Q1 2025 Century Communities Inc Earnings Call
Speaker Change: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Century Communities Inc. 1st quarter 2025 earnings conference call.
At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode.
Speaker Change: Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session.
Speaker Change: If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator.
Speaker Change: I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Langton, SVP Off Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Speaker Change: Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for Century Communities Learning's conference call for the first quarter 2025. Before the call begins, I would like to remind everyone that certain students may learn this call, may constitute forward-looking statements.
Speaker Change: These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to an abrupt and uncertainties that could cause actual results to different cheerly from those described or implied in the four different statements.
Speaker Change: Journal of these risks and uncertainties can be found under the heading risk factors in the company's latest 10K, as supplemented by our latest 10Q and other SEC filings.
Speaker Change: We undertake no duties to update our forward-looking statements. Additionally, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. The company's presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with Gap.
Speaker Change: hosting the call today or Dale Francescon, Executive Chairman, Rob Francescon, Chief Executive Officer and President, and Scott Dixon, Chief Financial Officer.
Speaker Change: Sawing today's prepared remarks. We'll open up the line for questions. The staff, I'll turn the call over to Dale.
Thank you, Tyler. Good afternoon, everyone.
Speaker Change: Over the past few months, we have seen an increase in economic uncertainty, interest rate volatility, and a voting consumer confidence, which have contributed to a slower than typical spring selling season.
Speaker Change: Our absorption rate in the first quarter was weaker than we had expected heading into the year. As these economic concerns coupled with constraints on affordability have led to elongated cell cycles and cause some home buyers to pause.
Speaker Change: That said, we still firmly believe there is underlying demand for affordable new homes supported by solid demographic trends.
Speaker Change: Despite the current headwinds, our deliveries of 2,284 homes will only 3% below year-ago levels, while our average sales price declined by approximately 1% on a year-over-year basis.
Speaker Change: During the quarter, we focused on balancing pace and price while managing our direct construction costs in incentive levels.
Speaker Change: As a result, we were able to maintain relatively stable home building gross margins of 20.1% excluding purchase price accounting in the first quarter, which eased by only 80 basis points on a sequential basis.
Speaker Change: Our first quarter net new contracts totaled 2,692 homes, a 6% decline versus the healthy levels we saw in the year ago quarter, and a 33% increase over first quarter 2023 levels.
Speaker Change: Our absorption pace averaged 2.8 in the first quarter of 2025 and increased sequentially in both February and March, likely benefiting from both seasonality and the decline in mortgage rates over much of the first quarter.
Speaker Change: So far in April , our absorption rate is trending below 1st quarter 2025 25
Speaker Change: Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please like and subscribe. I'll see you next time.
Speaker Change: As we mentioned last quarter, given our lot pipeline and community count, we have the ability to grow our deliveries by approximately 10% annually over the next several years.
Speaker Change: That said, we are not focused on growth for the sake of growth alone, and we'll look to balance pace and price at the community level to optimize our returns.
Speaker Change: We continue to target our sales efforts and incentives on monetizing, completing, and completed comes while matching our start pace with our current and anticipated sales pace to maintain an appropriate level of spec inventory within our communities.
I also wanted to briefly address the topic of terrorists.
Speaker Change: While the situation is obviously fluid at this time, we are not expecting to see any meaningful increase in our direct costs in the near term.
Speaker Change: The majority of the products that we purchase are either made in the US are currently exempt from tariffs under the U.S. MCA agreement.
Speaker Change: We also have price protection agreements with our preferred supplier partners for many of the non-commodity products that we purchase and believe that with our relationships we will be able to work with our suppliers to mitigate the impact of any potential increase costs that could occur throughout their supply chains.
Speaker Change: In closing, I want to highlight that Century was recently selected to newsweeks list of America's most trustworthy companies for the third year in a row.
Speaker Change: We believe our inclusion on this list is a testament to the dedication of our team members and trade partners.
Speaker Change: which allows us to execute on our mission of consistently delivering a home for every dream and we want to thank them for their efforts.
Speaker Change: I'll now turn the call over to Rob to discuss our operations and land position in more detail.
Thank you, Dale, and good afternoon, everyone.
Speaker Change: As expected, our incentives on closed homes increased to approximately 900 basis points in the first quarter 2025, up from roughly 800 basis points in the fourth quarter 2024.
Speaker Change: are incentives on new orders in the first quarter also averaged approximately 900 basis points.
