Operator
Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Green Brick Partners, Inc.
third quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again.
I will now hand the conference over to Jeff Cox, Chief Financial Officer. Jeff, please go ahead.
Jeff Cox
Good afternoon, and welcome to Green Brick Partners earnings call for the third quarter ended September 30th, 2026. Following today's remarks, we will hold a question-and-answer session.
As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be available for playback. In addition, a presentation will accompany today's webcast, which is available on the company's Investor Relations website at investors.greenbrickpartners.com.
On the call today are Jim Brickman, co-founder and co-Chief Executive Officer, Jed Dolson, co-Chief Executive Officer, and myself, Jeff Cox, Chief Financial Officer. Some of the information discussed on this call is forward-looking, including a discussion of the company's financial and operational expectations for 2026 and beyond.
In yesterday's press release, the company detailed material risks that may cause future results to differ from its expectations. The company's statements are as of today, October 29th, 2026, and the company has no obligation to update any forward-looking statement it may make.
Our comments today also include non-GAAP financial metrics. Reconciliations of these metrics and the other information required by Regulation G can be found in yesterday's earnings release and in the accompanying presentation.
With that, I will turn the call over to Jim.
Jim Brickman
Thank you, Jeff. Before discussing the quarter, I want to recognize Jed Dolson's promotion to co-Chief Executive Officer.
As we previously announced, Jed assumed his new role on October 15th. Jed has been an integral part of Green Brick since before we became a public company.
His leadership, commitment to our home buyers, and focus on long-term value creation have contributed meaningfully to our growth and success. I'm excited to work alongside him in his expanded role as we continue to execute our strategy, build on our foundation, and develop the next generation of Green Brick leadership.
Turning to the quarter, I am pleased with the results our team achieved in a difficult housing market marked by high mortgage interest rates and economic uncertainty causing many potential home buyers to reevaluate the timing of their purchase decisions. Despite these affordability pressures, we delivered 978 homes, an increase of 2.6% from a year ago, generating home closing revenue of $437 million with a homebuilding gross margin of 28%.
We generated net income of $59 million or $1.35 per diluted share. Net new home orders increased 3.1% compared to the third quarter of 2025 to 926.
Orders increased each month of the quarter, even as mortgage rates steadily rose during the quarter. These results demonstrate the resilience of Green Brick's differentiated operating model.
Even as many first-time buyers continued to require significant incentives to purchase a home, we increased orders and deliveries while maintaining the highest homebuilding gross margin among our public homebuilding peers. This quarter highlights three important advantages of our business: the strength of our margins and balance sheet, our owned and self-developed land strategy, and the strength of our primary growth engine, Trophy Signature Homes.
We recognize that the current housing market conditions are challenging. At the same time, we also believe that cyclical downturns create opportunities.
Specifically for Green Brick, we believe these potential opportunities include capturing market share and laying the foundation for sustained growth when the housing market inevitably improves. Our strong balance sheet and low leverage provide us with the financial flexibility to navigate current market conditions and invest selectively in attractive opportunities.
Our homebuilding debt-to-total capital declined to 13.1% from 15.3% year-over-year, and our net homebuilding debt-to-total capital was relatively unchanged at 9.6%. Book value per share increased 14% year-over-year to $46.10.
We continue to view growth in book value per share as an important indicator of the value we are creating for shareholders over time, complemented by opportunistically repurchasing shares. Our strong margins and significant land pipeline allow us to remain patient and disciplined in deploying capital.
The foundation of our performance begins with our owned and self-developed land strategy, which remains the primary driver of our industry-leading margins. At September 30th, we owned 40,869 lots and controlled another 10,566 lots under contract, giving us a total pipeline of 51,435 lots.
We believe owning land gives us greater control over lot cost, the timing of development, and the pace at which we bring homes to market. Approximately 38,000 of our total lots are part of our large master-planned communities that will be developed in multiple phases over 5 to 10 years or longer.
By securing these parcels well in advance of home delivery, we believe we have locked in our lot acquisition basis and minimized exposure to cost inflation and escalating fees that many builders incur when purchasing finished lots from third-party developers. One of the primary differentiators from many of our peers is that we do not rely on land banking arrangements with high interest costs that can distort a builder's economic leverage and risk, and that can give a land banker indirect control over a builder's lot purchase timing.
We believe this approach is particularly valuable in the current environment. Trophy Signature Homes is a key driver of Green Brick's long-term growth strategy.
