit CAGR in book value per share through the end of fiscal 2027 through both profitability and share repurchases which would equate to a book value in the mid-50s. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave.

David Goldberg: Thanks, Allan. During the fourth quarter, we closed 1,400 homes well ahead of our expectations. Our stronger than anticipated closings in the quarter were a function of two factors. First, we executed 83 model home sale-leasebacks to improve balance sheet efficiency. Second, we sold more specs that could close in the quarter than we expected. Given the competitive environment currently, the margins on the specs we sold and closed in the quarter were below our expectations heading into the quarter. The combination of a higher percentage of specs and larger incentives resulted in a 17.2% gross margin.

On the positive side, our strong fourth quarter closings led to improved operating leverage in the period with SG&A at 9.6% of total revenue. All told, in a tough market, we were able to deliver fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of approximately $64 million and $1.02 in diluted earnings per share. With that said, let's detail our expectations for the first quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Our outlook contemplates market conditions remaining challenging with incentives elevated as builders push calendar year-end closings. We expect to sell approximately 900 homes with specs representing up to 75% of the total. We expect to end the first quarter with about 170 expect communities.

We anticipate closing about 800 homes in the quarter with an ASP around $515,000. Spec sales will remain elevated, we expect a lower portion of these sales to close within the period compared to the fourth quarter. Adjusted gross margin should be around 16%. This is primarily being driven by the higher level of incentive on specs and the very low share of to-be-built sales in the quarter's closings. SG&A total dollar spend should be relatively flat compared to last year's first quarter. We expect land sale revenue to be about $10 million with minimal P&L benefit. This should generate adjusted EBITDA between breakeven and $5 million. Interest amortized as a percentage of homebuilding revenue should be about 3%.

We should generate a net tax benefit of approximately $2 million. All this should lead to a net loss of about $0.5 per diluted share. While it's difficult to predict full-year results at a seasonally slower time of the year, I wanted to provide some commentary on our full-year goals. Simply put, we want to meet or exceed our fiscal 2025 adjusted EBITDA despite beginning the year with fewer homes in backlog and lower first-quarter margins. It won't be easy, here's why we think we can do it. We expect a combination of community count growth and a slightly improved sales pace, especially in the third quarter, to help generate a 5-10% increase in closings versus fiscal 2025.

ASC will also be up from a changing mix of communities delivering homes. We expect first-quarter gross margin to represent the low point for the year and we have a clear strategy to deliver about three points of margin improvement by the fourth quarter, assuming no reduction in current incentives. Here are the catalysts we believe will drive this improvement. First, the realization of the savings from our rebidding should grow sequentially over the year adding about $10,000 a home or nearly two points of margin by year-end. Second, we expect to benefit from a positive mix shift within our existing communities.

Our most aggressive incentives have occurred in our communities priced below $500,000, typically three to five points above our higher ASP communities. The share of our closings from these lower-priced communities should fall by double digits by the fourth quarter. And third, our newest communities are performing very well. The 48 opened since April 1, have generated margins more than 200 basis points above our reported margins. These new locations should grow to more than one-third of our closings by year-end. Any reduction in incentives, or a more favorable mix of to-be-built homes would only help. Estimating the timing and exact impact of these factors is difficult. But they should all contribute to sequential and margin improvements this year.

Finally, SG&A as a percent of total revenue should be down compared to our full-year fiscal 2025. Our balance sheet remains healthy with total liquidity at the end of the fourth quarter of nearly $540 million. With $215 million of unrestricted cash, nothing drawn against our revolver, and no maturities until October 2027, we have ample resources to fund our growth plans in fiscal 2026 and still allocate capital toward our other goals. In fiscal 2025, we repurchased about 1.5 million shares for about 5% of the company. We continue to view our stock's current valuation as compelling and we expect to repurchase at least that many shares in fiscal 2026.

