Green Brick Partners Inc (GRBK) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Green Brick Partners Earnings Call for the Third Quarter ended September 30, 2021. Following today's remarks, we will hold a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be available for playback. A slideshow supporting today's presentation will accompany today's webcast and is available on Green Brick Partners' website, www.greenbrickpartners.com. For listeners joining us by teleconference, go to the Investors & Governance, then click on the option that says Reporting, and then scroll down the page until you see the Third Quarter Investor Call Presentation.

The company reminds you that during this conference call, it will make various forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including its financial and operational expectations for 2021 and the future and anticipated impact of COVID-19 on future operations, prospects and other aspects of our business.

Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties and could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those set forth in our forward-looking statements. These risks are set forth in our third quarter earnings press release, which was released on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, and the risk factors described in the company's most recent annual quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Green Brick Partners undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements that are made during this call. In addition, our comments will include non-GAAP financial metrics. The reconciliation of these metrics and the other information required by Regulation G regarding these metrics can be found in the earnings release that Green Brick issued yesterday and the presentation available on the company's website.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Green Brick's CEO, Jim Brickman. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Hi, everyone. With me is Rick Costello, our CFO; and Jed Dolson, our COO. Thank you for joining the call. As the operator mentioned, if you are joining us by phone today, the presentation that accompanies this earnings call can be found on our web page at greenbrickpartners.com. At the top of our web page, click on Investors & Governance, then click on the option that says Reporting and scroll down the page until you see the Third Quarter Investor Call Presentation. I'll give everyone a few seconds to do this.

Our third quarter income of $48.5 million was a record for any third quarter and up nearly 40% from the prior year. Year-to-date, our net income was up 50% versus the first 9 months of 2020. Thanks to a great team effort, we provided our investors some of the best returns in the industry. Our return on equity was 26.1% for the quarter, bringing our year-to-date return on equity to 24%, which compares to 19.9% year-to-date 2020.

After we saw the huge upward shift in demand in June 2020, our land teams did a fantastic job of quickly pivoting to acquire well-located land. As a result, during the last 12 months, our lot position grew over 100% to 24,354 owned and controlled lots. While these additional 12,000 plus lots acquired over the last year did not meaningfully contribute to our bottom line in 2021, these lots will contribute to us growing significantly in the future -- in our future earnings.

Our gross margin reached 26.9% this quarter, up 580 basis points from 2 years ago, up 210 basis points from the prior year quarter and up 150 basis points from the first quarter of 2021 and up marginally compared to the last quarter as Green Brick achieve pricing power in our core markets of Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta. In order to capitalize on rising prices and demand, we have pace sales by limiting our available homes for sale to generally those where the slab is at least poured.

We have also achieved price increases in excess of input costs. We believe this focus on price over pace will sustain our industry-leading margins and strong financial performance. With our record $1 billion backlog, leading margins and superior lot position, Green Brick is extremely well positioned to grow our business in 2022 and beyond.

At the end of the third quarter, we now have a record 830 -- 863 spec homes under construction, which is up nearly 50% year-over-year, included in our record 2,555 homes under construction. Most of our homes under construction should convert to closings over the next 3 quarters. The sale and closing of the increased number of spec homes will allow us to capture the most current price increases and to maximize our profitability.

Please flip to Slide 4 of our presentation. We are a diversified builder with 8 brands in 4 major markets with a wide array of product types and price ranges. We believe this stratification of products will continue to appeal to a broad base of homebuyers and expect that our entry-level segment will continue to rapidly expand through the growth of our Trophy Signature and CB JENI brands. As we have discussed in our previous earnings call, Green Brick operates under a much simpler ownership structure than seen in prior years, as approximately 70% of our top line revenues are now generated by wholly-owned builders and another 10% of our total revenues are generated by subsidiaries with a 10% to 20% minority interest.

If you turn to Slide 5, we highlight some of our financial results. Since 2015, we have grown our revenues at a compounded annual growth rate of 27.4% from just under 300 million in 2015 to just over 1.2 billion over the last 12 months. Over that same period, Green Brick has grown our bottom line pretax income and an even better compounded annual growth rate of 44.3% as we have improved margins, added financial services, instituted national purchasing, simplified our ownership structure and gained overhead leverage.

Our current quarter residential growth of 28.4% and pretax income growth of 39.3% falls right in line with our historically high compounded annual growth patterns. This current year growth is not surprising since we have sustained this growth since Green Brick went public in late 2014. We aim to achieve the best risk adjusted returns possible for our investors for the third quarter and had a 26.1% return on average equity. Our third quarter gross margin of 26.9% are some of the best in the industry, while we maintained one of the lowest debt to capital of homebuilding peers at 31.9%.

Just last week, Green Brick was given the rank of #19 on Fortune's fastest-growing companies list for 2021. This is up 36 spots from last year and positions Green Brick as one of the fastest public builders. We continue to focus on growing our business responsibly with high-quality communities and low leverage in markets where Green Brick operates and we get the benefit of significant economic and demographic trends, which we will discuss in more detail in the next few slides.

Slide 6 quantifies the strong population growth over the past decade seen in Texas, Colorado, Florida and Georgia for the 2020 census data. Out of the 25 largest states in the United States, these 4 states show some of the highest percentage increases from the population 10 years ago. Texas led the nation with its resident population expanding just under 4 million people in the last decade. Colorado, Florida and Georgia, all show a double-digit growth over the same time period, while the population for U.S. grew only 7.3%.

We believe this positive population growth is evidence that our concentration in Sunbelt and Sunbelt adjacent lower tax state is a winning strategy. We expect that in migration to these states from California and the northeastern United States and the very strong demographic profiles of the Sunbelt will continue to generate positive population growth for many more years to come and will preserve the robust housing market for us in future years.

Slide 7, we highlight the economic growth of our core markets and present the decline in active homebuilding listing seen in September '21 from the prior year. Like every other economy in the country, the COVID-19 pandemic created a major disruption in commercial activity and led to a significant rise in unemployment early last year. However, as shown on the right side of the graph of this page, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth have remained remarkably resilient. With Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth achieving the lowest unemployment rates in August 2021, it is evident that our core markets should sustain a strong job market and labor force. We believe these economic strengths will continue to support the strong demographic trends in our markets and reinforce housing demand for years to come.

Looking at the left side of the graph, you can see that Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta had the second and third largest 12-month declines in active listings as of September 30, 2021, of the 10 largest MSAs with listings down 34% and 28%, respectively. This remarkable drop in listings is evidence of the booming demand in our markets and is an indicator for pricing power Green Brick has in 2021 to capitalize on inventory shortage of existing homes.

We believe this imbalance between housing demand and supply in our markets will persist through 2022 and provide Green Brick with continued pricing power to offset rising input costs. With 90% of our ending active selling communities in DFW and Atlanta, we believe that Green Brick is well positioned to succeed in Q4 2021 and beyond. Additionally, we believe the strong bounce back from the high unemployment seen in April 2020 and the rapid uptick in demand is further proof that our focus on business-friendly pro-growth markets is the correct and best choice that will continue to differentiate us from our peers.

Jed Dolson, our Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, will now speak in greater detail to our growth drivers and our land position. Jed?

Thanks, Jim. On Slide 8, we demonstrate how our investment in land has translated into an increased capacity to generate top line growth. As you can see from the chart on this slide, the key driver behind our strong financial and operational results has been our ability to convert investments in land to future growth in revenue. Year-to-date, our lots owned and controlled increased by 9,886 to end at 24,354 total lots, a new all-time high for the company. This is a 68% increase from the start of the year.

After including land under option and lot option through joint ventures, we expect about 90% of our current inventory of lots owned and controlled will be self-developed by the company. We believe this strong emphasis on land development should allow Green Brick's margins and returns to continue to represent one of the best growth opportunity profiles among our peers as these self-developed lots avoid expensive premiums charged by third-party land developers.

For those of you who are interested, Slide 9 provides additional detail on the attractive submarkets in DFW and Atlanta where our lot supply is located.

Now follow me to Slide 10, and you will see that our communities and lots under development hit new highs this quarter. With 55 communities under development versus 42 last quarter, our land pipeline is well established to meet our continued growth trajectory over the next several years. These lots under development will shift toward the entry-level market with over 1/3 of the lots under development located in more affordable submarkets.

