PulteGroup, Inc. (PHM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of PulteGroup, Inc. My name is Todd Sheldon, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the company. At the end of the formal meeting, we will have a question-and-answer period. Please submit your questions or comments on the online portal, and we'll do our best to get your questions answered at the end of the meeting. If you provide your name and contact information with your question, we will contact you after the meeting if we're unable to answer your question during our time today. We also note that the time of shareholder proposals has passed, so we ask that you restrict your questions to matters that are pertinent to the matters appropriately before the meeting today. Now I will turn the meeting over to Mr. Bryce Blair, our Nonexecutive Chairman.

Well, thank you, Todd. The 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of PulteGroup, Inc. will please come to order. As Todd mentioned, I'm Bryce Blair, Chairman of the Board of Directors of PulteGroup and I want to thank you for joining us today. We're conducting this meeting in a virtual setting due to the unprecedented impact of the coronavirus pandemic. While we would normally hold our annual meeting in person at our Atlanta headquarters, we're meeting virtually today in accordance with federal and state public health directives to help stem the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic and help protect the health and safety of our employees and shareholders. This is the first time we've had a virtual meeting, so please bear with us as we manage through this new format. And we will be assessing the format this year and will keep you posted on whether we intend to use it for future meetings. Now before we start, I would like to say a sincere thank you to all of our employees and trade partners that have done an amazing job working through the rapidly changing economic and public health conditions while continuing to serve the needs of our customers. I also want to thank all of our medical, public health and other essential workers for keeping us safe and helping us manage through this crisis. After the formal portion of the meeting, our CEO, Ryan Marshall, will provide an update on the company with more detail on the impact of COVID-19. I will act as Chairman of the meeting, and Todd Sheldon will record the minutes of the meeting and handle the meeting rules and procedures. Our rules and procedures have been posted to the Web portal, and we'll conduct the meeting in accordance with these procedures. At this time, I'd like to introduce the other directors of the company: Brian Anderson, Richard Dreiling, Tom Folliard, Cheryl Grisé, André Hawaux, John Peshkin, Scott Powers and Lila Snyder. Also, I'd like to introduce the senior officers of the company who are in attendance. That would be Ryan Marshall, our President, Chief Executive Officer and also a member of the Board of Directors; and Todd Sheldon, the Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. So at this point, I'll ask Todd Sheldon to discuss some procedural matters and to handle the shareholder voting. Todd?

Thanks, Bryce. First, our shareholders will vote on 3 proposals submitted to shareholders for consideration at this meeting. Following the voting on the 3 proposals, we will then adjourn the formal meeting of shareholders and Ryan Marshall will give us a brief report on the company's recent performance. Following Ryan's remarks, there'll be an opportunity to take comments and address questions through the online portal. On your screen, you should see a copy of the agenda for the meeting today. The annual report on our Form 10-K for the company for the year ended December 31, 2019, together with the Notice of Annual Meeting of Shareholders, a proxy statement and a form of proxy for this meeting were distributed beginning on March 23, 2020, to all shareholders of record at the close of business on March 13, 2020, which was the record date set by our Board of Directors. Copies of our 2019 annual report on Form 10-K and the proxy statement for this meeting are available through the online portal. On March 13, 2020, there were 269,480,062 shares that were issued and outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting. According to the company's bylaws, a majority of those shares will constitute a quorum for this meeting. Broadridge has been selected by the company to tabulate the proxies and ballots to certify the voting results, and Sid Rodrigue of Broadridge is online today and is our inspector of elections. If you wish to vote and have not done so, now is the time to do so through the online portal. The polls are now open. If you previously returned a proxy card and do not wish to change your vote, you do not need to vote at this time. If you've not turned in your proxy card or if you are a shareholder of record and would like to vote your shares in a different manner than you indicated on your proxy card, you can update your vote through the online portal now. The polls will close immediately following the presentation and discussion of the 3 proposals, so it is important that your votes be cast at this time. We will report the results of the voting after the proposals have been introduced. Broadridge has previously reported to me that there are present in person or represented by proxy at this meeting holders of at least 230 million common shares of the company, which is approximately 85% of our outstanding shares. And therefore, a quorum is present. In accordance with the Notice of Annual Meeting, our first item of business is the election of directors. As indicated in the proxy statement, the 10 nominees for a 1-year term to serve and hold office until the Annual Meeting of Shareholders in 2021 are: Brian Anderson, Bryce Blair, Richard Dreiling, Thomas Folliard, Cheryl Grisé, André Hawaux, Ryan Marshall, John Peshkin, Scott Powers and Lila Snyder. We note that no other nominations were submitted as provided in the company's bylaws. Mr. Chairman, I move that these nominees be elected as directors.

Thank you, Todd. Is there any discussion regarding these nominations?

Seeing no comments on these nominations, we'll move to the next matter, which is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2020. I move that this proposal also be approved.

Is there any discussion regarding this proposal?

Seeing no comments on this proposal, I move to the third matter to be considered by shareholders, which is the approval of an advisory resolution on executive compensation. And I move for the approval of that advisory resolution.

Thank you, Todd. Is there any discussion regarding this final resolution?

And seeing no comment on that proposal or any other, I hereby declare the polls closed. Mr. Chairman, based on the tabulation provided me by Broadridge, I can confirm the following. With respect to the first proposal relating to the election of directors, I confirm that all 10 nominees have received at least 92% of the total votes cast, which is a majority of the total votes eligible to vote. With respect to the second proposal relating to the ratification of the appointment of auditors, I confirm that over 90% of the votes cast were cast for the proposal to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young for fiscal year 2020, and that proposal has also been approved. With respect to the third proposal relating to an advisory vote on executive compensation, I confirm that at least 92% of the votes cast were cast for the approval of the advisory vote, and that proposal has been approved.

Thank you, Todd, and congratulations to the directors who are elected. So that covers all 3 proposals and concludes the formal business portion of this meeting. I'd now like to ask Ryan Marshall, our Chief Executive Officer, to comment on the company's recent performance. Ryan?

