Forestar (FOR) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Globe and Mail

22-07-2025

DATE
Tuesday, July 22, 2025, at 11 a.m. EDT
CALL PARTICIPANTS
President and Chief Executive Officer — Andy Oxley
Chief Financial Officer — Jim Allen
Chief Operating Officer — Mark Walker
Vice President — Chris Hibbetts
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RISKS
Management cited "While affordability constraints and weaker consumer confidence" as ongoing headwinds negatively impacting the pace of new home sales and lot deliveries.
Gross profit margin declined to 20.4% from 22.5% in the prior year quarter, with management attributing part of the decrease to the closeout of "one community with an unusually low margin."
Lot delivery guidance was lowered to "14,500 to 15,000 lots" for FY2025, down from prior expectations, in response to slower market conditions.
TAKEAWAYS
Revenue: $390.5 million in GAAP revenue, up 23% compared to Q3 FY2024, driven by higher lot sales volume and pricing mix.
Net Income: $32.9 million, or $0.65 per diluted share, down from $38.7 million, or $0.76 per diluted share, in the prior year, due to margin compression and lower one-time gains.
Lots Sold: Lots sold totaled 3,605, representing an 11% increase from Q3 FY2024 and a 6% sequential increase from the previous quarter.
Lots Under Contract: 25,700, up 26% year over year, representing 38% of owned lots and $2.3 billion in future revenue.
Gross Profit Margin: Gross profit margin was 20.4%, down from 22.5% in the prior year quarter. After adjusting for an unusually low-margin community, the normalized gross profit margin was approximately 21.1%.
SG&A Expense: $37.4 million, or 9.6% of revenue, up from 9.2% last year, attributed to new market expansion and a 16% higher community count.
Average Lot Sales Price: $106,600, influenced by a greater proportion of higher-priced lot deliveries.
Liquidity: $792 million, including $189 million in unrestricted cash and $603 million in undrawn revolver capacity.
Debt and Capital: Total debt stands at $873 million, with a net debt to capital ratio of 28.9% and $70.4 million in senior notes maturing within twelve months as of June 30, 2025.
Book Value Per Share: $33.04, up 11% year over year, reflecting growth in stockholders' equity.
Revenue Guidance: Management reaffirmed full-year revenue guidance of $1.5 billion to $1.55 billion for FY2025, despite reduced volume expectations.
Lot Delivery Guidance: Lowered to 14,500-15,000 lots for FY2025, citing slower homebuyer demand.
Capital Expenditure: $372 million invested in land and development, with approximately 80% allocated to development versus 20% to acquisition.
Owned Lot Position: 102,300 total lots as of June 30, 2025, with 67% owned and 33% controlled; 10,000 finished lots at quarter-end.
Backlog Exposure: 27% of owned lots were subject to a right of first offer with D.R. Horton, as detailed in executed agreements as of June 30, 2025.
D.R. Horton Relationship: 15% of D.R. Horton home starts in the past 12 months, and 23% of its finished lot purchases in Q3 FY2025 were from lots developed by Forestar Group Inc.
New Market Expansion: Entered seven new markets over the past year, including the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, supporting a 16% increase in community count.
Development Cost Trends: Management stated development costs have "stabilized," remaining "flattish" sequentially.
Pricing Outlook: Higher average lot pricing year to date has been attributed mainly to sales mix, with some support from national lot supply constraints.
Strategic Focus: Continued emphasis on capital efficiency, inventory turnover, and targeting entry-level/first-time buyer segments.
SUMMARY
Forestar Group (NYSE:FOR) management attributed a 23% revenue increase to higher lot sales and price mix, while acknowledging net income (GAAP) fell due to lower gross margins and the absence of prior-year asset sale gains. Year-to-date pricing has exceeded initial expectations for FY2025, leading to maintained revenue guidance of $1.5 billion to $1.55 billion for FY2025, despite reduced lot delivery targets of 14,500 to 15,000 lots in response to slowed demand. Lot backlog reached a five-year high, reflecting expanded contracts and reinforcing growth visibility. Leverage remains moderate, and liquidity is described as strong, with management underlining operational flexibility as a competitive advantage.
Jim Allen stated, "Over the last three years, that [gross margin] range has kind of been in the 21% to 23% range," suggesting no clear trend toward further margin erosion.
Capital structure was positioned as a key differentiator, with management referencing competitor challenges accessing project-level development loans.
New market entry and increased diversification of the customer base were highlighted as ongoing priorities to drive future growth opportunities.
Mark Walker noted, "The availability of contractors and necessary materials remains solid. The land development cost has stabilized."