In the next 3 months, we expect to complete and release roughly 900 lots to our subsidiary homebuilders for new housing starts. During fiscal year 2022, we expect to accelerate our delivery of finished lots by finishing 3,700 lots during the year. With both our long-term and short-term land needs met, we have visibility for growth at least through fiscal year 2023.

Slide 11 highlights our ending units under construction. Our units under construction are up 44% over the past 9 months and up 88% over the last 12 months. While we have seen growth at virtually all brands and price points, our unit growth was primarily driven by starts in our Trophy brand, where we increased its ending units under construction by 255% during the 12 months ended September 30, 2021. As we go forward, we expect continued expansion of the Trophy brand to establish larger communities with higher absorption rates and unit density.

Additionally, our pivot to these larger communities focused on entry-level buyers has not been at the cost of increased risk. Our Q3 2021 home closing saw an average FICO score of 747, with 84% of our fundings exceeding a FICO score of 700 per data from Green Brick's Mortgage Ventures. The creditworthiness of our average buyer profile is a fundamental strength of many of the A markets where we operate, which we will -- which we believe will continue to mitigate risk for our business.

In summary, we feel we have a very strong land position in some of the best markets in America with strong demand from low-risk buyers, all while maintaining a conservative debt-to-capital ratio and achieving industry-leading margins. To provide some additional context for the strong results this quarter and take a more detailed look at how our Trophy brand is well established for future growth, please turn to Slide 12 of our presentation, which gives an in-depth look at Trophy share of Green Brick's performance metrics through September 30, 2021.

As you can see on the slide, Trophy's percentage of home closings has grown by 16% from 20% from our full year closings in the fiscal year 2020 to 36% for the 9 months ending September 30, 2021. However, with 39% of our starts this year and 61% of lots owned and controlled related to Trophy, we believe Trophy has a clear runway to continue its growth trajectory in Dallas-Fort Worth.

While our lots owned and controlled allocated to Trophy has increased nearly 148% from a year ago, it is important to note that nearly 15,000 lots shown as of September 30, 2021, includes 2 communities with more than 1,000 lots each that have a much longer life cycle. Excluding these 2 communities, Trophy's share of existing lots is 51%, which is still 15% higher than Trophy's 36% share of home deliveries these past 9 months.

One of the main ways we mitigate risk in these larger, longer life communities is buying land in submarkets at very attractable, very affordable prices. In future phases of our own lot deals, not included in our 55 communities under development, we have approximately 6,600 lots at a basis of under $6,300 per favor lot, which is substantially below replacement costs today. Most of these also have muds or [pins] that further reduce our cost of capital and development risk.

Slide 13 of our presentation explains why we believe the growth of our Trophy Signature brand has the capacity to scale our bottom line results even faster than our top line results. First, with the average Trophy community expected to be double the size of our other subsidiary next year in terms of lot count per community, we're able to increase our absorption pace without requiring growth in community count. Second, Trophy's business model allows for 100% utilization of purchase orders during construction with no changes allowed. This process reduces our average cycle time by roughly 12% and allows for more efficient inventory turnover and stronger financial results.

Finally, Trophy has seen an outsized improvement in its gross margin over the past 12 months, increasing by 410 basis points. This growth exceeds by 140 basis points, our consolidated margin improvement of 270 basis points for the same period year-over-year. This higher profitability is enhanced by Trophy's lower SG&A leverage. This combination of higher margin, shorter cycle times and better SG&A leverage should generate higher returns on invested capital. All in all, we believe these strong fundamentals will continue through 2020 (sic) [2022] and make a strong case of our continued investment in Trophy Signature homes.

Next, Rick Costello, our CFO, will discuss our third quarter and annual results in more detail. Rick?

Thanks, Jed, and thank you all for joining us to review our 2021 third quarter financial results. Slide 14 of our presentation shows the continuation of our high levels of year-over-year growth in our home closings and home closings revenue. Year-to-date, our closings have grown by 24%, while related revenues grew 31% year-over-year. Quarter-over-quarter, our closings grew by 19%, and our home closing revenues grew by 29%.