During the fourth quarter, we spent $122 million on land acquisition and development, bringing our full-year fiscal 2025 total to $684 million. At the same time, we generated $63 million in land sale proceeds for the full year, leaving our net land spend just above $600 million. At year-end, our active controlled lot position was nearly 25,000 with 62% of our lots under option contracts. With our 2027 community count under control, we're able to be very disciplined in our land spending allowing us to allocate capital and maximize flexibility in returns. Finally, earlier this week, our board unanimously authorized the company to enter into a new rights agreement to continue the protection of our deferred tax assets.

At the September, our deferred tax assets totaled more than $140 million, about $84 million of which related to energy tax credit. The rights agreement is critical to reduce the risk of an unintended ownership change, which would limit our ability to realize benefits related to these credits. We note two important points about our rights agreement. First, at the end of the year, our DTA represented more than 10% of our book value and that percentage is expected to grow through June 30 as we continue to recognize additional energy efficiency credits. Second, the agreement will be presented for shareholder ratification at our upcoming annual meeting in February and will expire if shareholders do not support it.

Ultimately, our board took this action because they believed it was prudent to protect these assets. Which were earned through our incorporation of energy efficiency products in our homes on our way to becoming America's number one energy-efficient builder. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Allan.

Allan Merrill: Thank you, Dave. 2025 was certainly challenging. But it was also productive. We demonstrated both operational agility and strategic discipline. And we made progress toward each of our multiyear goals. Although we don't expect 2026 to be dramatically different, at a macro level, we are encouraged by following new home inventories and better affordability. But we aren't just waiting around hoping for better conditions. With a leaner, more efficient balance sheet, and numerous catalysts for margin improvement, we're positioned to make further progress toward our multiyear community count, deleveraging, and book value growth goals. Our homes are different. They're better, and in 2026, we expect that both customers and investors will notice.

Let me finish by thanking our team for their ongoing efforts to create value for our customers, our partners, our shareholders, and for each other. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to take us into Q&A.

Operator: Thank you, sir. Please press star followed by the number one. To withdraw your question, you may press star followed by the number two. Please unmute your phones and state your first and last name as prompted. One moment, for the first question. Our first question comes from Rohit Seth with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Rohit Seth: Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just on the gross margin, you got a 17.2% in the fourth quarter. You're guiding to sixteen Q1, a little bit of a decline there. But you guys the cost savings coming through. So just curious, said you mentioned incentives are going to...

David Goldberg: Well, yeah, Rohit. Look. We really talked about...

Rohit Seth: Just curious when the rebate benefits start to hit. Is that in Q2, Q3?

David Goldberg: Three things. So you put it correctly in Q1. Obviously, going in, we have incentives higher, and specs have been a higher percentage of our sales closings and backlog, frankly. So that you're going to see in Q1 in closing Q1. But as we go through the year, we didn't give an exact timing, but we talked about being able to pick up three points. And those are really the three points we talked about, right? The direct costs, which are nearly two points of margin improvement the $10,000 of rebid we've got so far. And, frankly, what we continue to work on then you think about the mix shift that we discussed in some of our existing communities.

We went into some depth about lower-priced communities and what that means and the shift away from lower-priced communities. That's going to add some margin accretion as we move through the year. And then finally, we talked about it pretty in-depth. We've got a lot of new communities that have come online. The margin profile of our new communities is better than our existing communities. And frankly, as those constitute a higher percentage of our overall closings, that will be accretive to margins. So look, we tried to make it pretty clear. We're not waiting for the market to get better. This isn't about assuming incentives are going to come down or that something's going to change the macro environment.

If those things happen, great. But what we're really trying to do is control what we can control.

Rohit Seth: Okay. And then, on your orders, orders improved substantially from your Q3. I think you had some issues there that you want to resolve, which you did. Q1 guide of about 900 orders. Just curious what you saw maybe October and November?

Allan Merrill: I think, it's Allan. October was sluggish as it usually is. So it was sort of in line with our expectations. I would expect, you know, as we have seen, almost every year, November and December, we'll build on that. So nothing out of the normal seasonal pattern. And I think the overall guide is to just below two. I think it's about one eight for the quarter.

Rohit Seth: Okay. Alright. I'll pass it on. Thank you.