INDUSTRY GLOSSARY
Lot Banker: An intermediary acquiring finished lots for resale to builders, often providing bridge financing or inventory management.
Right of First Offer: A contractual arrangement giving a specified party, here D.R. Horton, the first opportunity to purchase lots before they are offered to others.
Full Conference Call Transcript
Andy Oxley: Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. I'm also joined on the call today by Jim Allen, our Chief Financial Officer, and Mark Walker, our Chief Operating Officer. The Forestar Group Inc. team delivered a solid third quarter generating $32.9 million of net income or $0.65 per diluted share on $390.5 million of revenue. Lots sold increased 11% year over year and 6% sequentially to 3,605 lots. Additionally, lots under contract to sell increased 26% from a year ago to 25,700 lots representing 38% of our owned lot position and $2.3 billion of future revenue, which is the highest contracted backlog we have had during the last five years.
While affordability constraints and weaker consumer confidence continue to impact the pace of new home sales, we maintained strong liquidity through disciplined investment in inventory. Our experienced operators are adjusting the pace of development where appropriate, and we are moderating our land acquisition investments. Over 80% of our investments this quarter were for land development. We remain focused on turning our inventory, maximizing returns, and consolidating market share in the highly fragmented lot development industry. Our unique combination of financial strength, operating expertise, and a diverse national footprint enables us to consistently provide essential finished lots to homebuilders and navigate current market conditions effectively. We will now discuss our third quarter financial results in more detail.
Jim Allen: Thank you, Andy. In the third quarter, net income was $32.9 million or $0.65 per diluted share, compared to $38.7 million or $0.76 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. Revenues for the third quarter increased 23% to $390.5 million compared to $318.4 million in the prior year quarter. Our gross profit margin for the quarter was 20.4% compared to 22.5% for the same quarter last year. The current year quarter was negatively impacted by the closeout of one community with an unusually low margin. Excluding the effect of this item, our current year quarter gross margin would have been approximately 21.1%. Our pretax income was $43.6 million compared to $51.6 million in the third quarter of last year.
And our pretax profit margin this quarter was 11.2% compared to 16.2% in the prior year quarter. The prior year quarter was positively impacted by a $5 million gain on sale of assets. Pretax profit margin in the prior year quarter, excluding the gain on sale, would have been 14.6%. Lots sold in our third quarter increased 11% to 3,605 lots, with an average sales price of $106,600. Our average sales price this quarter was impacted by an outsized mix of lot deliveries from communities with higher price point lots. We expect continued quarterly fluctuations in our average sales price based on the geographic and lot size mix of our deliveries.
Chris Hibbetts: In the third quarter, SG&A expense was $37.4 million or 9.6% as a percentage of revenues compared to 9.2% in the prior year quarter. Our increase in SG&A is primarily driven by the expansion of our operating platform, including entering seven new markets alongside D.R. Horton's footprint, and increasing community count by 16% in the last year. We are pleased with the progress we have made building our team, and we continue to attract high-quality talent. We remain focused on efficiently managing our SG&A while investing in our teams to support future growth.
Mark Walker: New home sales have been slower than last year as continued affordability constraints and weaker consumer confidence continue to weigh on demand. However, mortgage rate buy-down incentives offered by builders are helping to bridge the affordability gap and spur demand for new homes, particularly at more affordable price points. Our primary focus remains developing lots for new homes at prices that target entry-level and first-time buyers, which is the largest segment of the new home market. The availability of contractors and necessary materials remains solid. The land development cost has stabilized. We have also seen improvement in cycle times despite continued governmental delays.
Our teams utilize best management practices and work closely with our trade partners to develop lots to drive operational efficiency.
Jim Allen: D.R. Horton is our largest and most important customer. 15% of the homes D.R. Horton started in the past twelve months were on a Forestar Group Inc. developed lot. And 23% of their finished lot purchases this quarter were lots developed by Forestar Group Inc. With a mutually stated goal of one out of every three homes D.R. Horton sells to be on a lot developed by Forestar Group Inc., we have a significant opportunity to grow our market share within D.R. Horton.
We continue to work on expanding our relationships with other homebuilders, and intermediate 15% of our third quarter deliveries or 530 lots were sold to other customers, which includes 331 lots that were sold to a lot banker who expects to sell those lots to D.R. Horton at a future date. We also sold lots to eight other homebuilders, one of which was a new customer.
Mark Walker: Our total lot position at June 30 was essentially flat from a year ago, at 102,300 lots, of which 68,300 or 67% was owned and 34,000 or 33% were controlled through purchase contracts. 10,000 of our owned lots were finished at quarter-end, and the majority are under contract to sell. Consistent with our focus on capital efficiency, we target only a three to four-year supply of land and lots and manage development phases to deliver finished lots at a pace that matches market demand.
Owned lots under contract to sell increased 26% from a year ago to 25,700 lots or 38% of our owned lot position. $230 million of hard-earned money deposits secured these contracts, which are expected to generate approximately $2.3 billion of future revenue. Our contracted backlog is a strong indicator of our ability to continue gaining market share in a highly fragmented lot development industry. Another 27% of our owned lots are subject to a right of first offer to D.R. Horton based on executed purchase and sale agreements.
Chris Hibbetts: Forestar Group Inc.'s underwriting criteria for new development projects remains unchanged at a minimum 15% pretax return on average inventory, a return of our initial cash investment within thirty-six months. During the third quarter, we invested approximately $372 million in land and land development, which was relatively flat with the prior year quarter. Roughly 20% of our investment was for land acquisition, and 80% was for land development. Although we have moderated our land acquisition investment, our team remains disciplined, flexible, and opportunistic when pursuing new land acquisition opportunities.
Our current land and lot position will allow us to return to strong volume growth in future periods, and we still expect to invest approximately $1.9 billion in land acquisition and development in fiscal 2025, subject to market conditions.
Jim Allen: We have significant liquidity and are using modest leverage to keep our balance sheet strong and support our growth objectives. We ended the quarter with $792 million of liquidity, including an unrestricted cash balance of $189 million and $603 million of available capacity on our undrawn revolving credit facility. Total debt at June 30 was $873 million, with $70.4 million of senior note maturities in the next twelve months. And our net debt to capital ratio was 28.9%. We ended the quarter with $1.7 billion of stockholders' equity, and our book value per share increased 11% from a year ago to $33.04.
Forestar Group Inc.'s capital structure is one of our biggest competitive advantages, and it sets us apart from other land developers. Project-level land acquisition and development loans are less available and have become more expensive in recent years, impacting most of our competitors. Other developers generally use project-level development loans, which are typically more restrictive, have floating rates, and create administrative complexity, especially in a volatile rate environment. Our capital structure provides us with operational flexibility while our strong liquidity positions us to take advantage of attractive opportunities as they arise. Andy, I will hand it back to you for closing remarks.
Andy Oxley: Thanks, Jim. As outlined in our press release, we are maintaining our fiscal 2025 revenue guidance of $1.5 billion to $1.55 billion while lowering our lot delivery guidance to 14,500 to 15,000 lots in response to current market conditions. Our team has a proven track record of adjusting to changes in market conditions quickly, and we are closely monitoring each of our markets as we strive to balance pace and price to maximize returns for each project.
While we expect home affordability constraints and cautious homebuyers to continue to be a near-term headwind for new home demand, we are confident in the long-term demand for finished lots and our ability to gain market share in the highly fragmented lot development industry. Continued execution of our strategic and operational plans, combined with constrained finished lot supply across the majority of our diverse national footprint, positions us for further success. With a clear direction, a dedicated team, and a strong operational and financial foundation in place, I am excited about Forestar Group Inc.'s future. John, at this time, we'll open the line for questions.
Operator: Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your telephone keypad. You may press 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. It may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Once again, please press 1 if you have a question or a comment. The first question comes from Trevor Allinson with Wolfe Research. Please proceed.
Trevor Allinson: Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. First one's on gross margins. You called out the single community had I think you said roughly a 70 basis point impact on margins. Excluding that, it still seems like gross margins took a step down both sequentially and year over year in the quarter. Should we think about this 21% gross margin rate being a good run rate going forward? Or were there other kind of one-time impacts in the quarter that impacted your margins?
Jim Allen: Just one moment. The range of 21 to 23%. So at the lower end of the range for this quarter, but we haven't really seen anything that would indicate significantly lower margins going forward.
Trevor Allinson: Okay. You guys were cut off for quite a long time. I really only caught the end of that question. Could you repeat the beginning or the answer? Could you repeat the beginning of it? I'm not sure if other people had the same technical difficulty. But I think I only caught probably the last five or six words of your answer.
Jim Allen: Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah. It's really mostly mix. I mean, again, if you exclude that one closeout community, our margins, our normalized margin for the quarter would have been 21.1%. We try to do that every quarter, adjust for unusually high or low margin lot sales, or kind of one-time items. Over the last three years, that range has kind of been in the 21% to 23% range. So this quarter, it's a little bit lower. But, you know, and we're continuously managing price and pace at each community to maximize returns. We underwrite to returns, not to margin.