While Slide 14 looks at our historical closings and revenues, Slide 15 points and pivots to our future closings and shows the year-over-year increases in net new orders and a record backlog. While net new orders are up 52% versus the first 9 months of 2020, our Q3 2021 net orders were down 16% as the company metered sales to better match construction schedules and buyer expectations and improve our ability to capture price increases throughout the construction cycle.

Interestingly, with our average sales price of $542,000 in net new orders, is up nearly 22% in Q3 on a year-over-year basis, our sales revenues for net new orders in the quarter was up 2% over last year, despite the 16% drop in order numbers. Year-to-date, sales revenue is up 34% with orders up 17% and the average sales price up 15%. The absorption rate per average active selling community per quarter of 8.8 homes during the 9 months ended September 30, 2021, exceeds the 6.9 net new home orders per quarter during the 9 months ended 9/30/20 by 27.5%.

That said, our absorption pace in Q3 of 2021 of 8.2 net homes per quarter is over 50% higher than Q3 of 2019, 2 years ago. By metering sales during the last 6 months, we've been able to increase our spec homes under construction by nearly 50%, which will enable us to capture ongoing price increases and to maximize profitability. We're now limiting sales to homes that have at least a slab poured.

Our mix of homes under construction is now at 34% spec homes at 9/30/21, which is up from only 28% as of March 31 of this year, but so far below the 44% spec level as of the end of last year. Likewise, our Q3 2021 ending backlog is up 84% from a year prior, with our backlog average sales price up 21%. We will continue to limit our sales pace, begin to reduce our backlog and increase our level of spec inventory in the coming period.

Bottom line, we're holding back homes for sale, so we have a better mix of presold backlog homes versus specs. We believe that any noted decline in new orders reflects these efforts rather than changes in demand which remains very strong. We think improving our mix will lead to more efficient operations, higher margins and returns and less risk of construction costs. Prices are rising every month. So selling some houses 2 or 3 months before completion will get a better margin than selling all the houses 7 months ahead of completion. The expected return to a higher level of spec units under construction should position us to capture increased sales prices. Managing this type of flow is a corporate strength and making decisions like this contribute to our superior gross margins and return on capital.

Let's move to Slide 16 related to our financial highlights. Homebuilding gross margin for Q3 2021 was up 210 basis points over the same quarter of 2020, and adjusted gross margin was up 160 basis points quarter-over-quarter. For the 9 months ended September 30, 2021, homebuilding gross margin and adjusted gross margins were up by 270 basis points and 230 basis points, respectively, from the same year prior period. We believe that our focus on price over pace will continue to sustain our industry-leading gross margins.

Turning to operating leverage. Our SG&A expense improved by 80 basis points at 9.8% for Q3 2021 with the prior year quarter at 10.6%. Our year-to-date Q3 ratio of SG&A expense to total revenues of 10.2% improved by 110 basis points from 11.3% for the prior year. With increasing top line revenues expected in Q4 2021, we expect quarterly and full year operating leverage to continue to improve. Our interest coverage of 17.9x year-to-date was 22% higher than the same prior year period. Our strong interest coverage clearly demonstrates our capacity to generate positive cash flow well above our needs.

Our bottom line Q3 2021 diluted EPS of $0.95 was a record for any third quarter and represents a 40% increase over Q3 of 2020, far outpacing our total revenue growth of 24%. For the 9 months ended 9/30/21, our diluted EPS of $2.48 was up 49% from the prior year period. As you will recall, during Q2 of 2020, we benefited from a $6.7 million tax benefit from energy tax credit related to open prior tax years.

So to get a better sense of our improvement in our operational income performance, we need to look at pretax income which has grown 61% year-to-date over the first 9 months of 2020. And finally, our annualized net income return on average book equity is strong this quarter at 26.1% and for the year increased an additional 100 basis points to reach 24.0% year-to-date. So combined with our low debt leverage, our risk adjusted returns are truly remarkable.

Our focus on high-quality communities that drive our industry-leading gross margins and impressive returns to shareholders is even more evident in our performance over the last 2 years, as we show on Slide 17. This is a new chart that shows since Q3 of 2019, our gross margins have improved 580 basis points to 26.9% with 8 consecutive quarters of increase. That's a 27.5% increase from 21.1% in Q3 of '19 and has driven remarkable earnings growth during that time. On the last 12-month basis, net income has grown 66.8% annually over the last 2 years from $56.1 million in Q3 of '19 to $156 million in Q3 of '21. We've achieved this growth while maintaining a conservative balance sheet and have redeployed our earnings into a robust land pipeline that has grown our lots owned and controlled by 100% over the last year, which positions Green Brick for growth in 2022 and beyond.

