Five Point Holdings, LLC ($FPH)

Greetings, and welcome to the Five Point Holdings, LLC First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Today's call may include forward-looking statements regarding Five Point's business, financial condition, operations, cash flow, strategy, acquisitions and prospects. Forward-looking statements represent Five Point's estimates on the date of this conference call and are not intended to give any assurance as to actual future results. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could affect future results and may cause Five Point's actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in forward-looking statements. These factors include those described in today's press release and Five Point's SEC filings, including those in the Risk Factors section of Five Point's most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. Please note that Five Point assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Now I would like to turn the call over to Dan Hedigan, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our call. I have with me today Mike Alvarado, our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer; Kim Tobler, our Chief Financial Officer; and Leo Kij, our Senior Vice President of Finance and Reporting. Stuart Miller, our Executive Chairman, is joining us remotely. On today's call, I'll update you on our first quarter results and will provide an overview of the current state of our business, including our operating strategy and expectations for the remainder of 2026. Mike will then discuss our Hearthstone Venture and other growth initiatives in more detail, after which Kim will review our financial results and outlook. We'll then open the line for questions. Turning to the first quarter. As expected, we began 2026 with a relatively quiet quarter from a land sales perspective and reported a consolidated net loss of $5 million. This result was driven primarily by the timing of land sales as we did not have any significant residential land closings during the quarter. As we've discussed in prior periods, our earnings are inherently tied to the timing of land transactions, and we expect variability from quarter-to-quarter depending on when these sales occur. From a revenue standpoint, we generated $13.6 million during the quarter, primarily from management services associated with our Great Park and Hearthstone segments. From a balance sheet perspective, we ended the quarter with total liquidity of $550.1 million, including $332 million of cash and cash equivalents. This level of liquidity continues to provide us with substantial flexibility to operate the business, manage through market cycles and pursue strategic opportunities, including the $40 million share repurchase that we announced today, which I'll discuss in more detail later in my remarks. Operationally, activity across our communities remained steady as the Great Park builder sold 82 homes during the quarter, while Valencia saw 90 home sales. While these volumes reflect a more measured pace than we saw at certain points in 2025, they demonstrate continued engagement from the homebuyers even in a more challenging environment. As we look ahead, we continue to expect our earnings in 2026 to be weighted towards the third and fourth quarters as land sales close and fee-based income from Hearthstone grows. Let me now turn to the market. The current market environment is unsettled and consumer confidence has been impacted by a number of factors, including geopolitical uncertainty stemming from the conflict in the Middle East, increased volatility in financial markets and mortgage rates that have risen again recently after trending down briefly. We're seeing the impact of these dynamics across the homebuilding sector as consumers have been hesitant to make large purchase decisions in uncertain environments. Prior to the start of the conflict in the Middle East, we saw green shoots of improvement in consumer confidence, driven in part by a reduction in mortgage rates. We believe that markets and demand will recover following the resolution of the conflict. These recent trends have translated into slower absorption rates and a more cautious approach by builders in committing to new land purchases in the near term. That said, since our communities are located in California markets that remain chronically undersupplied, we continue to see demand for our homesites. With our liquidity and balance sheet, we have the flexibility to adjust the pace and structure of our land sales in order to protect long-term value. I'll share more about our land sales during my community updates. Let me now turn to the $40 million share repurchase that our Board has approved. We believe the share repurchase gives us the ability to opportunistically deploy capital at an attractive return given that our shares are currently trading at a significant discount to book value. Importantly, the repurchase has been structured to preserve financial flexibility. Even after execution, we expect to maintain substantial liquidity to support our operations, development activities and strategic growth initiatives. Let me now turn to our operating strategy. As a reminder, our strategy is built around 4 key elements. First, we are focused on optimizing homesite value within our master planned communities by aligning land sales with homebuilder demand. In the current environment, this means being disciplined and patient and in some cases, moderating the pace of land sales or using different land sale structures to maintain long-term value. Second, we are maintaining a lean operating structure and carefully managing our fixed costs and overhead. This discipline has been a defining characteristic of Five Point over the past several years and remains a core focus as we move forward. Third, we are matching development expenditures with revenue generation. We continue to take a measured approach to infrastructure spending, ensuring that capital is deployed in line with near-term monetization opportunities. And fourth, we continue to expand our platform through capital-light growth initiatives. The addition of the Hearthstone platform was an important step in this strategy, and we continue to evaluate new land development opportunities focused on managing capital dedicated to providing housing in select U.S. markets. Our focus will remain on executing against these priorities as we navigate the current environment and position the company for long-term growth. Let me now provide you with some updates on our communities, starting with the Great Park Neighborhoods. At the Great Park, we continue to see steady builder activity with 82 homes sold during the first quarter. While absorption has moderated compared to prior periods as certain collections have sold out, builder interest in the community remains solid, and we continue to work closely with our guest builders on future land sales and program development. We currently have 12 actively selling programs in the Great Park Neighborhoods with 7 additional programs planned to open later this year. These current and upcoming programs will ensure our guest builders can continue delivering a wide variety of housing options throughout Great Park Neighborhoods. We also recently completed the bidding process and have selected the builders for 5 new residential programs totaling approximately 28.5 acres. These builders are currently in due diligence, and we expect to close these land sales by the end of this year. We anticipate pricing will be consistent with our most recent land sales. Next, I'll discuss Valencia, our other active community. Valencia is in the beginning phases of a long-term development timeline and is poised to provide critical housing in the Los Angeles market. Builders sold 90 homes here during the quarter, reflecting continued progress at our first village in the community. We currently have 11 builder programs open and actively selling. We anticipate 6 new programs will open over the course of 2026. We're also currently in discussions with builders about potential residential land sales in 2026, which may include a rolling option land sale structure that helps enhance our land values by reducing the carry cost for the builder. As I noted earlier in my comments, our balance sheet and liquidity allow us to be patient and to pursue creative solutions in order to optimize value obtained for our homesites. As we discussed on our last call, the entitlement approvals we secured for Entrada South and Valencia Commerce Center in 2025 have significantly enhanced the long-term value and development potential of this asset. As a reminder, Entrada South is expected to consist of approximately 120 net acres of residential land, over 1,300 market rate homesites and approximately 40 net acres of commercial land, while Valencia Commerce Center is expected to include approximately 110 net acres and will cater towards industrial and light manufacturing focused uses. We are now working with our engineering teams to prepare the infrastructure plans and ministerial permits in order to start development of these 2 villages, which we expect to start in the first half of 2027, with our first land sales projected to occur in 2028. We'll have more to report on our development activities for these 2 villages in the coming quarters. Additionally, we continue to advance approvals for 3 additional villages. Upon approval, these villages, together with our existing entitlements will bring our total to more than 10,000 entitled homesites, providing a substantial long-term pipeline of homesites to support L.A. County's chronically undersupplied housing market. Turning to San Francisco. We're waiting for issuance of final permits to initiate the next phase of land development at Candlestick. We expect that this initial work will begin shortly. Our development is starting at a time when residential rents and home prices in San Francisco are rising and the demand coming from AI and other tech companies in the commercial space seem to be growing quarter after quarter. Our intentions are to start engaging with potential large users who are ready to build on the momentum San Francisco has been generating and become an anchor in Candlestick's rebirth as a thriving mixed-use urban community located directly on the San Francisco Bay. Before moving on, I just want to reiterate that across all of our communities, our approach remains consistent. We're focused on pacing development and homesite sales in a way that aligns with market conditions and optimizes long-term value. Now let me touch on Hearthstone briefly. The integration of the Hearthstone team and operations have continued to progress well, and we expect our management fee revenues to increase as recently committed capital is deployed into new projects. Mike and Kim will provide additional detail on operational and financial results for Hearthstone in their remarks. Before I wrap up, let me provide an outlook for the rest of the year. We are reaffirming our guidance and continue to expect consolidated net income in 2026 to be approximately $100 million with our earnings weighted more heavily towards the second half of the year. Let me conclude by saying that while the market environment has become more challenging in recent months, Five Point remains well positioned. We have a strong balance sheet, substantial liquidity and a deep inventory of well-located land in supply-constrained markets. These strengths provide us with the flexibility to navigate near-term uncertainty while continuing to focus on long-term value creation. We also have a very experienced team with seasoned professionals who have been through numerous market cycles and disruptions and have the depth of knowledge to navigate through these cycles in a constructive manner. As always, we'll continue to monitor market conditions directly and adapt as needed. With that, I'll turn it over to Mike.

