Thank you, and thank you for joining us today. On the call with me is Bob Schottenstein, our CEO and President, and Derek Klutch, President of our mortgage company.

First, to address Regulation Fair Disclosure, we encourage you to ask any questions regarding issues that you consider material during this call, because we are prohibited from discussing significant non-public items with you directly. As to forward-looking statements, I want to remind everyone that the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in today's press release also applies to any comments made during this call.

Also be advised that the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. With that, I'll turn it over to Bob.

Thanks, Phil, and good morning, and thank you for joining us today. As I begin, I'd like to take a brief moment to acknowledge an important milestone for M/I Homes.

2026 marks our 50th year in business. Over the past five decades, our company has grown to become one of the nation's largest and most respected homebuilders.

Looking back, we've been through a lot. We've experienced disciplined growth, and certainly our fair share of successes navigating through multiple housing cycles.

Through it all, we have maintained an unwavering focus on quality, customer service, and operating at a high standard. As we look ahead to celebrating this milestone, we're proud to report that we are in the best financial condition in our history, have a group of leadership teams that are as strong as we've ever had, and that we are well-positioned in our 17 markets.

With that, we'll turn to our 2025 performance. Our full-year 2025 results reflect the economic conditions that we, and frankly, our entire industry, experienced throughout the year.

Despite choppy demand, affordability challenges, economic uncertainty, and other macroeconomic pressures, our performance remained very solid. Though new contracts were down slightly for the full year, we were pleased that our monthly new contracts during the fourth quarter showed a 9% year-over-year increase, and that we successfully increased our 2025 average community count by 6% versus our guide of about 5%.

In 2025, we delivered 8,921 homes, recorded revenue of $4.4 billion, and excluding charges of $59 million related to inventory and warranty items, we generated pre-tax income of nearly $590 million, which was down 20% compared to last year's record $734 million. Our pre-tax income percentage was a very solid 13% before the charges, and 12% after all charges.

Our financial services segment had a record capture rate of 93%, record volume levels, and a very strong year, achieving pre-tax income for the year of $56 million. Our full-year gross margins, excluding the above-mentioned inventory and warranty charges, were 24.4%, 220 basis points lower than 2024, and down primarily due to higher incentives and higher lot costs versus the same period a year ago.

As you all know, our primary incentives were and continue to be mortgage rate buydowns, and we will continue to use these incentives as necessary on a community-by-community basis. Our net income was $403 million, or $14.74 per share, with a very strong return on equity of 13.1%.

Our shareholders' equity increased 8% year-over-year and reached an all-time record of $3.2 billion, with a record book value per share of $123. The quality of our buyers in terms of creditworthiness continues to be strong, with average credit scores of 747 and average down payments of almost 17%, or just over $90,000 per home.

Our Smart Series, which is our most affordably priced product, continues to have a very positive and meaningful impact, not just on our sales, but our overall performance. Smart Series sales comprised 49% of total company sales in the fourth quarter, compared to 52% a year ago.

As I previously noted, we ended the year with community count growth with 232 active communities, which was an increase of 5% compared to the end of '24, and on average, an increase of 6%. In terms of our various markets, our division income contributions in 2025 were led by Columbus, Dallas, Chicago, Orlando, and [Minnea- Minneapolis?]

. Our new contracts for the fourth quarter in our Southern region increased by 13% year-over-year, and by 4% in the Northern region.

For the year, new contracts decreased 1% in the Southern region, and 9% in our Northern region. Deliveries increased 1% over last year's fourth quarter in the Southern region, and represented 57% of the company-wide total.

The Northern region contributed 981 deliveries, which was a decrease of 8% over last year's fourth quarter. For the year, homes delivered slightly increased in the Southern region, but decreased slightly in the Northern region.

Our owned and controlled lot position in the Southern region decreased by 11% compared to a year ago, increased by 9% compared to a year ago in the Northern region. We have a tremendous land position.

Company-wide, we own approximately 26,000 lots, which is slightly less than a three-year supply. Of this total, 30% of our owned lots are in the Northern region, with the balance of 70% in the Southern region.

On top of the lots that we own, we control via option contracts an additional 24,000 lots. In total, we own and control approximately 50,000 single-family lots, which is down 2,000 lots from a year ago, and this equates to roughly a five to six-year supply.

Most importantly, 49% of our lots are controlled pursuant to option contracts, which gives us continued flexibility and important flexibility to react to changes in demand or individual market conditions. With respect to our balance sheet, we ended the year in excellent condition, with cash of $689 million and zero borrowings under our $900 million unsecured revolving credit facility.

This resulted in a very strong debt-to-capital ratio of 18% and a net debt-to-cap ratio of zero. Before I conclude, let me again state that we are in the best financial condition in our 50-year history.

Despite the current challenging conditions, we feel very good about our business, remain very confident in the long-term fundamentals of our industry, and are well-positioned as we begin 2026. I'll now turn it over to Phil to provide more specifics on our results.

Thanks, Bob. Our new contracts were up 18% in October, up 9%, excuse me, up 6% in November, and up 4% in December, for a 9% improvement in the quarter compared to last year's fourth quarter.

Our sales pace was 2.8 in the fourth quarter, compared to 2.7 in 2024's fourth quarter. Our cancellation rate for the fourth quarter was 10%.

As to our buyer profile, 48% of our fourth-quarter sales were to first-time buyers, compared to 50% a year ago. In addition, 79% of our fourth-quarter sales were inventory homes, compared to 67% in last year's fourth quarter.

Our community count was 232 at the end of 2025, compared to 220 at the end of last year. During the quarter, we opened 17 new communities while closing 18.

For the year, we opened 81 new communities. We currently estimate that our average 2026 community count will be about 5% higher than 2025.

We delivered 2,301 homes in the fourth quarter, and about 40% of our quarter deliveries came from inventory homes that were both sold and delivered within the quarter. As of December 31st, we had 4,500 homes in the field versus 4,700 homes in the field a year ago.

Revenue decreased 5% in the fourth quarter of 2025 to $1.1 billion, and our average closing price for the fourth quarter was $484,000, a 1% decrease when compared to last year's fourth-quarter average closing price of $490,000. Our gross margin was 18.1% for the quarter, including $51 million of charges, which consisted of $40 million of inventory charges and $11 million of warranty charges.

Excluding these charges, our gross margin was 22.6%. The breakdown of the inventory charges is $30 million of impairments and $10 million of lot deposit due diligence costs written off.

The majority of our impairments in the quarter were in entry-level communities with average selling prices below $375,000. The warranty charges were due to two communities in our Florida market.

For the full year, our gross margins were 23.0%. Excluding our $59 million of charges, our full-year gross margin was 24.4%.

Our fourth-quarter SG&A expenses were flat compared to a year ago, and were 11.6% of revenue compared to 11.0% last year. Interest income net of interest expense for the quarter was $6 million.

Our interest incurred was $9.5 million. We had solid returns given the challenges facing our industry.

Our pre-tax income was 12% for the year, and our return on equity was 13%. During the fourth quarter, we generated $129 million of EBITDA, and for the full year, we generated $608 million of EBITDA.

Our effective tax rate was 21% in the fourth quarter, compared to 22% in last year's fourth quarter, and our annual effective rate for this year was 23.5%. We expect 2026 effective tax rate to be around 23.5%.

Our earnings per diluted share for the quarter decreased to $2.39 per share from $4.71 per share in last year's fourth quarter, and decreased 25% for the year to $14.74 per share from $19.71 per share last year. During the fourth quarter, we spent $50 million repurchasing our shares, and for the year, we spent $200 million.

We currently have $220 million available under our repurchase authority, and in the last three years, we have purchased 13% of our outstanding shares. Now Derek Klutch will address our mortgage company results.

Thanks, Phil. In the fourth quarter, our mortgage and title operations achieved pre-tax income of $8.5 million, down $1.6 million from 2024, and revenue of $27.8 million, down 2% from last year, primarily as a result of lower margins on loans closed and sold and partially offset by higher average loan amounts and more loans closed.