Please move to Slide 18 of our presentation, where we compare our Q3 '21 gross margins with available peer data. Our gross margin reported for the quarter was 26.9% and 26.5% year-to-date. This chart demonstrates that this performance is among the best in the industry. We believe our superior margin experience is evidence of our conservative land underwriting, operating efficiencies as we scale our business and prudent planning. This is the winning strategy that has well prepared us to manage pace and price during the remainder of 2021 and beyond. We expect our gross margins to remain among the best in the industry as we focus on maximizing profitability by limiting presales and increasing spec homes.

Slide 19 visually demonstrates that we have grown our revenues and provided stable earnings by concentrating on several homebuyer segments. For the 9 months ended 9/30/19, 2 segments accounted for about 60% of our revenues. Fast forward 2 years and we now address 6 distinct and significant customer segments, which all experienced strong revenue growth in the first 9 months of this year.

For the 9 months ending September 30, 2021, our entry-level segment plus our first time move-up segment, now combined to represent 35% of home closings revenues, an increase of 1,600 basis points over 2 years ago when they combined to represent just 19% of home closings revenue. The expansion of our more affordable inventory was created through intentional reallocation of more capital to our Trophy Signature Homes brand. We expect to continue to expand our entry level segment, which we believe should position Green Brick to capture an even greater portion of today’s housing demand.

Please turn to Slide 20. Here, we have compared our performance versus our small and mid-cap peers to demonstrate why we believe that our risk adjusted growth and returns are uniquely strong. We have provided 6 measures, 5 of the measures covered the 12 months ended 9/30/21 or nearest period, growth in homebuilding revenues, gross margin percentage, interest coverage, pretax income return on invested capital and growth in lots owned and controlled, and the other measure, which is debt to capital is as of a point in time, 9/30 of '21.

With the strength of Green Brick's results for each of these metrics, Green Brick continues to perform at or near the top of our peer group. In fact, our high gross margins succeed even some large cap peers as we discussed earlier in our remarks. Our returns on capital are even more impressive when you consider our peer-leading growth in lots supply, as most of these lots will not produce income until 2022 and beyond.

Lastly, please look at Slide 21, which focuses on our lower leverage. We were able to achieve our record-setting results while maintaining one of the lowest debt to cap ratios among small cap and mid cap builders and growing our land and lot position by 100% over the last 12 months.

I'll now turn the call back to Jim, who will wrap up our part of the call prior to opening things up for Q&A. Jim?

Great. Thanks, Rick. Really great results this quarter or the culmination of years of diligent planning and hard work by our subsidiary builders in our corporate team. We believe that the results achieved this quarter are just the next step in Green Brick's remarkable growth story as the company swiftly moves to materially exceed $1 billion in revenues this year. We believe Green Brick's prospects for continued top line and bottom line growth are truly unrivaled in our industry.

I'll now turn the call back over the operator for your questions. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Michael Rehaut with JPMorgan.

This is Maggie on for Mike. You talked about your focus on price over pace and also pointed to the continued pricing power that you're seeing. Could you talk about this quarter the pace and magnitude of price increases maybe compared to earlier this year? And looking forward, how you're thinking about the potential for further price increases, particularly being mindful of affordability as you continue the pivot towards the entry-level segment?

Sure. This is Jim Brickman. Obviously, this is a major topic that everybody wants to discuss. And Jed Dolson, our Chief Operating Officer is probably best prepared to really answer that in detail because he deals with this question on almost a daily basis with our builder. So Jed, do you want to talk about price versus pace and pricing strategy or margins?

Yes. Maggie, we were very aggressive on our price increases this quarter in Q3 more so than in Q2. And we think those results will show up later in further quarters.

And Maggie, it's Rick. Thanks for your question. And also, just in terms of magnitude, our backlog ASP grew by 7% from quarter to quarter. And that was largely driven by the ASP on our new orders, which was up by 10% from Q2 to Q3.