David Goldberg: Thank you, Rohit.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Alan Ratner with Zelman and Associates. Your line is open.

Alan Ratner: Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks, as always, for all the thoughtful comments. And I know it's not easy to give a '26 outlook right now, but I think you walked through the moving pieces as well. Dave, just on or Allan, on the margin improvement for the year, I think you certainly walked through the tailwinds. One thing I didn't hear mentioned is land costs and you know, I would be surprised if your land flowing through the P&L at least is not somewhat of a headwind relative to 25. So how should we think about that as at least a partial offset to the tailwinds you have on the material and labor side?

Allan Merrill: And next. I understand the question entirely. You know, I always ask very good ones. What I've seen and what we've seen, Alan, is that the newest communities that are starting to hit the P&L, they've referenced 48 that have opened since April. Have across the board had better margins than existing communities. Now they're very, very low impact in closings in Q1. And that grows. So, I mean, there's got to be you're right about the fact that having bought later, they may have a per watt cost that is higher, but it appears to date that the mix of product and price is still allowing us to show margin improvement on those new communities.

I realize that's a little contrary to some other narratives, but that's the experience we've had since April. There's not a big move in the percentage of land cost as you look forward. And remember the we talked about is probably going to go up especially in the second half of the year. As we move out of some of our lower-cost communities. That's part of that percentage not changing.

Alan Ratner: Understood. Okay. No. That's helpful. And then second on the volume side, just 5% to 10% growth being, I guess, the goal for next year. I'm hoping you can help bridge that a little bit for me. I mean, I'm looking at your backlog, it's down 36% to start the year. I look at your spec count, that's also a bit lower than it was entering 2025. Not that's a bad thing, but, you know, your first Q orders guidance is also down year on year. So it feels like you had a pretty big hill to climb out of to put up closing growth for the year.

So can you help us think through exactly how that's going to flow through at least based on your expectations?

David Goldberg: Yeah. Look, Alan, I would kind of focus on a couple of things. And there's a lot that goes into it, obviously. Backlog is less and less predictive in a more spec-oriented market. And so what you really have to think about is units under production, ability to turn units, frankly, given the community count growth that we have and the sales pace improvement that we expect, especially in the third quarter off a pretty easy comp, we get to our 5% to 10% number. But that's really where it comes from. You know, Alan, you're a student of the industry, obviously.

If you go back and look at sixteen, seventeen, 2018, '19 and just look at units under production and the number of times they turn relative to closings in an environment where sales paces were not in the threes. They were in the low, mid, and high twos in years, we were turning that units under production two and a half times. We don't even have to turn the unit under production number from September at that speed to get to, up and closings. So it really is a function of sales more than it is backlog or more than it is a function of units under production.

And we absolutely think having a higher community count and having, not repeating our Q3 challenge of twenty-five. Will help us, get there. But that's you characterized it. We characterized it. That's our goal. And we laid out very clearly the parts and pieces of how we can get there.

Alan Ratner: Right. I appreciate that. And if I could squeak in one last one. You know, there's been a lot of chatter, over the last month or so about things the administration and is or might potentially do as far as getting involved in your guys' business to try to improve affordability and increase production, etcetera. You know, there's an article in the journal today about forward rate commitments, which was pretty negative just in terms of the mechanics of it. I'm not going to get into whether I agree or disagree with that.

But you guys have a little bit of a unique mortgage program and yet you're competing against these aggressive rate commitments or rate buy downs that your competitors are offering or you're probably doing it to some extent as well. What are your thoughts about forward rate commitments in terms of are they healthy for the market? Do you expect them to continue? Do you expect them to be cracked down upon by FHFA? And any thoughts you can give, I think, would be helpful. Thank you.

Allan Merrill: It's a obviously, tricky topic because there are lots of different facts and, you know, we can look at different buyer profiles, and different lenders. See things that are good or bad. From our perspective, we'd like to give customers choices. And if they want to use incentive dollars to buy rates down, we have a mechanism for them to do that. And they get tremendous transparency from multiple lenders. On exactly how those dollars are being spent on their behalf to achieve that rate buy down. If they want to use those dollars in the design center, if they wanna use those dollars on the price, our buyers have the opportunity to make those choices.