Thanks, Dan. Let me begin by discussing our Hearthstone Venture, which provides management services to residential land banking funds. As a reminder, Hearthstone is the manager for multiple separate fund vehicles where Hearthstone receives management fees and generally invest 1% of the equity required for the operations of each particular fund. As Dan mentioned on our last call, we anticipated securing commitments from significant new capital partners for the Hearthstone platform during the first quarter, and we successfully closed 2 new funds for a total of $600 million in new equity commitments. This will provide the platform with the ability to deploy approximately $1 billion in capital with leverage. The Hearthstone platform currently has approximately $3.4 billion in assets under management and has over 30,000 homesites under control with 13 homebuilders in 16 states. Needless to say, this platform is operating in active housing markets across the U.S. and with the country's leading public homebuilders. We are very excited about the strength of the Hearthstone team and the potential to scale this business. Moving beyond Hearthstone, you have heard us discuss that we are exploring additional growth opportunities available to Five Point, particularly in our core land development business by utilizing outside capital partners to joint venture with on these projects and to create additional fee-based revenue streams. This is a familiar structure for us as we have used it successfully at the Great Park. Our confidence in finding future opportunities lies in the fact that the U.S. homebuilding market is anchored by large national builders with significant and recurring demand for finished homesites. The numbers are substantial to say the least, especially when it is widely reported that these numbers continue to reflect a significant shortfall compared to demand. Based on the home deliveries reported by the larger public homebuilders, the size of the addressable market is north of 250,000 homesites per year. This demand should create the underpinnings of a durable and growing opportunity for institutional land developers like Five Point. We are continuing our work to identify opportunities that will provide recurring management fees and attractive returns on investment, and we expect to have more to report on these initiatives on future calls. Now let me turn it over to Kim, who will report on our financial results for the quarter.