Speaker Change: Looking forward, we continue to expect incentive levels to be the largest driver of changes to our gross margins in the near term and anticipate second quarter incentives to increase by up to another 200 basis points due to the current conditions that are waning on order activity.
Speaker Change: We had continued success in controlling our costs in the first quarter with both our direct construction and finished lot costs on the homes we delivered roughly flat on a sequential basis.
Speaker Change: On a year-over-year basis, our direct construction costs declined by 4%.
Speaker Change: During the first quarter, our cycle times remained at approximately four months, and we have not seen any impacts from immigration reform on our labor base so far.
Speaker Change: While we are performing well on the cost side, we are still taking actions to further streamline our cost structure
Speaker Change: Given the slower than expected spring-selling season, in mid-April, we made the difficult decision to right-size our workforce, along with implementing other cost savings programs to lower our fixed costs.
Speaker Change: The savings from these initiatives will flow through cost-of-home sales, S-G-N-A, and financial services, and we would expect to see more of a benefit in the third and fourth quarters of this year, compared to the second quarter.
Speaker Change: We ended the first quarter with a community count of 318 up 26% on a year-over-year basis.
Speaker Change: While it is still early and also recognizing the 28% growth in our community count in 2024, we currently expect our UN 2025 community count to further increase
in the mid-single digit percentage range.
Speaker Change: who will provide a strong base to execute from over the next couple of years.
Speaker Change: In the first quarter, we started 2,211 homes and similar to last quarter continued our focus on maintaining an appropriate level of spec-home inventory.
Speaker Change: Turning to land, we ended the first quarter with close to 80,000 owned and controlled lots with our controlled lots accounting for 55% of our total lot count.
Speaker Change: Both our own and total lot count have remained consistent since the third quarter of last year, and we have continued to be disciplined on the landfront and underwrite deals to current market assumptions.
Speaker Change: Before turning the call over to Scott, I want to provide an overview of our land strategy.
Speaker Change: While we are involved in land banking agreements in a handful of our current communities,
are low-risk [inaudible]
Speaker Change: Landlight Business Strategy is primarily based on what I would describe as more traditional option agreements.
Speaker Change: with individual landowners and third-party land developers that require lowered levels of deposits and offer a greater transfer of risk.
Speaker Change: To highlight this point, at the end of the first quarter, our 43,000 controlled lots were secured by non-refundable deposits that totaled only $71 million.
Speaker Change: While there is clearly uncertainty in the market, we are proactively managing our costs, targeting incentives to drive incremental sales, remaining disciplined on starts at inventory levels, but still continuing to position the company for growth in the years ahead while mitigating
Speaker Change: I'll now turn the call over to Scott to discuss our financial results in more detail.
Scott Dixon: Thank you, Rob. In the first quarter of 2025, pre-tax income was $53 million and that income was $39 million for $1.26 per diluted share.
Scott Dixon: Adjusted net income was $42 million, or $1.36 per diluted share.
Speaker Change: Yvitao for the quarter was 73 million, and it just did Yvitao was 76 million [inaudible]
Speaker Change: Home sales revenues for the first quarter were $884 million down 4% for the prior year quarter on lower deliveries in average sales price.
Speaker Change: Our first quarter average sales price of 387,000 decreased by 1% on a year-over-year basis primarily due to the higher level of incentives.
Speaker Change: Our deliveries of 2,284 homes in the first quarter declined by 3% on a year-over-year basis, and were impacted by our decision to manage our starts at a lower level over the past two quarters, with elevated mortgage rates and economic uncertainty also laying on order activity.
Speaker Change: For the second quarter 2025, we expect our deliveries to range from 2,300 to 2,500 homes, assuming an absorption pace similar to first quarter 2025 levels of 2.8.
Speaker Change: Looking out to the back half of the year, we would expect further sequential increases in our deliveries in both the third and fourth quarters of 2025.
Speaker Change: At quarter end, our backlog of sold homes was 1,258 valued at 521 million, with an average price of 414,000.
Speaker Change: While the average price of our first quarter backlog was about the average sales price of our first quarter deliveries, this difference is largely due to mix, including the percentage is shown to complete homes.
Speaker Change: In the first quarter, adjusted home building gross margin was 21.6 compared to 22.9 in the fourth quarter 2024. In cap home building gross margin was 19.9 versus 20.6 in the prior quarter.