And I think anytime you've got transparency in the marketplace, and consumers are making choices, I feel pretty good about that.

Alan Ratner: Appreciate the thoughts as always. Thanks, guys.

David Goldberg: Thanks, Alan.

Operator: Our next question comes from Alex Rygiel with Texas Capital. Your line is open.

Alex Rygiel: Thanks. And Dave, I do appreciate all the guidance here, 2026. Couple of quick questions. The gross margin on your land sales was obviously low in the quarter. And you talked a little bit about your expectations for 2026. Can you just talk a little bit bigger picture sort of exactly what you're doing here with regards to, your land sales and what the strategy is?

Allan Merrill: Yeah. What we've done is a combination of probably two different things. The easiest part is a number of the communities that we've bought over the last three or four years were larger than we intended to use. And as we have brought them through entitlement and development, they're at a natural state now where we can what we call, sell off a product line. Or at least consider selling off a product line. So that's just sort of absolute ordinary course.

Doesn't happen a lot, but there have been instances where opportunity to control three or 400 lots, maybe four product lines, we wanna do two or three of them, and we wanna have a partner, do the other one. But we control the asset. So that'll be a part of our asset sale activity in 2026. But the other thing, and I talked about this in the script, was we went through this. We realized middle of last year I mean, by the spring selling season, it was clear the demand environment did not take off, and we were very intentional about re-scrubbing everything in our pipeline.

And one of the things we realized that sort of links to the incentive discussion is in those lowest-priced communities where incentives were the highest, those did not generate the kind of returns that we wanted. I'm delighted with the fact that we've been able to sell. We sold 60 odd million of that in '25 at a nice gain. I think we've got other opportunities to harvest and reinvest that capital in locations where we can make great returns. It's hard to predict, you know, what will be the result of negotiations over individual sales. But we expect the aggregate value will be over a 100. And we expect that in the aggregate, will be a gain.

It will be above our cost. I don't know that'll be true about every single asset at hard for me to predict that. But I feel excellent about the underwriting that we have done on our assets. I think they've held value or gained value since we bought them. But we are aligning really the locations where we have the best opportunity to get paid for our differentiated value proposition. Gotta remember, and I don't mean to sound pedantic, but we're the first builder to do zero energy ready at scale. And so figuring out which buyer profiles, which submarkets, align best with that differentiated value proposition, are some places that are price and only price.

Those are spots where I am happy that we've got a market to sell some land to others who wanna play that way. We'll take our capital and put it in places where our value prop is well rewarded.

Alex Rygiel: And then coming back to your spec home strategy, with 75% of your sales in the quarter spec related. What's your view on sort of how we end 2026 and what that mix looks like sort of heading into 2027?

Allan Merrill: You know, have you ever heard the expression, it's nice to want things? Somebody if you got kids, you know, they want something and you're like, oh, honey, that's great. Nice to want things. I want for us to have a much lower spec ratio. We are dealing with the reality, though, that right now, the buyer dynamic is specs are how to drive an acceptable sales pace. So I think it can take I mean, there are an infinite number of possible outcomes, but let's take kinda two ends of the spectrum. I think if the environment stays as it is, rates stay where they are, we're still fighting affordability.

We're dealing with you know, an overhang in markets of inventory. I think specs are gonna stay much higher than we would like. Long term. I think we see some strengthening in the spring selling season, and I'm not predicting that. It's certainly possible. We're seeing we talked about some green shoots and affordability, and it appears there's a little reduction in that. Inventory, which we anticipated. Could be in an environment where we can move back to sixty forty or fifty. We don't love being at seventy five twenty five because we absolutely do make more money on to-be-builts where we give buyers the opportunity to have the style selections in their home.

But we are gonna play in the market that is out there, not the one that we want. And so we've acknowledged that. For the time being is different than we want, but it is the way it is.

Alex Rygiel: And then one last question. Any directional thoughts on net land spend next year?