So we're always going to have a mix of higher or lower margins depending on which communities are delivering in the period. So this quarter was kind of at the lower end, but at this point, we see no indication of reduced margins.
Trevor Allinson: Okay. Alright. That's very helpful. And apologies if others could hear you clearly and had to repeat the answer there. Second question is around development costs. You mentioned again that they've stabilized. I think you used similar language last quarter. Have you started to see the development costs actually decline sequentially? Or is it just more of stabilization as you say and those are kind of flattish quarter over quarter?
Jim Allen: Yeah. It's flattish, and it didn't stabilize for quite some time now. Sometimes we see some upticks in some categories and some downward mobility in others as well. But for the most part, we're just classifying it as stable.
Trevor Allinson: Okay. Makes sense. Thank you. Thanks for all the color, good luck moving forward.
Jim Allen: Thanks.
Operator: The next question comes from Anthony Pettinari with Citigroup. Please proceed.
Asher Sohnen: Hi. This is Asher Sohnen on for Anthony Pettinari. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to clarify about the guide. I mean, you trimmed your volume guidance but reiterated revenue, which I guess implies better pricing. Is that just a function of maybe the mix of which communities are delivering or are there other puts and takes on pricing that we should think about?
Jim Allen: Yeah. I mean, if you just kind of look back to our original guidance, and the ASP implied in that, you know, to date, we've realized a higher ASP. Which is partly due to lot price increase, but largely due to mix as well. So if you just look at the average selling price to date, what that implies for the fourth quarter, it leads to us leading our revenue guidance at the same level.
Asher Sohnen: Great. Thanks. And then just to clarify on that last point. What is what would you point to as driving those lot price increases?
Jim Allen: Yeah. I mean, we just have a real...
Mark Walker: Yeah. In our original guidance, we had implied a low single-digit ASP increase, you know, just based on the kind of national shortage of finished lots. And so it really is community by community where the lots are located for the price, but then I said, a large part of our ASP increase is just due to mix.
Asher Sohnen: Of where those are located. Okay. Understood. Thanks. I'll turn it over.
Operator: The next question comes from Michael Rehaut with JPMorgan. Please proceed.
Alex Isaac: Hi, good morning. This is Alex Isaac on for Mike. Appreciate you taking my question. I wanted to ask about the new markets you entered and curious if there's any like regional focus as well as also, like, what you're seeing on the ground, you know, between the regions that you operate in.
Andy Oxley: Yeah. So, as we've talked about, we are opening up in the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, Salt Lake, Reno. So those are all new markets for us. We have team members now, boots on the ground, and are in the process of building out support around those as market conditions allow.
Alex Isaac: Thanks for the color on that. Those are all new markets in the last year, but we didn't have any new markets necessarily in this quarter.
Alex Isaac: Okay. That sounds great. Appreciate that. And one other question, you mentioned, you know, all the capital structure. There's been some questions that we've received related to some of the other competitors in the land development space, and their restructure. Is there an interest or would there be any consideration of conversion to a REIT, you know, for Forestar Group Inc. or has that been something that you've considered?
Jim Allen: No. Not really. I mean, we're a developer as opposed to, you know, land banker just providing financing. So I think that's really our business model and our focus.
Alex Isaac: That sounds great. Appreciate all the color.
Operator: Once again, if you have a question or a comment, please indicate so by pressing star 1 on your touch. The next question comes from Barry Hames with Sage Asset Management. Please proceed.
Barry Hames: Thanks so much for taking my question. D.R. Horton on their call talked about a slower growth in their community count as they go through the next few quarters, you know, into next fiscal year. You know, I think they talked about having been in double digits and getting down to more of a mid-single digit. It sounded like maybe over a couple of quarters, but could you talk about how that might affect your thoughts going forward as you start thinking about the next fiscal year? Thanks so much.
Andy Oxley: Well, we still have a lot of growth opportunity within Horton because at the moment, we're about 15% of their lots. And our mutually stated goal is to basically double that in the intermediate term. So I think that we will continue to see growth and market share consolidation within Horton. But also, you know, we are increasing our customer base with other builders as well and continuing to add new customers to the mix. So we think we have significant opportunity to grow both within the Horton footprint and outside.
Barry Hames: Great. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Operator: If there are any remaining questions, please indicate so now by pressing star 1.
Andy Oxley: Thank you, John. And thank you to everyone on the Forestar Group Inc. team for your focus and hard work. Stay disciplined, flexible, and opportunistic, as we continue to consolidate market share. We appreciate everyone's time on the call today and look forward to speaking with you again to share our fourth quarter results on Tuesday, October 28.
Operator: This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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