Speaker Change: Additionally, purchase price accounting associated with our two acquisitions in 2024 reduced our first quarter 2025 gross margin by 20 basis points.
Speaker Change: We would expect purchase price accounting to have a similar impact on our clumbling gross margin in the second quarter of 2025.
Speaker Change: The second quarter 2025, both our direct construction and finished lock costs, should be roughly flat, quarter over quarter, as we continue to successfully manage our costs.
Speaker Change: However, we expect home building growth margin to ease on a sequential basis through the higher levels of incentives.
Speaker Change: S-GNA is a percentage of home sales revenue with 13.27% in the first quarter.
Speaker Change: Assuming the midpoint of our full-year home sales revenue guidance, which I'll detail shortly, we would expect our S-GNA as a person of home sales revenue to be roughly 12.5 [inaudible]
Speaker Change: Also, so that people can better model our STNA, we would expect roughly 70% of our STNA to be fixed and 30% variable for the full year 2025.
Speaker Change: For the second quarter 2025, we expect our S-GNA as a percent of home sales revenue to be approximately 15.5 percent.
Speaker Change: Revenues from financial services were 18.5 million in the first quarter in the business-generated pre-taction sum of 2.4 million.
Speaker Change: We would expect a similar margin profile from our financial services business, so the remaining three-quarters of this year.
Speaker Change: Our tax rate was 25% in the first quarter of 2025.
Speaker Change: We would continue to expect our full year caps rate for 2025 to be in the range of 25% to 26%
Speaker Change: with the increase over our full year 2024 tax rate of 24.1%, primarily driven by a reduced member of Homes expected to qualify for 45-hour credits.
Speaker Change: Our first quarter 2025 met home building debt in that capital ratio equal 30.1% and compared to the fourth quarter of 2024 levels of 27.4%
Speaker Change: Our home-building debt to capital ratio equal 32.4% in the first quarter and compared the fourth quarter of 2020-24 levels of 30.3%
Speaker Change: During the corridor, we increase our quarterly cash dividend by 12 percent to 29 cents per share and have consistently grown our dividend on an annual basis since its initiation in 2021.
In the first quarter, we also repurchased [inaudible]
Speaker Change: 753,000 shares of our common stock for $56 million at an average share price of $73.76.
Speaker Change: or a 13% discount for a book value per share of $84.41 as of the end of the first quarter.
Speaker Change: We ended the quarter with 2.6 billion in stockholders equity and 788 million of liquidity.
Speaker Change: Additionally, in mid-April, we increase the capacity of our Senior Unsecured Credit Facility, the 1 billion from 900 million.
Speaker Change: We also have no senior debt materities until June of 2027, providing us ample flexibility with our leverage manager.
Turning to guidance [inaudible]
Speaker Change: With the ongoing economic uncertainty, interest rate volatility, and declining consumer confidence impacting our order activity, we are reducing our full year home delivery guidance to be in the range of 10,400 to 11,000 homes in home sales revenue to be in the range of 4 to 4.2
Speaker Change: Our full-year home delivery guidance assumes an average absorption rate of approximately 2.8 for the full year 2025.
Speaker Change: Inclosing, we are taking the necessary steps to address the headland facing the market, including reducing our costs, remaining discipline on the landfront, and maintaining appropriate level of spectrum inventory, or matching our starts with our sales.
Speaker Change: At the same time, subject to market demand, we have the ability to grow our deliveries by approximately 10% annually over the next several years, given our lot pipeline, community count and strong balance sheet.
With that, I'll open the line for questions. Operator
Speaker Change: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session.
Speaker Change: Should you have a question, please press the R1 in your touchstone phone.
Speaker Change: You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised [inaudible]
Speaker Change: Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star 2.
Speaker Change: If you're using a speaker phone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys.
Speaker Change: Your first question comes from Carl Reichardt of BTIG. Your line is already open
Carl Reichard: Great. Thanks, guys. Nice to talk to you. Thanks for taking the questions.
Speaker Change: I'm looking at your absorption rate between communities and complete and complete was up I think I got it right 4%
Speaker Change: I'm wondering if you'd like to talk about why that difference was so stark, if the macro has kind of impacted everything the same. Is that a function of the aggressiveness of some of your entry-level peers in their pricing and incentive structures, and if so, how do you combat that as you get further into the spring and into the summer?
Yeah, Carl, great question and appreciate it.
Speaker Change: So, you know, a lot of dynamics that obviously are interplaying between our century brand as well as our century complete. I think one of the benefits that we've always had on the century complete brand that I think you're seeing run through some of those numbers is just...
Speaker Change: Just the fact that we are playing in some markets where they're quite frankly is not as much direct competition from other builders and I think that's really played itself through in a little bit more of a stable absorption profile here in the first quarter.
Speaker Change: Well, more specifically, Carl, just real quick, you know, when we look at it though on the community's side, you know, Texas really had the lowest performance at 2.1 absorption, and you know, part of that is some things that we're working on fixing, of course, but that was really one of the outliers that dropped things down as well.
Speaker Change: Okay. And when you're thinking about moving product, go in forward just to maintain the pace that you've got, and I think you said April is slower than Q1 already.
Speaker Change: Are you looking more aggressively at direct price cuts on finished units or near finished units versus incentives or versus like interest rate buy downs and other kinds of non base price cut incentives and maybe you can talk about if that mix is shifting. Thanks.
Well, homes that are complete.
that are unsolved.
Speaker Change: We're definitely moving both with interest rate buy downs as well as price reduction so, you know, that's why we've messaged here that our margins could be come.
Speaker Change: Off in Q2 based on another 200, up to another 200 basis points in incentives to move that product. So yes, those are being discounted higher if they're complete and unsold.
Okay, I appreciate it. Thanks, stars.
Absolutely.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from Jay McCanless of Wedbush. Your line is already open
Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions.
Speaker Change: So I'm just trying to walk through the closing guidance map here.
Speaker Change: 22, 85 closings, I think, for this quarter, and then your talk, and roughly somewhere between 2,400 for the second quarter.
Speaker Change: and then a pretty big jump, I guess, in your cadence in the back half of the year. I mean, normally, you would see closings go up in the back half, but if you're seeing this much headwind,
Speaker Change: What makes you think that's going to happen? Is it going to be community growth or something else? I guess just kind of walk us through how you're thinking about the fact half from a volume perspective?
Speaker Change: Come online here in the second and the third quarter from a sales perspective. That's when we're counting a new community Come online, which will really support the higher closings in the back half of the year, even which kind of generally fly up sorctions in badic lift and archive.
and then...
Speaker Change: Did you and I apologize if you said this already, but did you quantify what type of SNA savings you think you might get from some of the way off that it happened?
Speaker Change: So the savings from the various cost reduction activities, which are of course not just specific to the reduction in force.
Speaker Change: We'll flow through a handful of different line items including cost of sales.
Speaker Change: S-GNA, as well as the financial services lining items. From an S-GNA perspective, those cost savings are incorporated in the guide for the full year of S-GNA that we provided.
and then Dixon.
Yes, sir. Go ahead.
Speaker Change: No, go ahead, Jay, sorry. All right, now I'm just going to ask in terms of pricing.
Speaker Change: I guess any help you can give us there in terms of the level, the price cuts you're having to make and
Speaker Change: and also with the buy downs that you all are doing that you talk about. I guess is it still five and a half to five and three quarters, is that kind of the sweet spot where people get interested or you're having to buy it down even further right now, just giving some of the other affordability challenges that are out there.
Speaker Change: So generally speaking for the first quarter, that average rate that we were buying down to has been pretty consistent in the mid-fives.
Speaker Change: Now, as we move forward, and obviously with the volatility that's occurred in rates here, that cost could obviously continue to increase.
I think, and generally speaking, from an incentive standpoint [inaudible]
You know, we've been running kind of.
55 Price, 45 in Senate, or excuse me, mortgage.
Speaker Change: and I think you'll see that generally continue to play itself out over that additional 200 bases points that we currently see with the foul April itself as played itself out.
Speaker Change: Okay, great. Thanks so much. Thanks for taking my question. Too late. Thanks, Jay.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from Alan Ratner of Zellman in Associates
Your line is already open [inaudible]
Hey, guys, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question.
Speaker Change: Hey, I was hoping to just a better understand a little bit the timing of the incentive increase you mentioned, second quarter kind of expecting it to be up about 200 basis points.
Speaker Change: On the other hand, it sounds like April has been a softer month from an order perspective. So, were these incentives increases done kind of more recently and recent days in response to the continued softness and fells or...
Speaker Change: where they've done earlier in the month and you still haven't seen a response, I guess, or at least an acceleration from that.
Speaker Change: Yeah, Alan, I think the easiest way to kind of articulate it is, obviously there's been a change here that we've seen in the consumer profile.