Allan Merrill: I think directionally, it's gonna be on the order of what it was in '25. It could be a little more, it could be a little less. I mean, but it's not gonna be dramatically different. You know, we've got development activity going on as we move toward that 200 community count. And we'll have some takedowns as we open communities. But as Dave said, we have a lot of discretion over our land spending this year. Which is, a good place to be.

Alex Rygiel: Thank you.

David Goldberg: Thanks, Alex.

Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press 1. Our next question comes from Sam Reed with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Sam Reed: Thanks, guys. Just following up on the direct cost savings you talked to that $10,000 of sounds like it's labor and material. Was wondering if you could bucket those savings a little bit in greater detail. Some of your peers have called out some nice savings on the labor side. And we've heard anecdotally some nice savings on the material side too. But just would love to see hear what you're seeing the drivers behind that, $10,000 number.

David Goldberg: Sam, I appreciate the question, but we don't really bucket out the individual labor versus material costs. I don't know, Allan, if you have other thoughts. But...

Allan Merrill: Well, I can help you in one way and then something that's a little bit different for us. And we kinda committed to it last year that we would do it, and that is drive down the cost of delivering a zero energy ready home. And I think of that $10,000, probably, it's not half but probably several thousand dollars relate to finding efficiencies by maintaining the performance of our homes. Again, I come back to we're the first builder at scale to do zero energy ready, and so some of the trades, some of the material providers, we weren't getting discounts. As we were doing that for the first time.

And I think we've been able to use our experience in the construction science that we have to reduce those costs. So that's a piece of that $10,000 but the larger share of it, as Dave said, is a combination of things. You know, we've got some turnkey trades. We've got some piecemeal trades. So I kinda distrust people talking about labor and materials as though they can completely bucket it. Because again, in a turnkey market, if you've got a cost reduction, it's a combination of both, and you can't really know that.

Sam Reed: Yeah. It makes perfect sense. And then just wanted to quickly hear any thoughts on the economic of the model home sale leasebacks. I mean, realize that's not something going to be big every quarter, but just kind of curious high level sort of what those economics look like. Thanks.

David Goldberg: Yeah. Look, just big picture. There were 83 sales that you can kinda work out the revenue impact from that. We've given that information. And the profitability was roughly in line with what we did, as an overall business. It was a financing cost. You know, look at it like if you're doing land banking or something like that, maybe a little better than that. I mean, it was just a way to use our cash. We can redeploy it in the business earning a higher return than that cost of funds.

Sam Reed: Absolutely, guys. Makes perfect sense. I'll pass it on.

David Goldberg: Thanks, Sam.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Julio Romero with Sidoti and Company. Your line is open.

Julio Romero: Hey, good afternoon. You guys said that the sales pace in Texas improved sequentially in the fourth quarter. Can you just talk about your expectations for Texas from a sequential sales pace in the first quarter? And then secondly, kind of embedded with regards to the market in Texas from a full-year standpoint?

Allan Merrill: Look, our full-year forecast for all three of our Texas markets is subdued. But it's nothing like what we experienced in the aggregate in the third quarter of last year. You know, I don't wanna get into quarterly statewide projections. But it's nothing like a snap back to what I would call normalcy. You know, we were under two in the fourth quarter I think we were one eight, which is better than the one three for sure. But it's still not great. We're not assuming, as I said, some dramatic improvement. But I'm really, really happy with our teams in San Antonio and Houston. I mean, we struggled in the third quarter, and they've really found a different gear.

I like that whole state. To lift up. It'd have a huge effect for us as a company with nearly 40% of our communities in Texas. But I think we're taking a fairly cautious static view that market doesn't get dramatically better over the next nine or ten months.

Julio Romero: Got it. That's helpful. And you mentioned one of the things that's encouraging you is the improvement in affordability or rising from wage growth. Can you just speak to which markets in particular you're seeing that and which markets are you encouraged about the prospects for improving wage growth helping your business in 2026?