Thank you, Mike. As Dan shared, as expected, this was a quiet quarter without land sales, and we recognized a small loss of $5 million. Our first quarter loss of $5 million was largely made up of the following components. We had $13 million of management services revenue, $6.9 million associated with our management of the Great Park Venture, $3.5 million of that, which was incentive compensation and $6.1 million associated with Hearthstone. There is $6.9 million of management services costs and expenses associated with that revenue. We recognized a small loss from our unconsolidated entities of $145,000, largely because we did not have any sales at the Great Park Venture. Our first quarter SG&A was $14.7 million, consistent with the prior year first quarter of $14.8 million. Finally, we recognized $900,000 of tax benefit. Now a few words about our cash and liquidity. As Dan mentioned, we ended the quarter with $332.6 million of cash as well as $217.5 million of availability on our revolving credit facility, resulting in total liquidity of $550.1 million. At the end of the quarter, our debt to total capitalization ratio was 16.3%, and our net debt was $117.4 million. I'd also like to note that during the quarter, we paid down principal of $40.1 million and accrued and current interest of $6.2 million with respect to our related party EB-5 reimbursement obligation. This leaves approximately $18.5 million due on this obligation. I would like to now provide a little more information regarding our Hearthstone venture. First, Mike shared that as of the end of our first quarter, the assets under management were $3.4 billion. When considering this number, I would like to note that we do not earn fees on a portion of the AUM that is attributable to builder deposits. As of March 31, such builder deposits were approximately $600 million, which leaves $2.8 billion of fee-paying assets under management. Also, I want to mention that historically, Hearthstone's asset management fees have been made up of a monthly base fee plus a deferred performance fee. The performance fee is based on overall returns at the end of the fund or tranches within the fund. I mentioned this because you will see some volatility in the implied fee associated with changes in estimates of the performance fees and true-ups when funds or tranches are complete. Finally, as Dan mentioned, we are reaffirming the guidance we gave at the beginning of the year, and we expect to end the year with approximately $100 million in earnings with the expectation that we will have material sales in the third and fourth quarters. Dan also mentioned that our Board has approved a share repurchase of up to $40 million. While we are not predicting at this time over what period the share repurchase will be effectuated, we anticipate that we will finish the year with more than $300 million in cash and total liquidity of over $500 million even after taking share repurchases into account. With that, let me turn it back to the operator, who will open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Alan Ratner with Zelman & Associates.

First question, maybe I'll start with Hearthstone. Just listening to homebuilder conference calls this quarter, I think land banking has been a pretty topical issue that investors are focusing on. And I'm curious if you could just talk through a little bit how your typical land banking deals with builders are structured in terms of deposits, in terms of -- are they monthly payments for interest or quarterly, annual? And have you seen more recently any changes in appetite from builders in terms of their appetite for land banking?

Alan, Dan. Thank you for the question. I'm going to give this one to Kim, if you don't mind, he can give you a little more detail.

Alan, just quickly without getting too granular, our land banks use a contract where there's a monthly option payment. The builder has a right to buy the land at the cost that we purchased it at plus any improvements that were made during the life of the contract. So that's the typical arrangement that we have.

Got it. And have you seen any changes in appetite from builders? I know it's a short time period, but I guess over the last few months here, has there been any kind of changes in what they're seeking in terms of terms? Or has it been pretty consistent?

No, very consistent. And we're still seeing reasonable interest and progress.

Great. Another question, shifting to the development side. With fuel prices on the rise here, I'm curious, have you started to see any inflation creeping back into your development expenses? Is that something you're concerned about or focused on? And just generally, if you could talk more broadly about what you're seeing on inflation, that would be great.

Thanks, Alan. The -- right now, I think from a standpoint of your question on fuel cost is pretty optimistic. It's a good time for us. We're not actively grading. We won't be starting any active grading up in Valencia till the end of the year. So that hopefully gives us a real opportunity for these markets to stabilize on the fuel side. We are doing some grading at the Great Park. But pretty much most of our work have been done there. So we're kind of doing the fine grading. So we haven't really seen any major impact, any cost in our budgets caused by fuel. But obviously, we'll have more to say or think about that as we get towards the end of this year and we start some active grading. Overall, though, we are not seeing any additional increases in our budgets right now for our land development.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. Therefore, I'd like to turn the floor back over to CEO, Dan Hedigan for closing remarks.

Thank you. On behalf of our management team, we thank you for joining us on today's call. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

Thank you. And this concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation.