M/I Homes, Inc. (MHO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of M/I Homes. [Operator Instructions] It is my pleasure [indiscernible] Schottenstein, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of M/I Homes. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Shareholders of M/I Homes. My name is Bob Schottenstein, and I'm the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. We are [ holding ] this year's annual meeting in a virtual-only format. I would now like to take a moment to introduce the other Board members of the company who are present electronically or in person for today's meeting: Bill Creek, who's also an Executive Vice President and our Chief Financial Officer; Friedl Böhm; Bill Carter; Michael Glimcher; Liza Ingram; Nancy Kramer; Bruce Soll; Norman Traeger; and Kumi Walker. Before we make our presentation about our 2022 fiscal year, we're going to take care of the formal part of this annual meeting. Therefore, the meeting will now come to order. I will ask Susan Krohne, our Chief Legal Officer and Secretary of the company who will also act as the secretary of this meeting, to run the formal part of the meeting to report on the notice for this meeting. Susan?

Thank you, Bob, and good morning, everyone. First, if you have not done so already, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the rules of conduct for this annual meeting, which are posted on the meeting center screen. On April 6 of this year, written notice of this meeting, our annual report, a proxy statement and a proxy card were mailed to all shareholders of record at the close of business on March 16, 2023, the record date of this meeting. The tabulation of today's votes will be conducted by Tammie Marshall of Computershare, the company's registrar and transfer agent, who will act as inspector of elections for this annual meeting. In addition to counting the votes, Ms. Marshall will also determine the number of votes, which are present in person or by proxy. Ms. Marshall has made available on the meeting center screen a list of shareholders of record certified as of the record date. This list will remain open for inspection by shareholders until the close of the meeting. A copy of the proxy statement and annual report are also available on the meeting center screen. If you join this virtual meeting as a shareholder and you have already submitted a proxy, you do not need to vote during the meeting. If, however, you have joined the meeting as a shareholder and wish to vote during the meeting, you may do so by clicking on the cast your vote link that is located on the left side of the meeting center screen and voting any time before we declare the polls closed. The polls are now open, and we will close the polls immediately following the consideration of the last matter to be voted upon at this meeting. I now ask Ms. Marshall to report on the number of votes entitled to be cast at this meeting.

Thank you, Ms. Secretary. As of the record date, there were 27,712,250 common shares outstanding and votes eligible to be cast at this meeting. Of such amount, 24,361,388 are present in person or by properly executed proxy. As a result, a quorum exists for this meeting.

Thank you. There are 4 matters to be considered at this annual meeting. First, the election of 3 directors for terms expiring in 2026. Second, an advisory resolution to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers, known as say-on-pay. Third, an advisory resolution on the frequency of say-on-pay votes. And fourth, a proposal to ratify the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as the company's accounting firm for 2023. Please note that shareholders will have the opportunity to ask questions regarding each matter being voted upon at this meeting when such matter is addressed. In addition, shareholders will have the opportunity to ask general questions about the company following our presentation regarding our 2022 fiscal year. [Operator Instructions] With respect to the first matter, the 4 nominees for election as directors are Phil Creek, Nancy Kramer, Bruce Soll and Norman Traeger. Subject to our majority voting policy described in the proxy statement, a plurality of the votes of the outstanding common shares is required to elect each nominee. May I have a motion with respect to the election of directors?

My name is Ann Marie Hunker, and I'm a shareholder of the company. I move for the adoption of the following resolution: resolve that Phil Creek, Nancy Kramer, Bruce Soll, Norman Traeger be elected to serve as directors of M/I Homes until the 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders and until their successors are duly elected and qualified or until their earlier resignation, removal from office or death.

My name is Scott Turner, and I'm a shareholder of the company. I second the motion.

Thank you. Are there any questions regarding this matter? We will now turn to the second matter, which is the approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of the company's named executive officers. The affirmative vote of the majority of the outstanding common shares is required to approve this proposal. May I have a motion with respect to this matter?

I move for the adoption of the following resolution: resolve that the shareholders approve on an advisory basis the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement.

I second the motion.

Thank you. Are there any questions regarding this matter? Thank you. We will now turn to the third matter, which is the approval on an advisory basis of the frequency of future advisory votes on the compensation of the company's named executive officers. The option of 1, 2 or 3 years that receives a plurality of the votes cast on this proposal will be deemed the preferred option of our shareholders. May I have a motion with respect to this matter?

I move for the adoption of the following resolution: resolve that the shareholders advise that an advisory vote with respect to the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the company's proxy statement pursuant to the compensation disclosure rules of the SEC should be presented every 1, 2 or 3 years as reflected by the votes cast for each of these alternatives in connection with this resolution.

I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion of this matter? We will now turn to the fourth matter, which is the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as the company's accounting firm for 2023. The affirmative vote of the majority of the outstanding common shares is required to ratify the appointment. May I have a motion with respect to this matter?

I move for the adoption of the following resolution: resolve that the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as M/I Homes' accounting firm for 2023 is ratified on behalf of the company.

I second that motion.