Thank you, Bryce, and congratulations to the directors that have been reelected for another term. Before I start my comments today, I would like to quickly say thank you to the health care professionals that have helped -- the nurses, the doctors, the scientists that have helped our country navigate this unprecedented time. So thank you. Macey, if you could please advance the presentation to the slide titled Broad and Balanced Geographic Footprint. I'd like to highlight just a number of things that I think are unique and different about the strategy the management team and the Board of Directors have collectively worked to implement over the last several years. First and foremost, we believe that our balanced and diverse geographic footprint, as you can see from the map on the slide, is one that gives us a competitive advantage. From east to west, north to south, we have worked to diversify the overall footprint of where we operate. All of our businesses equate to about 20% of the company's business, with our Midwest business being just slightly less than that and the Northeast being our smallest business, representing about 6% of the company's closings. If you could please advance the slide. We operate under 6 primary brands that we believe help the segment, the way that we approach our consumers and help us to effectuate our diversified strategy and the customers that we serve. The most recent addition to our family of brands is the American West brand, which we operate exclusively in the Las Vegas market. Please advance the slide. We serve a variety of price points, and we have specifically worked to expand the presence of our price points under the $275,000 price point, which has grown to be roughly 20% of our business at present. Please advance the slide. Our company continues to be guided by a very strong work ethic. And one of the things that I'm quite proud of is that we were recently certified as a Great Place to Work company by the Great Place to Work organization. This is an independent survey run by the Great Place to Work organization. And they randomly surveyed a selection of our employees, and based on the independent benchmarking that they use, we were awarded that certification. We continue to make our primary philanthropic effort in the company our Built to Honor program, which continues to be mortgage-free homes that we provide to our nation's veterans, wounded veterans that have served in our country's military and fought for the freedoms that we all enjoy. To date, we've provided over 57 homes mortgage-free to wounded veterans under our Built to Honor program. Advance the slide, please. As you can see, our independent, experienced and diverse Board brings a wealth of experience and diversity to the table. And I'm very fortunate and blessed to be able to work with this group of individuals. On the next slide, you'll see that we've highlighted over the last 5 years the superior business and financial results that the company has been able to deliver. Specifically in 2019, we delivered just over 23,000 homes that generated just shy of $10 billion in revenue. We continue to focus on delivering through-cycle return to our investors and believe that we've been very successful in doing that. On the next slide, you'll see that our business strategy has been one where we focused on the customer, both delivering on -- delivering an outstanding product and providing an outstanding experience to the customers. They make the most significant purchase that they'll ever make in their lifetime. This was very much a part -- this is very much a part of the history of this company, and believe that it's something that is deeply ingrained and was loved and created by our founder, Bill Pulte. We continue to invest in high-returning, shorter-duration land positions, and that's been a focus of ours for the last number of years. Our business practices are very disciplined, and we have been very conservative in the way that we have managed the risk inside our organization. The asset efficiency of our organization continues to improve as we work to continue to generate free cash flow. Let me now turn to a couple of responses and some information on changes that we've made inside of the organization as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic. Macey, if you could please advance to the slide titled Company Comments on COVID-19. We did implement a series of operational changes in response to this pandemic. And first and foremost, we've looked to put our employees and our customers first and make sure that they are safe. The majority of our employees were able, have been working remote in accordance with the shelter-in-place restrictions that most states and municipalities have been operating under now for the last several weeks and months. Most of our customer interactions, including our sales process, our design, many of our construction meetings, have all been conducted virtually. And I'm so incredibly proud of our team and how we've been so quick to adapt to the change in the way that we typically operate the business. We've implemented enhanced cleaning and personal hygiene practices, and we've made sure that our trades have been in compliance with the local and state and OSHA orders and keeping everyone safe and healthy. On the next slide, some other things that I would highlight that we have implemented, and we talked extensively about these on our most recent earnings call. If you were not able to hear that, I'd invite you to go to our Investor Relations website where the transcript and the replay of that call was posted. But specifically, though, I'd just highlight, work to minimize our future cash outflows associated with the homes that we're building, the land that we're buying and our general operating costs. We've worked to do that in an effort to maintain outstanding liquidity, which we have. And as of the end of our first quarter, which ended March 31, we had $1.9 billion in cash, which included a $700 million draw on the company's revolver as of the end of March. Given the extent of our current business disruptions, the company has suspended our stock repurchase program, and we did withdraw our guidance around operating and financial results for 2020, and we won't be providing any further guidance for the indefinite future. On the next slide, I won't touch on much here, but I think this slide gives you a nice idea of the way that we've changed our strategic playbook over the last number of years, with our primary focus endeavored at growing the company and providing through-cycle return to our shareholders. On the next slide, you'll see that we have worked very hard at becoming land lighter and more efficient. And as of the end of 2019, 41% of the lots that we controlled were controlled via option. The other 60% of the -- 59% of the lots that we controlled were owned. We've greatly enhanced the overall use of options, including the most recent acquisition of the American West company in Las Vegas where we were able to acquire 3,500 lots in Las Vegas, with over 2/3 of those lots being controlled via option. The final comments that I'd like to make today would be around our common -- leveraging our common plan platform, where today in over 80% of the closings -- of the company's closings come from that commonly managed plan platform, which is quite impressive. The plans are well designed. They're consumer-inspired. We're able to leverage those throughout our operations. And we believe that, that is one of the elements of our playbook that has given us tremendous advantage in our gross margin profile. The next step in that common plan strategy was to make investments and strategic gains in off-site manufacturing. And so we were excited to announce in the first quarter of 2020 that we acquired the Jacksonville-based operations of Innovative Construction Group. This is a comprehensive off-site manufacturer of frame shell components that manufactures wall panels, roof trusses, floor systems and provides on-site installation. We expect to be able to leverage not only the wonderful systems of ICG but also the very bright and skilled management team that joined -- has now joined the Pulte team as part of that integration as we work to intelligently integrate these very efficient, very cost-effective materials into our operations in the Jacksonville area. In closing, I appreciate the support of all of our shareholders and the wonderful opportunity that we have to steward the capital and steer the strategic direction of this company. With that, Mr. Chairman, I will turn the meeting back to you.

Thank you, Ryan. Todd, are there any questions that have been submitted? Todd?

Yes, Bryce. This is the point of the meeting where we open the floor to shareholders who may have submitted questions or comments through the online portal. At this point, we see no questions or comments relevant to the purpose of the meeting at this time.

Well, thank you, Todd. So thank you all for attending this year's meeting, and I'd like to thank you all for your continued support of PulteGroup. And with that, I will now adjourn the PulteGroup 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Thank you all.

Thank you. This concludes the conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your phone lines.