By combining attainable home prices with our land development capabilities and efficient construction platform, Trophy expands our ability to serve the large pool of first-time and first-move-up buyers. We believe that Trophy's scale as the third largest builder in DFW and its continued expansion in Austin and Houston provide a clear path to grow deliveries, broaden our revenue base, and strengthen our presence in our key Texas markets over the next few years.
Our focus remains on translating that growth into attractive returns that deliver long-term shareholder value. Green Brick Mortgage continues to grow rapidly, driving third-quarter financial services revenue to $11.2 million, an increase of 52%, while pretax income increased 69% to $5.6 million.
For the first 9 months, financial services pretax income increased 92% to $15.6 million. Our mortgage, title, and insurance operation helps us support buyers in a market in which monthly payments remain critical to the purchase decision.
Our goal is to consistently deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns to our shareholders. Over the past 12 months, we returned $57 million to shareholders through stock repurchases while continuing to invest significantly in land acquisition and development to position us for future growth.
Even with our land-heavy balance sheet and macroeconomic headwinds, for the 12 months ended September 30th, our return on assets was 10.6% and our return on equity was 14.5%, which remains among the very best of our public peers. For the most recently available trailing 12-month period of our public homebuilding peers, the median return on assets was 3.9% and the median return on equity was 6.2%.
Our disciplined, returns-focused approach and our experienced team of operators position us well to create long-term shareholder value. With that, I now turn it over to Jed to discuss current buyer trends and operating results.
Jed Dolson
Thank you, Jim. I appreciate the confidence of our board and Jim as I begin serving as co-CEO.
Having helped build Green Brick alongside this team for many years and through different homebuilding market cycles, I am excited about our future and remain committed to the disciplined operating and capital allocation principles that have driven our success. As Jim discussed, affordability remained the defining factor in buyer behavior during the third quarter.
Buyers remain highly sensitive to monthly payment amounts and rate buydowns. Closing cost assistance and targeted price continue to be the critical tools, particularly for first-time homebuyers.
Trophy's ability to meet these buyers' needs showed in our results. For the first time, Trophy generated 60% of both total company orders and deliveries in the quarter, a testament to Trophy's operating model and leadership team.
Net new orders increased 3.1% year-over-year to 926, supported by a 5.8% increase in average active selling communities to 109. Monthly sales pace was 2.8 per community compared with 2.9 a year ago.
Our industry-leading gross margins provide flexibility to use pricing and incentives to capture demand while balancing community-level returns. Our cancellation rate was 8.2% compared with 6.7% last year and remained relatively low compared to our peers.
Green Brick Mortgage continues to work closely with our sales teams to help buyers qualify by identifying financing solutions earlier in the sales process. Green Brick Mortgage funded 499 loans during the quarter, an increase of 42% year-over-year.
Total origination principal was approximately $185 million, a 36% increase year-over-year. The average FICO score was 734, and the average debt-to-income ratio was 41.1%.
Our mortgage capture rate was 66% for the quarter despite facing the headwind of rolling out to new communities where adoption can often take time to ramp up. We remain focused on increasing our mortgage capture rate in Texas communities.
Our mortgage team is also implementing technology initiatives and aiming to broaden the products it offers to improve efficiency, enhance customer service, and support growth and capture. Based on current market conditions, we continue fine-tuning our mortgage operations within our Texas markets before expanding to Atlanta to support The Providence Group, which may occur in 2027.
While capture rates declined slightly, reflecting the continued expansion of the captive mortgage business into new communities, many of which have pre-existing outside lender relationships, we expect our long-term capture rate to be approximately 70%, supporting additional loan volume and revenue. We continue to make progress on construction efficiency as our average construction cycle declined to 116 days, 25 days shorter than last year.
Trophy Dallas's cycle time averaged 88 days compared with 97 days a year ago. While we are seeing a modest effect of labor availability among some construction trades as a result of increased immigration and customs enforcement activity in certain of our markets, we have not experienced a measurable impact on our operations to date.
We started 954 homes for the quarter, essentially flat with the prior year. We ended September with 2,181 homes under construction, down 1% year-over-year, and 562 completed spec homes, within our target of 1 to 2 months of supply.
We are aligning starts with sales pace while maintaining quick move-in inventory for homebuyers seeking near-term delivery and rate certainty. We continue to invest in land and development to support future growth.
Through September 30th, our investment in land acquisition and land development totaled approximately $597 million, including $323 million for land development, excluding reimbursements, and $274 million for land and lot acquisitions. For 2026, we expect land and lot acquisitions of approximately $350 million and land development outflows of approximately $430 million, excluding reimbursements.