Got it. And then the second question is on your gross margin outlook over the next couple of quarters. Can you remind us when you expect to see peak lumber costs flowing through the P&L and then also talk about how you're thinking about other inflation into 2022?

And then lastly, at your Investor Day, you highlighted some of your programs in operational initiative that are helping you manage through the current environment. So could you talk about how those are also factoring into your outlook over the next couple of quarters?

Sure, Maggie. This is Jim Brickman. Most of the lumber cost, the big lumber price increases, we're going to run through the income statement by the end of the fourth quarter. Really, the challenge right now is what's happening, are we going to give up some of those lumber cost benefits as lumber prices they retreat slower than they go up, but are we going to give some of those increases back next year. And we're watching that very closely. We think we’ve reached prices nicely where we can still have margin growth.

Next week, for example, Jed and I are talking to all of our division presidents and each one of our purchasing departments and operating managers and we are -- we have basically 9 stages of construction. We're going through each stage of the construction and reviewing input costs today and projections tomorrow. And really, it's just an ongoing process. We feel good about it, but it's very volatile.

Our next question comes from the line of Susan Maklari with Goldman Sachs.

This is Charles Perron in for Susan. First, I would like to talk about the land market and what you're seeing in there? It seems like you were able to secure further your land position this quarter and to support growth for the coming years. But can you talk about the competition that you're seeing for those lots, both from the public and the private builders? And how does this impact the margin trajectory in the coming years?

Okay, Charles. This Jim Brickman. I'm going to take that at a high level and then try to answer it a little bit more on a granular level. First of all, my job as CEO is to manage risk and create a culture that manages risk. And I think we've done a really good job of doing that. And I’m going to continue to do that. At the same time, we recognize the profit starts with land and the greatest risk is in land.

And I'd like to leave kind of our audience with 2 points about off balance sheet, land banking risk, margin and return. And one is that, land banking comes at a very high cost of capital. Two is that land bankers are some of the smartest people in the homebuilding space. And three, I've been really perplexed by this. And that is that the idea that to please Wall Street that land risk can be magically shifted to land bankers that are some of the smartest people in the room, I think, is a little disingenuous.

Lots are in very low supply in all of our markets. There are very few developers in our markets. We have been the biggest land developer in our markets for a very long time. And we are going to use our strong balance sheet, low lot supply to continue to develop lots because generally, we think these lots are going to provide at least a 5% margin advantage over auction lots. So does that answer your question on kind of a broad basis and a margin basis?

Yes. Yes, it does. I appreciate the color on that, Jim. And then my follow-up, I was wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the supply chain dynamics that you've seen over the quarter. Obviously, a lot of your competitors have reported a very challenging supply chain environment right now. But I would be curious to know how it has impacted your business over the course of the quarter? And where do you see the most pressure right now?

Jed, why don't you take that?

Yes, Charles. The biggest problem with the supply chain right now is the lack of predictability about what is going to be the next shortage, whether it be labor or material. So just the uncertainty about what is around the band after we finish the next stage of construction.

We are ordering materials way in advance now. We are labor lined up way in advance. But frankly, labor is having to touch the homes more frequently. They're having to come back on return trips because they don't have all the materials that are needed when they make the first trip out.

So it's material varies shortage -- material shortages vary market-by-market. For example, in Atlanta, we are having cabinet and window issues. In Dallas, we're having less of that, but we're having more brick shortages here. So it's really a submarket by submarket issue.

Our next question comes from the line of Carl Reichardt with BTIG.

I had a couple for you guys. One on deliveries. Was there -- if you look at your internal budget for 3Q, did you have some deliveries that shifted out of 3Q into 4Q due to those delays, Jed?

And then second, you mentioned of the 2,500 plus homes that you have under construction, you thought most of those would close in the next 3 quarters. I'm just trying to get a definition of most, is 90% kind of the right numeric to attach the most?

Yes. This is Jed, Carl. Yes. To answer your last question first, yes, you could assume 90% of the 2,500 will close in the next 3 quarters. And on -- and then yes, we did have several last-minute material shortages. We had a lot of flooring issues in Dallas in Q3 that did push some closings into Q4.