Thank you. Are there any questions regarding this matter? Thank you. At this time, I now ask those shareholders who intend to vote during the meeting and have not already done so to complete the submission of their vote on the meeting center screen. [Voting]

At this time, I declare the polls closed. Ms. Marshall, will you please report?

Thank you, Ms. Secretary and Mr. Chairman. I hereby report that, one, Phil Creek, Nancy Kramer, Bruce Soll and Norman Traeger have been elected to the company's Board of Directors; two, the compensation of the company's named executive officers has been approved by the shareholders; three, the shareholders has advised that future advisory votes on the compensation of the company's named executive officers should be held every 1 year; and four, the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as the company's accounting firm for the 2023 have been approved.

Thank you, Ms. Marshall. The certificate of the inspector of election will be included in the records of the meeting. The formal part of this meeting is concluded, and we will now proceed with our presentation regarding our 2022 fiscal year. First, because of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, I have to tell you that certain of the matters, which we are about to discuss regarding, among other things, the company's future performance and our expectations for the future constitute forward-looking statements that are dependent on certain risks and uncertainties. Any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results may differ materially as a result of the risk factors described in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022. Thank you.

Thank you. [indiscernible] again, and I'm going to take just a couple of minutes to give an overview of the company's performance in 2022 and our outlook thus far for 2023. If we could go to the first slide, please. This is a pretty clear snapshot of where our company operates. We've been in business since 1976, began in Columbus, Ohio, actually went public in 1993. And today, we operate in what we consider to be 17 of the best housing markets in the United States. And this map shows exactly where we do business, including our 2 most recent expansion markets, Nashville, Tennessee and Fort Myers, Naples. We're very excited about the markets in which we do business. We have a leadership position in many of them and believe we have enormous opportunity to grow in all of them. Next slide. 2022 was an excellent year for the company, posting many records, including record revenue of $4.1 billion, 10% better than the previous year. We closed just under 8,400 homes, 3% below what we had closed in 2021. From an income standpoint, we posted an enormous record income -- pretax income of $635 million, 25% better than the year before. Earnings per share increased 30%. We sold just under 6,700 homes, 27% below what we had sold the year before, and ended the year with 3,137 homes in backlog, 35% lower than the year-end backlog for 2021. M/I Financial, which operates our mortgage and title services, had record volume in 2022, and it was a very unusual year with interest rates rising at an unprecedented record level, which created some challenging conditions from a demand standpoint. But through it all, we believe we finished the year in excellent shape, ending the year with a record $2.1 billion of shareholders' equity, and our balance sheet being as strong as any time in the history of our company. Going to the next slide. There are 4 different financial metrics revealed here. The upper left shows closings or what we call homes delivered, and you can see the growth over the last 5 years from just under 6,000 to over 8,000 homes in 2022. Moving to the upper right, revenue nearly doubling over the 5-year period from $2.2 billion to over $4 billion in 2022, a reflection of the growth in closings as well as the average -- the increase in the average selling price of each individual home closed over the 5-year period. Then moving to the bottom left, you can see where pretax income has grown by nearly fivefold over the 5-year period from just over $141 million pretax income in 2018 to the record year last year that I mentioned earlier of $635 million. And then totally reflecting the strength of our balance sheet, our shareholders' equity more than doubling over the 5 year from just under $900 million to nearly $2.1 billion at the end of 2022. Going to the next slide. Our company has been posting significantly strong return on equity, one of the highest in the homebuilding industry. And you can see how we've done over the last 5 years, just under 30% return on equity for the last several years. We're off to a very strong start in 2023, just having recently announced our first quarter results, posting a number of records. We had a record first quarter pretax income, up 11% over last year, just around $136 million. Our net income also was a record, up 12%. Record revenue, up 16% to $1 billion. Our closings were up 10% year-over-year. Very pleased with that. And [ our ] sales were down 14%. It reflected a much slighter decrease than we had seen through the last half of last year as sales have picked up significantly during the first 3 months of this year compared to the last 6 months of last year. You can see the increase in EPS. In terms of our balance sheet, very low debt levels, debt-to-cap ratio of 24%, a net debt-to-capital ratio of 6%, ended the quarter with over $500 million of cash and 0 borrowings under our $650 million line of credit, again, our strongest financial condition in the history of the company. Moving forward, very excited about our business, very excited about the prospects for another strong year in 2023. We continue to focus on delivering more affordable product to the first-time home buyer, improving our cycle time, very important operational metric within our company. The cycle time had stretched out during the pandemic with all of the logistic and supply chain issues that absolutely impacted our industry in a very significant way. We're [ calling ] back a lot of that cycle time now, which will improve home deliveries, and we're excited about that. We plan to increase our community count, which is -- which are our stores, this year by about 10% over last year, continuing to increase and grow our market share in all of our markets and also a very strong focus on our key core values of high levels of customer service, high levels of quality, building a better home and improving the diversity of our company, and then finally, being able to say at the end of this year that our balance sheet continues to be very strong. We will continue to keep our debt levels low and give the company the platform to grow as we go forward. That concludes my presentation. Thank you for joining us.

This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.