Speaker Change: at least at the volatility post March in the early April 12, so you're in that.
Speaker Change: That volatility has been in the market has caused a consumer to pause, and so we're at currently we believe we're anticipating some additional incentives that we've recently put in place in order to achieve the absorptions that we're looking for into Q2.
Speaker Change: Got it so it's more of a prospective look based on kind of the continued volatility I guess in the market so I guess that that kind of someone answers my next question but it sounds like for your full year absorption got a 2.8 that's
Speaker Change: in line with your average in the first quarter, maybe even a bit above year-to-date if you include April's softness in there. So, that's counter-seasonal. I mean, normally we would see the absorptions a bit lower, certainly in the fourth quarter. So, is that...
Speaker Change: Stability, just based on your expectation or your strategy, if you will, to do what you need to do from an incentive standpoint to kind of hit that type of absorption level.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I think that's, I think that is fair, Alan, yes [inaudible]
Speaker Change: Okay, perfect. Alright, and then finally, just on the tariff set, I know you mentioned kind of no significant cost impact. I'm just curious.
Speaker Change: Is there any potential or are you at all kind of concerned about the potential for some supply chain disruptions from all of this noise, just kind of thinking like if builders were to try to move around some of their suppliers to try to mitigate some of these potential cost headwinds, could that cause any stress on some domestic suppliers or distributors or any bottlenecks, have you had any conversations with trades alluding to that at all?
Speaker Change: Yeah, I mean we've obviously been cognizant that that could be a result going forward. We haven't seen anything to date of course, but you know we're.
Speaker Change: fully aware that that could happen and working toward if it did, you know how we would mitigate that but again nothing today it's still very fluid as things are moving around but it is a possibility.
Speaker Change: Of course, understood. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from Michael Rehaut of JP Morgan. Your line is already open.
Michael Rehu: Hi everyone, this is Andrew Azzi on from Mike. I appreciate you taking my questions. Drill down. Hey, I'm not sure if you covered this. I joined a bit late, but it's possible I wanted to drill a down a bit into the demand trends over the last couple of months within the quarter. Obviously, we know April was pretty volatile, but yeah.
Michael Rehu: Yeah, you know what we really saw in the first quarter was, you know, we're very typical seasonality, albeit muted from the very very strong 2024 that we experienced in the first quarter.
Michael Rehu: So, sequentially, demand, absorption, traffic, et cetera, were up as we moved through the corridor.
with March being a very typical.
Michael Rehu: March in kind of the three and a half from an absorption standpoint.
Michael Rehu: In really that most recent change has been that we want to make sure it's articulated here in the materials, it's certainly the volatility in April has caused our consumer to pause.
Michael Rehu: But again, from the two first quarter's orders perspective, very typical seasonality, albeit a little bit more muted than 2024, a little bit more on pace with 2023.
Speaker Change: Got it. And then maybe a bigger quick picture question on kind of the long-term 10% growth. What do you envision that to look like from a community count perspective versus let's say like a normalized sales pace when you give that number of 10%.
Speaker Change: Yeah, difficult to obviously foresee where absorptions are going to be. As we got into mid last year with the two acquisitions that we did and the efforts that we provided on the landfront, the focus was really getting on the additional store count from which to drive volume from.
Speaker Change: That really hasn't changed as we sit here today, so we anticipate year-over-year that will be up in the mid-singlet digits from a community count standpoint, so from positions from growth, I think we continue to be in a very good position to drive incremental leverage and GNA over the long-term out-of-art community counts.
We continue the...
Speaker Change: Review upcoming communities under today's market assumptions to ensure that they're underwriting with...
Speaker Change: with the environment that we're in. But we certainly feel optimistic about long-term demand with our consumer profile of the product that we're providing. And so I think we are very optimistic in achieving that growth over a longer period of time.
Speaker Change: Certainly the market dynamics of the first quarter, and then really recently here in April have slowed down on the exhaustion side, but we'll continue to work towards getting additional community count open to leverage the infrastructure that we have.
Speaker Change: I really appreciate all the color that's helpful. I'll pass them on. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from Ken Zener of Seaport Research Partners. Your line is already open.
Afternoon, everybody.
Good afternoon, Ken.
Speaker Change: Appreciate the transparency around the Delta and incentives. That's very useful.
Speaker Change: Now, did you see it occur, you know, if that's your general shift in incentives, did it occur more in the Century Complete Product line? Or was it more just kind of regional in nature or was it price point in nature? I'm trying to...
Discern how the different buyers might be.
Demand the incentives
You know,
Speaker Change: and a handful of dynamics that are running through the various different regions on and on
Speaker Change: from a mortgage and center side, you see it very consistently across our buyer profile. Our Century Complete brand is your aware. You know, it's a little bit more of a direct in terms of the pricing, not a ton of additional auctions that are available within the spec homes. So you don't see as many just direct price reductions within that brand, just as a normal course.
Speaker Change: Within the regions of Century complete, I think, or excuse me, as the Century brand, we are seeing a little bit of a higher incentive level within, within likelihood, Texas, region that's opposed to our other regions.
Speaker Change: I don't know that I would necessarily slice it between any other price point. In general, the West has probably held up the strongest amongst all of our regions. But as you know, we're pretty focused on the first time home buyer, so generally speaking, the trends on incentives.
have been consistent across our regions.
Speaker Change: a few things that happened to put them mildly. But what I just said in this, they're kind of...
Speaker Change: Brockness, I'm thinking about it. So if your starts, I think you said 2211.
2700 orders
Um...
And did we lose you?
Bill, are you still there? Yes, I think.
We lost...
The Signals of Ken, Alpany, to the next.
Speaker Change: We heard just the first part of it and then apologies, we could not hear the rest of the question.
Speaker Change: That's all right. I stopped talking, which is surprising. What I'm asking is you obviously the decelerated start.
Yo
Speaker Change: Starts to your orders. That gives us a fair indication about, you know, your closing range, but do you have to do any de-stocking? A home builder today mentioned that they're actually just going to be right lowering their inventory, they want to reduce their spec counts. [inaudible]
Speaker Change: Is that a situation where you are? Do you see kind of orders and starts in theory walking hand in hand through the rest of the year?
Speaker Change: Yeah, Ken, if you were to go back a couple quarters into early last year, we were at the market with more real bust, we certainly had a higher starts level, really since the back half a last year, third quarter and really into the fourth quarter, we've moderated those starts such that, especially we feel like we're in an appropriate position from an inventory level for which to move forward on.
Speaker Change: Okay, good. And I know I've asked this before, but like many of the builders report in materials which would give us useful insight into that start number and inventory and stuff. But thank you very much and I do appreciate your clarity. Thank you.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from Alex Barron of Housing Research Center. Your line is already open.
Alex Barron: Thank you. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Hi, Alex. Hi, I wanted to understand how you guys are thinking about
Alex Barron: using cashflow that comes back as you close homes to buy incremental land versus...
Alex Barron: stepping up on the share bye-bye given the discount to book the alley.
and John Dixon. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Yeah, Alex, very great question. I think, you know, from a high level, from a capital allocation perspective, really, really no changes than kind of what we've previously discussed.
Speaker Change: Broadly over the last 18 months or so. I think our first priority is to reinvest in the business while keeping our leverage, generally where you can see it wrong, which...
Speaker Change: Last year we did over a hundred million dollars of returning capital to our shareholders, both through our dividends as well as to share repurchases.
Speaker Change: and certainly given the 55 million of shared repurchases that we take here during the first quarter, we're certainly well on our pace.
Speaker Change: to hit or exceed that number next year. As we certainly look at, continue to look at our land pipeline and underrate to the current market conditions.
Speaker Change: We certainly will be opportunistic when we think it makes sense to redeploy some of that capital to share buybacks.
Got it
Speaker Change: And as far as the decision, you know, whether to increase rate by down versus cut prices maybe in response to what your competitors are doing, how are you guys making that decision, you know, what drives it?
Speaker Change: It's really a balancing act and it goes down to the individual.
Speaker Change: Subdivision in House, Alex. And a lot of it depends on that particular market, what some of the competitors are doing. And candidly, we're all doing a lot of the same thing in that regard. But it really just depends on the particular market and the subdivision within that market. It's not just general across the board, and one size fits all. [inaudible]
Okay, best of luck for this year. Thank you.
Absolutely, thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press R1.
Dale Francescon: There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Dale.
Francescon, for Closing Remarks
Dale Francescon: Please go ahead. Thank you operator. To everyone on the call, thank you for your time today and interest in Century Communities.
Speaker Change: Our team members, thank you for your hard work, dedication to Century, and commitment to our valued home buyers.
Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.