Allan Merrill: So we've got a national data slide, and I think it's don't know what slide number it is, slide five, where we have tried to consistently for, I mean, multiple years in every quarter, just kinda track this percentage of what the mortgage payment represents as a percentage of the income. And it's we haven't, you know, done anything to manipulate the data. We cited all of our sources, and we've just kinda done it apples to apples to apples. Over a period of time. And you can see that with rates being down 40 or 50 basis points, two or 3% and in some markets, more wage growth over the last year.

Those two things together have changed the direction of travel of the line. It's still at an elevated level. I think trying to drop it down a market is not something I don't have that data in front of me. But we are super intentional about our footprint. The places where we are, we like because they have multiple sources of job growth, they have multiple sources of demand. Again, we're really committed to where we are and part of that is because we have confidence in the economies.

Julio Romero: Makes sense. I'll pass it on. Thank you.

David Goldberg: Thanks, Julio.

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

Jay McCanless: Hey. Good afternoon, everyone. So good job on getting the specs down sequentially. I guess, should we expect further diminution there, or are you guys gonna have to add some to get ready for the spring season? How should we look for the direction on that?

Allan Merrill: That's a great question. I think that number will pick up a little bit, honestly, as we do get ready for the spring selling season. But we're very careful. We watch sales paces. We don't start specs just to start specs. We react to where the demand is. So to the extent that it's up, it's going to be because sales pace is supported it being up, not because we were chasing a dream.

Jay McCanless: The second question I had know, looking at the fiscal 2026 slide, you know, if you think about revenue land revenue being up from 60,000,000 to a 100,000,000. You're saying 5% to 10% closings increase. And just rough math makes me think high single digit may be potentially low double digit growth in total revenues. I guess, how much how good is the line of sight you think to getting to that 100,000,000 in land sales and especially if you could walk us through again, when you think this closings jump might occur, you know, back half or whatever.

Allan Merrill: Well, the closings are certainly gonna be in the back half. I mean, we know exactly where our backlog was coming into the quarter. We've guided to as few as 800 closings in the first quarter. So for us to have closings growth, it is going to be back half weighted. Also where the community count growth will appear. On the land sale side, Jay, we've got good visibility. Mean, these are transactions where in every instance, we have multiple parties that were either talking to or we're talking to before going, under contract. Or under LOI. So I feel pretty good about it. These are highly desirable locations and we're gonna get out of them at or above book.

So I feel like that's gonna be great because that's then capital we can recycle. Into higher returns.

Jay McCanless: Great. And then, just the last question I had, you know, makes a lot of sense on protecting the DTAs like y'all talked about in the deck. Assuming that the shareholders do vote for that, I guess, how much of that remaining balance do you think you guys can monetize? Whereas some portion of that gonna be gonna be lost when the program I think in the deck, it said if it's ratified, it's gonna still gonna expire sometime in '28. I guess, how much of that value do you think you can get out of those DTAs before it has to disappear?

Allan Merrill: Well, let's sort of separate it. We're really focused on the energy efficiency tax credits. And I think Dave quoted the number of $84 million. That number is going to grow through June 2026. Every zero energy ready home that we deliver is eligible for a $5,000 credit. So that's gonna be the source of that number growing. The program ends in June. But we will be able to use all of those energy efficiency credits. It's just a question of how quickly we can use them, which in turn is a function of what level of profitability we have, '26, '27, '28.

I think we will use them relatively quickly, and that's why one of the features of this rights plan is that subject to shareholder approval, it will go away the sooner of those energy efficiency credits being gone, or three years. This is absolutely to allow our shareholders to recoup the costs we've already incurred to build these homes. And, I think we'll be able to do that over the next several years. And that's what the rights plan is really about.

Jay McCanless: Okay. That's great. Thank you.

David Goldberg: Thanks, Chad.

Operator: At this time, I am showing no further questions.

David Goldberg: Alright. I wanna thank everybody for dialing into our fourth-quarter call, and we've forward to speaking to you at our first-quarter call. Thanks so much. This concludes today's call.

Operator: Thank you for your participation. Participants, may disconnect at this time.