For the year, pre-tax income was $56 million, and revenue was $126 million. The loan-to-value on our first mortgages for the quarter was 83% in 2025, compared to 82% in 2024's fourth quarter.

65% of the loans closed in the quarter were conventional, and 35% were FHA or VA, compared to 59% and 41%, respectively, for 2024's same period. Our average mortgage amount increased to $414,000 in 2025's fourth quarter, compared to $409,000 in 2024.

Loans originated in the quarter increased 1% from 1,862 to 1,874, and the volume of loans sold decreased by 1%. Our mortgage operation captured 94% of our business in the quarter, an increase from 91% in 2024's fourth quarter.

Now I'll turn the call back over to Phil.

Thanks, Derek. As far as the balance sheet, we ended the fourth quarter with a cash balance of $689 million and no borrowings under our unsecured credit facility.

We continue to have one of the lowest debt levels of the public homebuilders, and are well-positioned with our maturities. Our bank line matures in 2030, and our public debt matures in 2028 and 2030.

Total homebuilding inventory at year-end was $3.4 billion, an increase of 9% from prior-year levels. During 2025, we spent $524 million on land purchases and $646 million on land development, for a total spend of $1.2 billion.

This was up from $1.1 billion in 2024. At December 31, 2025, we had $900 million of raw land and land under development and $1.1 billion of finished unsold lots.

We own 10,500 unsold finished lots. At the end of the year, we had 1,030 completed inventory homes, about four per community, and 2,779 total inventory homes.

Of the total inventory, 1,116 are in the Northern region and 1,663 in the Southern region. At December 31, '24, we had 706 completed inventory homes and 2,502 total inventory homes.

This completes our presentation. We'll now open the call for any questions or comments.

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

Positive order growth, pretty impressive. Can you address the 13% growth you had in the South?

Can you bifurcate that into Texas and Florida? Because I think last time you commented Texas is a little bit more of the volume, and we've been seeing that Florida is actually doing a little better than Texas.

Could you address the split in that region?

In general, we had pretty solid sales everywhere. Our Carolina markets, Charlotte and Raleigh, have done very well.

In Florida, our Orlando market has actually held up pretty well. Tampa also has improved as we've gone through the quarter.

When you look at Texas, Dallas has stayed pretty solid for us along with Houston. Weaker markets have been Austin and San Antonio, it's been spread around a little bit.

Like you say, we were very pleased that our Southern region was up 13%, and our Northern region was also up 4%.

The only other thing I'll mention, Ken, and it's a good callout, just to build on what Phil said, is as we're getting now some traction in our newer markets in the Southern region, specifically Nashville and Fort Myers-Naples, that will slightly skew upward some of the percentages. We felt very good about our fourth-quarter sales.

I would simply add that as we begin 2026, we certainly have seen, and I think some of it's clearly seasonal, we're beginning a selling season right now as opposed to leaving the slowest time of the year in the fourth quarter, but we've certainly seen an important improvement in traffic.

I appreciate those comments. NVR reported too today, and margins are under pressure, the demand seems to be there.

Given the intra-quarter orders and closings, could you comment on the margin differential between your intra-quarter closings and your backlog, or spread, if you will, as well as are the majority of those intra-quarter closings, I assume they're coming from the lower price Smart Series, if you could address those two questions? Thank you very much.

I'm not sure I completely understood the question, and you may have to ask it again.

That's all right. I'll make it clear.

Okay.

Orders and closings per unit that were intra-quarter, what I call spec, how are those margins compared to the homes that came out of backlog? I'm assuming most of those intra-quarter orders, which were closings, were the Smart Series.

Yes and no. On the Smart Series point, the one thing I'll say is over the last 12 to 24 months, our business has changed quite noticeably in terms of the significant contribution of spec sales month in, month out.

About 2/3 to 3/4 of our sales are now coming from specs. If you go back 5 years ago, that would have been less than 50%, some cases less than 40%.

That's been a pretty significant change, and is likely here to stay as long as we're in this situation where we're needing to use rate buydowns to promote sales, because as you well know, the ability to provide a favorable rate buydown at any kind of a reasonable or at least acceptable cost, one of the conditions is that you can get the home closed within 60 to 90 days of the purchase of the buydown money, which means it's only going to really work for specs. Having said all that, the majority of 60% to 75% of the closings, quarter to quarter to quarter, all coming from spec sales.

Phil, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

Our closing GPs in the fourth quarter were 22.6%, forgetting the charges. We were pretty pleased with that.

Are there continued pressures? Yes.

We do feel good that our construction cost last year came down about 2%. We were also pleased last year that our cycle time improved by about 5%.

We're making some progress on some of those key areas. Spec margins, in general, are lower than to-be-built homes, but the last couple of months we have seen a slight pick up in our to-be-built business.

We just continue focusing every day on everything we can do to hold those sales prices stable or increase them, and also keep margins as high as we can.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Ken.

Hey, Bob. Hey, Phil.

Good morning. Nice quarter, and happy 50th anniversary.

Morning, Alan.

Good morning,

and

happy New Year.

We don't feel that old.

I hear you. It's very impressive, and I'm sure we got 50 more out ahead of us, looking forward to it.

My first question is on the order strength in the quarter. I was looking, and your fourth quarter obviously up year-over-year, but your fourth-quarter orders were actually fractionally higher on a sequential basis as well, which as far as I can tell, that's the first time that's happened since 2001.

I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about kind of your incentive and pricing strategy through the quarter. Would you say that order strength, at least kind of seasonally, is a reflection of improving demand, or was it more of a concerted effort by you guys to kind of clear through some inventory ahead of year-end, maybe with some higher incentives?

Boy, that's a great question. It's actually probably one of the most important questions that as we look week to week in terms of our sales activity.

I feel like it's a little bit of both. I think we wanted to push to get as many completed specs out to the buyers as we could.

I feel like demand is slightly picking up. I felt like, not every market, but in many of our markets, we were somewhat pleased with the level of traffic through the fourth quarter.

That is continuing. I think it's too early to make a call, but look, we've all been whining for the last number of years about all the pent-up demand, and housing is underperforming, and on and on and on and on, and more articles have been written about that almost than anything other than affordability.

It feels like we may be starting to see a slight improvement in demand. I also think, and we'll know when we know, we expected our margins to drop at least 200 basis points last year, and of course, they did that and then some.

The margins are likely to remain under pressure, but it's not clear to me at this point that the pressure in '26 will be as much as it was in '25. Hopefully those things are starting to level off a bit.

Again, we'll know when we know, but all things considered, pre-charges, we made almost $590 million last year, brought 13% to the bottom line. By historical standards, that's pretty good performance.

Just putting things in context, we've all seen a whole lot worse. I think that I'm optimistic about the first 4, 5 months of this year in terms of demand and the selling season, we'll see.

Alan, one thing I'll add is that we talked about the impairments came primarily from entry-level communities with an ASP under $375,000. It was led by our more challenging markets in Austin and San Antonio.

In general, we've seen a little more pressure on prices and margins on the real entry-level, lower price for us. Hopefully that is going to get a little bit better.

We tend to play at a little higher price point, but that's kind of where things are.

Got it. No, I appreciate all that detail.

Phil, you kind of touched on the second question I had, which was on those impairments. I guess the first one is a little bit of an accounting nuance, but I'm just curious if I look at you historically when you've taken charges, they're almost entirely in your fourth quarters.

You maybe have some minimal charges through the year, but it looks like fourth quarter's kind of where you generally take larger charges. I'm curious if there's any accounting reason why that is, at least compared to other builders.

B, I don't know if you disclose a watch list of communities that have maybe potential indicators of impairment, but is there any indication that impairments should continue here over the next handful of quarters just based on where some of your margins are trending in your lower price point communities?

Alan, I appreciate that, and I'll try to get all those points. To us, it's a business issue.

If you look at our business goals, we're in the subdivision business. That's what really matters to us.

That's how we operate the business. We try to get a pace of three plus, we try to get margins of 22 plus, and we try to make sure we're focusing on all the items: product, presentation, salespeople, make sure all those levers are working at all times.

When we're not getting acceptable pace over a certain period of time, we make the business decision often times to go to price. Of course, the way the accounting rules are basically is that once you get down to about a 10% GP, you kind of get to the point where carry costs, disposal costs exceed that, the accounting rules kind of force you to do an impairment, but again, to us, it's a business decision.

We do look harder at things toward the end of the year for sure, so that's why the majority of those charges in the past have been that way, although this year we did a small impairment also, I think it was in the third quarter. If you look at us today, we own about 25,000 unsold lots.

You always have a couple of problem subdivisions. Our impairment covered about 1,000 lots, about 1,000 of the 25,000 lots, and again, it was in the most affordable stuff.

We could have continued grinding through these communities at maybe 1, 1.5, 2 a month, maybe at 10%, 12% margins, but our view is when you look at the landscape of the business and the difficulty, especially at those lower price points, we decided to go to that last lever of dropping price, and that's what triggered those impairments. Again, we think that's a really good business decision.

We expect that pace to pick up. We expect the margin to get back to closer to normal levels, and that's why we did it.

The other thing I'll say, because I've been to the movie, it was a long time ago, but back during the Great Recession, when every quarter, you were sort of holding your breath as the builders reported because how many more impairments are coming? We all sort of felt like there was more coming.

This is very different. I'm not going to say there's no more coming, because no one knows that.

What I will say is that as we got towards the end of last year, it was sort of let's start 2026 with all cylinders, as strong as they can possibly be. Whatever thing we think might be a problem, let's deal with it now and let's enter 2026 with as many items controlled and behind us as possible.

Alan, I'll also

add that $10 $10 million,

$10 million was a combination of lot deposit write-offs, prepaid due diligence write-offs on deals we're not pursuing anymore, because we think to do those deals, it would take a pretty significant cost reduction or other changes in terms, we walked away from those deals. Again, on average, when you take a $30 million charge on 1,000 lots, you're looking at $30,000 per lot, which is pretty significant, and hopefully that's going to increase our pace and margins as we go into this year.

Makes sense. Thanks a lot, guys.

Thanks, Alan.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys.

Congrats on navigating a challenging environment, and appreciate the color on all the charges, as well.

Thanks, Buck.

Thanks, Buck.

Very welcome. I was kind of curious about the acceleration in land purchase activity and some of the lot development spend in the fourth quarter.

It was up both sequentially and year-over-year. I guess first kind of wondering if any particular markets or regions are getting the bulk of that new spend that you're targeting.

Should we read into that acceleration is that a indication of your confidence levels of kind of the demand that's out there and your growth trajectory, or how should we interpret that pickup in the land spend?

No, no, nothing really special. Again, some of our markets were impacted by weather when we get blacktopping done and those type things.

We own about 25,000 lots, as Bob said. We try to have about a one-year supply of finished lots, and that way we don't go dark, etc.

We ended the year with a little over 10,000 finished lots. Again, with our current run rate at 9,000, we feel good about that.

No, nothing really special. We're continuing to do a lot of land development.

We self-develop about 80% of our own land. As far as any strategy or direction, that just kind of was the way the dollars were.

We did spend a little bit more money last year toward the end, but just the way it kind of fell.

Okay. That's helpful.

I'm always curious about your Florida trends in particular. I was just wondering, cuz we've seen some signs that resale inventory to start the year in Florida here seems to have flipped negative year-over-year.

I think you mentioned that Tampa started to improve a little bit, Orlando seems to be steady. Is there any signs of improving traffic, demand, any signs that the stabilization of the resale inventory is helping?

When we look at the four Florida markets that we operate in, Orlando, Tampa, Sarasota, Fort Myers-Naples, Fort Myers-Naples is really new for us. We're very bullish about it.

There we had significant growth cuz we went from almost zero to over 100 and some units last year. We're expecting pretty meaningful growth there over the next several years.

As far as the other three where we've been a while, Orlando's clearly held up the best. Over the last, I would say, 30 to 120, 150 days, demand in Orlando has been stronger than Tampa and Sarasota.

Tampa was the toughest market for a while. Had probably for whatever reasons, the hardest hit for us in Florida, clearly.

Tampa business has picked up very importantly. It's not as strong as Orlando at this point, but we're encouraged by what we're seeing, that's for sure.

Sarasota's just sort of so-so. I think that market is a very good market, but it's sort of trending along in maybe C+, B-, that kind of thing.

Look, we're very invested in Florida, very committed to Florida. It's a huge part of our business.

Candidly, we have some of the best leadership teams in our company in Florida. We've been there a long time, and as was noted, we've been in business 50 years.

The first market outside of Columbus, Ohio, that we expanded to was Tampa. The second one after that was Orlando.

We've been in Florida for a long time since 1981 in Tampa and 1985 in Orlando. We've had a very strong leadership position in those markets, we'll continue to, as well as the operation in Sarasota and Fort Myers-Naples.

Outstanding. That's great to hear.

One last one if I can sneak one in. I was curious about just how you're structuring the mortgage rate buydowns right now in terms of what type of program or structure seems to be resonating and getting consumers over the hump?

Is there kind of a sweet spot target mortgage rate that seems to work best with those buydowns?

Yeah. Hi, Buck.

This is Derek. We've been going with a 4 7/8% 30-year fixed, and we think getting a sub-5% is the key, and that's what really seems to attract the buyers.

Then on top of that, in some divisions, we offer a temporary buydown, we can get buyers with a first-year payment in the 2.875% range. We've run that for quite a while, and that seems to be successful for us, just that sub-5% note rate.

That's clearly been our most successful. Recently, we've been tinkering with the 7/1 ARM that other builders have been using a lot.

Everybody has their own experiences. To Derek's point, what seems to work best for us is the very straightforward 30-year fixed, 4 7/8%, FHA, VA, or conventional.

In many instances, it's supplemented with the 2-1 buydown that Derek mentioned.

One thing I'll stress also is that our mortgage and title operations is very important to us. They only serve M/I Homes customers.

We're able to deal individually with customers. Depending on if it's a first-time buyer, there may be a real big need for closing cost assistance.

There's some people out there that do want to do to-be-built homes that do want a longer-term rate program. We're able to customize whatever we need to do with an individual customer, as opposed to throwing all kind of money to every customer that may or may not need that.

Being able to individually deal with customers, we think it's very important to our business.

Awesome. Very helpful color.

Appreciate it, guys. Good luck.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Hey, good morning, guys. I wasn't sure if I missed it, but did you guys give any guidance or outlook for margins for next quarter?

Do you feel like they're going to go down sequentially or is these impairments you took this quarter going to help stabilize margins?

Alex, you know us, we don't give guidance on things like that. We were pretty pleased with our margins in the fourth quarter.

We did deal with problem communities that we thought we needed to with the impairments. Don't give any guidance.

We are working hard on construction costs and cycle time and all those things. We are opening a number of new stores again this year.

We did give guidance: we expect average community count to be up 5% this year. No, we did not give any guidance as far as margins.

Okay. Did your incentive levels go up in the quarter versus the previous quarter for new orders?

Our margins were down a little bit. Are we doing a little bit more on closings in the fourth quarter?

Yes, we did. Again, that's reflected in our margins.

Trying to do the best job we can opening all these new stores. We opened 80 stores last year, and anticipate opening more than that this year, so that's a big opportunity for us.

Hopefully, spring selling season will be a little better than it has been.

Okay. Also, any shift in your strategy as far as what percentage of spec homes you guys are starting versus going back towards built-to-order?

No. It's Bob Schottenstein, Alex.

It'll likely remain about what it's been, which is about, like I said earlier, 2/3 to 3/4 of our business are spec sales. I don't see things changing there or on the rate buydown side to incent sales.

I don't see any of that changing anytime soon. Obviously, we're all reacting to almost on a daily basis to what's happening in the market.

As we did mention, we've been encouraged by early traffic improvements here that we've seen through the latter part of the fourth quarter and certainly as we begin 2026.

All right, guys. Best of luck.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Alex.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Just to kind of follow on that point, Bob,

Jay, congratulations on your new position.

Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.

Appreciate y'all's time this morning, as well. Just to kind of follow on what you were saying there, Bob, are you all seeing similar traffic pick up in both the North and the South, or is it a little stronger in one region versus the other?

I think that it's not every single one of our 17 markets, but certainly most. I would not say it's particularly regional.

Now, the last 5 days, things aren't very good anywhere because most people are frozen solid or they're snowed in, including here in Columbus, it's been pretty rough. In general, we've seen traffic start to pick up.

It always does this time of year. Feels a little better than even a year ago, though, to me.

That's great. Then, Phil, could you talk about, in the fourth quarter, your ending gross margin in the backlog, how that compares to what you reported for closings in 4Q?

Right now, like we're doing, as Bob said, 75%, 80% specs. In general, the margins in the backlog are higher than specs.

Are the margins at year-end a little higher than year-end a year ago? The answer is yes.

That's about 100 basis points difference. Hopefully, we're getting a little better.

We continue to focus on how we can improve the margins on these specs. Again, we're doing all we can.

We did have 22.6% margins in the fourth quarter, we're hoping margins hold up pretty good.

It's great. Then the next question I had, just thinking about the sales pace for these newer communities you're opening, are you all trying to push a similar sales pace as what you got in '25, or are you trying to be a little more cautious not wanting to give away too much margin at the beginning of these communities?

We always try to focus on getting that pace at three plus. Our store count is up about 5%, but again, you got to be a little more careful opening new stores, as far as if you're super aggressive on price and margin, again, you can feel that benefit for a while.

There is a lot of opportunity with these new stores. Hopefully, we've got the right product and the right price to move through there, but we are focusing on trying to keep this pace hopefully around three or a little better.

That's great. Thanks.

Then the last one for me, and thank you for the detail on the specs, I guess how are you feeling about MHO's inventory right now and maybe some broader commentary on what you're seeing in the industry? Does it feel like some of the excess spec inventory is being drawn down or what are you hearing from the divisions on that?

I think we feel really good about where we are. Not not to be silly.

If we didn't, we'd change. Going into this year, again, a lot of it's community-specific, but we want to be very aggressive in making certain that we have the product, standing product in the field, the inventory, if you will, so that we can take advantage of what should be a hopefully a decent selling environment here over the next three to four or five months.

I think we feel our strategy is the right strategy. We don't feel we need to do any significant shifts, and, other than community-by-community specific things, in general, I think we're very well-positioned.

Great. Just any industry commentary you've been hearing from the field?

In relating to what issue?

Relating to inventory. Spec inventory, specifically.

You mean, are people deep discounting just to move specs or have discounts slowed down or are more incentives being paid to third-party realtors or things like that?

Things like that. That'd be great.

You hear a crazy story now and then about once every two days. I don't think that's anything new.

People do what they need to do. Look, I think that knowing on a look back, knowing what 2025 was, if you'd have said to me we're going to bring 12% to 13% to the bottom line for the full year, I'd say I'll take it.

That's what we did.

Jay, we pay a lot of attention to our inventory levels. We do have about 1,000 finished specs, which is a little higher than last year's 800.

We do have 5% more stores. We have a few less houses in the field today than we did a year ago.

Again, we benefit by better cycle time. We're just trying to be very focused.

A lot of times execution doesn't get discussed, but now execution really matters. We're trying to be careful not to put too much inventory in the field, too many finished specs.

Again, it depends on is it an attached townhouse community? Is it a higher-priced community?

Every community's a little bit different. Again, doing 70%, 75% specs, we're relying on sales every week, every month, and that's what we have to stay focused on.

We were very pleased if you look at it last year, we closed almost the same number of houses as we did the year before, which was our record, 9,000 homes. Obviously, our hopes and plans are, we hope to close a few more houses this year than last year.

We have more stores. Again, we're staying focused, we try to run a conservative business, we're not trying to put inventory out there too far ahead of ourselves, but, again, we feel pretty good about our results.