Okay. And then on orders, could you talk about maybe the percentage of communities that your metering sales in still? And it seemed to me that your orders actually from an absorption or community perspective were pretty good. They're -- I mean, they're up. And sort of anti-seasonally in 3Q, we've heard or they're -- obviously, we've seen other builders whose numbers have been sort of off anti-seasonally. I'm just kind of curious your thinking on whether or not the orders surprise you to the upside given the metering, given the price increases and given the relatively flat communities sequentially?

All right. Well, let me kind of answer that in a backwards way in that Q3, we were a little disappointed with our cycle time. We thought with the drier weather, we would have finished more homes like we just alluded to, but we had labor and material shortages that prevented that.

So I think as you look forward in Q4, I think you'll see us tap the brakes a little bit on sales compared to Q3. As you mentioned, we sold more homes in Q3 than we did in Q2 of this year. So Q4, we're going to tap the brakes a little. The demand is off the charts, strong. We're metering sales in 80% plus of our communities.

And again, we have a lot more spec inventory that's going to be available to sell the first and second quarter of 2022.

Okay. And then last on pricing, are you noting in your sense -- and Jim, you kind of may alluded to this in terms of specs, but is your sense that your pricing power in Trophy Signature right now is greater than it is in the remainder of the brands and products? And then like I asked almost every quarter, any sense as to whether or not you're looking at expanding Trophy Signature more aggressively sooner in the market outside Dallas?

No, our greatest pricing power is in the very supply constrained markets like Frisco, Alpharetta -- Frisco, Texas; Alpharetta, Georgia where we are the largest builder in those submarkets, and there's very limited competition from other builders and unbelievably low existing house supply. So that's where really we have unbelievable pricing power.

At Trophy, it's still very good. Jed can talk more about limiting sales. But what we do with many Trophy communities is, we'll say, well, we're going to only take 4 or 5 sales and just limit sales after that totally, but take those 4 sales at obviously the highest margins we can harvest.

Other markets?

Other markets, unbelievably strong. Colorado Springs. Pardon me?

Expansion of Trophy.

Why don’t you take that since you deal with that?

Yes. On the expansion of Trophy, we are -- we continue to really keep our eye on 2 markets and we think we're making good progress in those 2 markets.

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Rygiel with B. Riley.

As it relates to average selling price, if we look out over the next few quarters given the product shift, how should we model that?

Alex, this is Jed. Was the question, how should we model average sales price over the next few quarters?

Yes. Average selling price for the total company, understanding that there's going to be some mix shift in there over time?

I think it will be pretty consistent with what we're seeing right now in our new orders. I mean you can really take a lot out of the overall trend in the backlog dollars, which is on an ASP basis is up year-over-year, now 21%. And that's for the near term, the general direction that you should see our prices traveling. I mean it's not to suggest that it's going to fully go up that distance because it's come a long way so far. But directionally, it's been pretty smooth on that basis.

[How about] the modelling question?

Alex, just to put some numbers to that. I would just say, in Q1, our ASP was approximately 420 and we see a pathway for that getting to around 500.

That's helpful. And then as we think about an effective tax rate for 2022, I assume it could be slightly higher than this year. Any broader thoughts on that?

Well, it certainly depends on if anything happens coming out of Washington. But absent that, we should continue on if the tax credits are the same, it would be at the 23.5%. The tax credits are certainly moving target right now in Washington.

Our next question comes from the line of David Papson with CDT Capital.

My question regarding the guidance for finished land lot for 2022, looks like it come down quite substantially quarter-over-quarter just that expectation. There's about a 900 lot delta. Just kind of curious, what kind of causing that? Is it really just supply chain lows and labor lows? Any guidance will be helpful?

Well, David, our communities that we do deliver, they are -- as we mentioned, they're continuing to increase the number of lots. We did -- we're seeing development delays, just like we're seeing homebuilding delays. So we have -- from a community count perspective, we did see community count just dip a little bit. But those communities are higher velocity, higher number of lot communities, which we had forecasted. So we -- I think we gave some pretty good numbers during our -- during the call about what we -- how many lots we anticipate delivering over the next 3 to 4 quarters.

Yes. David, that delta certainly was a function of communities going from the end of Q4 of 2022 to the beginning of Q3 ‘23. So it wasn't a big delta, it was one community basically.