Absolutely. One question I forgot: could you talk or can you if you talked about it, maybe repeat the commentary on what the profit margins on new communities look like?

As far as what the margins are on new communities we're opening versus older communities, is that your question?

Correct. Yeah.

That's it.

Again, that's really hard question. Last year we opened 80 stores.

I would say, in general, they're pretty close. We have some new stores that are doing really well and some that aren't doing so hot.

It's an individual situation. Overall, we feel pretty good about the new stores we're opening.

We're trying to make sure we have the right product and the right price and all those things open the right way. That's just really hard question, Jay.

Understood. Thank you, guys, for all the time.

That's all the questions I have. Thank you.

Thanks, Jay.

Hello again. Thank you.

I wonder if you could comment on the flexibility of the business. Obviously, mortgage buydowns for let's say 2/3 of the communities that you have product, you're trying to protect the community, price points, etc.

For new communities, given that the communities that opened last year and conversely they're opening this year, how much of a change to the product type or how you open it up at what price points, can you talk to the dynamics that you employ when making those choices on new communities in terms of resetting the let's say home size or the specs that you're building are the I don't want to use word de-spec, but they're more simpler in terms of price points. How much flexibility do you really have there when you're coming into opening a community 6 to 9 months out vis-a-vis the product, construction cost, type?

Probably, yeah, I think a lot more flexibility I think than most people might realize. Look, so much of it's determined by zoning.

You have to stay within the confines of the permissible zoning parameters. Having said that, usually those parameters give you a fair amount of flexibility.

The amount of internal debate, discussion, analysis, strategy, if you will, that goes into each community planning from the very earliest stages, when we think there's a site in I'll use this as an example, in Charlotte that we're looking to tie up, from the moment that we think that site might be available, the debate occurs within the division. Sometime it springs all the way up to corporate conversations about what are we going to do with that if we get that deal done and that becomes a new store for us?

What is that store going to look like? What are we going to merchandise in that store?

Who is the buyer? There's that's a lot more art than science.

I'm not saying it's like building a rocket ship to the moon, but it is a lot more art than science. You do have some flexibility.

There is a fair amount of tinkering that takes place. We have projects, many of them, that will be coming on this year that when we first started planning them, we might have planned to do larger homes, and now we're looking to do smaller homes.

That's a very simple example. Or we may be re-planning in a way that the density stays neutral, but we're now going to develop it with smaller-sized lots.

Or perhaps the opposite, larger-sized lots to take advantage of maybe lot premiums. That's a huge part of what goes on, and of course, every new land deal in this company, before we are in a position where we've made a firm commitment, must get approved at the corporate level through our land committee process and evaluation process, which is a discussion involving the specific division and, of course, a few of us here at corporate.

Even in that, after this thing has been batted back and forth at the division level, we'll quite often have questions about the product and the product line and what are we really trying to do here and should we adjust this or that? Certainly on larger deals where there's multiple product lines or they have a long tail, we may have two or three land committee calls along the way.

What are we thinking? How's it look now?

Let's reconvene in 90 days. There's a whole lot that goes into that.

We're as good as our stores. We're a retailer.

We're a very unusual retailer because we reinvent ourselves about every 3 years. The stores that we have out there today, 3 years from now, 90% of them will be completely different.

Because we'll sell through and replace with new, and as Phil mentioned, we're poised to open a whole lot of new stores this year. We'll be closing out of a number of them, too.

What those stores look like and what we choose to sell, hopefully meeting the market where it is, who is the buyer, what are we targeting, that's a huge part of the business, huge part of the business. We've made our fair share of mistakes.

Hopefully we've learned from some of them. There's times when we've absolutely shifted to a strategy that has turned something that might have just been average into something really good.

When we see something that works in one market that maybe is a little bit off-the-wall thinking, we'll also try to apply that in other markets if it makes sense to do so. It's a very big, big part of the business.

Doesn't often get a lot of conversation, but it's a terrific question.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us. Look forward to talking to you next quarter.