One community. All right. That's helpful. And then just going forward, I guess, more broadly, is the company more in terms of growth of acquiring new land? Is it -- is the company more in growth mode? Is it in stability mode? Is it kind of in harvesting mode now that the number of lots and inventory has doubled? Any guidance around what we should expect for land acquisition going forward? Maybe not specific numbers, but incremental numbers might be helpful.

This is Jim. Well, first of all, I think we pivoted very quickly and alertly after, as we said in the call in May and June of 2020 and moved on a lot of land positions ahead of the pack. So we're in a really good position in terms of lots in 2022 and beyond. So we don't need to be aggressive on the land side to allow significant growth in our homebuilding revenues. We don't predict what that growth is going to be. But we have the lot position and the price position on those lots that were bought opportunistically to grow our business. And we're just going to continue to manage that the best we can.

Our next question comes from the line of Bill Dezellem with Tieton Capital.

I want to start out just by asking you to repeat what you said about the fourth quarter revenues versus the third quarter revenues, if you would, please? Any additional color you'd like to put around it.

Rick?

Bill, this is Rick. We really just said that we expect sequential revenue growth from Q3 to Q4. We really didn't provide any incremental color than that.

And you don't want to take this opportunity now to do that?

No.

All right. Fair enough. I thought I'd give you the opportunity, anyhow.

Sure.

So let me jump to home price. And really, you'd answered the question, I think, very early on in the Q&A, but I wanted to make sure that what we're seeing in terms of the backlog price being up or higher than the homes delivered price that that is really a function of pricing in the market, rather than the mix of homes, meaning fewer starter homes, more second time move up, et cetera, or anything like that. It -- did we understand that correctly?

Yes. This -- it's Rick, again, Bill. Our backlog ASP is up 22%, which is greater than the units are up. You can see, that's a trend indicator, if you will. It's not that the ASP is going to get to that level because if you look at our history, it's indicative of the actual homes that are in backlog, not the entirety of our mix because you will always have backlog with some of the more custom homes, populating your backlog, your build-to-suit jobs, etcetera, of Southgate Homes, et cetera.

Bill, this is Jim. Really, we don't expect people to track community by community by neighborhoods. But really, if we think for the next 90 days, if you track some of our Frisco communities with Trophy or our Alpharetta communities with TPG, you can actually just watch those prices increase pretty significantly in those neighborhoods.

So bottom line, part of what we are seeing with the backlog of prices being above homes delivered prices is price. Part of it is also a function of -- well, and I presume, even will be more of a function going forward of the number of spec homes, which will influence that price of homes delivered relative to backlog also.

Yes.

Okay. That's helpful. And then lastly, when are you anticipating that your starts will begin to ramp again? Because looking at the chart where you're showing your lots purchased -- or excuse me, lots owned and controlled and that's been increasing for a while. But in the past, you have said there's a couple year lag, but I think you've done some things to accelerate that. Would you put all those pieces of the puzzle together for us and help us understand when you -- when you're anticipating that start the curve to turn up?

Well, we don't predict starts in the future. But I can tell you that, the backlog is huge, it's kind of picked through the Python until we get the backlog starting to reduce materially in closings just because of the capacities internally with our own builders and externally with our subs and vendors. We don't want to start more homes because we're just competing against ourselves.

Our final question comes from Alex Barrón with Housing Research Center.

Just wanted to ask in terms of limiting sales to fix the backlog, is that something you think is just going to go through the end of this year? Or do you think it will extend into the early part of next year as well?

I think that's a great question. And I wish I could give a good answer. This is Jim. And I really think what we're monitoring very closely is the capacity of our sub base and our trade base. And that's going to really dictate the answer to your question. We just don't know that yet.

Got it. And I'm not sure if I missed it, but did you guys give a number as far as how many homes you guys started this quarter? I’m just trying to get a sense of how many -- how much you're trying to start ahead of sales versus sales.

Yes, we're pulling that for you right now.

You can usually define that when you see our ending units under construction, you would add the starts and subtract the closing, since you know the beginning and ending and the closing, so you can kind of induce it. But the starts in Q3 were 807.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. And this concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you all for your participation.