Our total 2026 planned land investment of $780 million is down from the $850 million we communicated on our last call, as we remain patient and selective on new acquisitions while preserving our ability to grow in the near and intermediate term. With that, I will now turn it over to Jeff to provide more details regarding our financial results and our capital position.
Jeff Cox
Thank you, Jed. Net income attributable to Green Brick for the third quarter was $59.2 million, a decrease of 24% from the same period last year.
Diluted earnings per share were $1.35, also down 24%. We delivered 978 homes, up 2.6% from 953 homes in the prior-year quarter, with 48% of our third-quarter closings also having been sold during the quarter, reflecting buyers' continued preference for quick move-in homes.
Home closing revenue declined 9.8% to $437 million, primarily due to a 12.1% year-over-year decrease in average selling price to approximately $447,000, which reflected increased incentives, primarily through mortgage rate buydowns, and a continued shift toward Trophy's more affordable product. Homebuilding gross margin was 28%, down 410 basis points year-over-year, due in part to higher incentives, which increased 180 basis points from the third quarter of 2025 to 9.9% of home closing revenue.
SG&A expense declined approximately 6% for the quarter to $51.8 million. As a percentage of residential units revenue, SG&A increased 40 basis points to 11.8%, mainly due to lower revenue.
We ended the quarter with 629 homes in backlog, down 6.8% year-over-year, representing backlog revenue of $379 million. The average selling price in backlog declined 11% year-over-year to approximately $603,000, reflecting a higher mix of Trophy homes and elevated incentives.
Turning to capital allocation, we repurchased 264,000 shares during the quarter for approximately $17.9 million. At September 30th, $132.7 million remained available under our repurchase authorization.
Our liquidity at the end of the quarter was $325 million, consisting of $100 million of cash and $225 million available under our $330 million unsecured revolving credit facility. We also repaid the remaining $50 million of principal on our 2026 4% senior notes.
Total debt, excluding our warehouse facilities, was $305 million, with $63 million of senior notes maturing the next 12 months. Our homebuilding debt-to-total capital ratio of 13.1% and net homebuilding debt-to-capital ratio of 9.6% remain among the lowest of public homebuilders.
We believe our liquidity and financing capacity provides substantial flexibility to fund our operations while continuing to invest in opportunities that meet our return criteria. With that, I will now turn it back to Jim for closing remarks.
Jim Brickman
Thank you, Jeff. In closing, we remain confident in Green Brick's long-term outlook.
Our differentiated operating model and financial strength position us to navigate current market conditions and pursue opportunities for sustainable growth. While affordability pressures and elevated incentives continue to challenge the industry, our focus remains on disciplined execution, prudent capital allocation, and creating long-term value for our shareholders.
I would like to thank our employees and trade partners for the continued commitment to Green Brick, and our homebuyers. This concludes our prepared remarks.
We will now open the lines for questions.
Operator
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please limit yourself to one question.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again.
We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device.
Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Rohit Seth with B.
Riley. Please go ahead.
Your line is now open.
Rohit Seth
Hey, thanks for taking my question. Housing market obviously challenging during the quarter and into October with the increase in rates, and just wondering if you can comment on how demand progressed through the quarter and how we should be thinking about incentives as we enter the fourth quarter?
Jim Brickman
Hi, this is Jim Brickman. If you can tell me which way interest rates are going to go, I'll tell you which way our incentives are going to go, because a lot of our incentives relate to mortgage buydowns.
Rohit Seth
It's
Jim Brickman
very hard to predict. We watch the 10-year bond very closely.
Big picture, I think one of the most important messages we want to leave investors with is that when we enter a market like this that is challenging and you have 28% gross margins and 11% or 12% SG&A, it's a huge advantage. There almost very little debt.
It's a huge advantage, because we are seeing many peers right now where their GAAP gross margin is about the same as their SG&A. We don't want to give up any margin, but we have a lot to give if we need to and still remain very profitable.
We're seeing peers have nothing left to give. We don't like being in a tough market like this, but we think we really have a huge competitive advantage if incentives increase.
Jeff Cox
Seth, this is Jeff. I'd just add on to that based on your follow-up or your other question regarding sales throughout the quarter.
I would say that they followed the typical seasonal patterns. September was certainly a tough, but we saw sequential increase in sales from July through September.
A little encouraged by that, but it's tough, like Jim mentioned.
Rohit Seth
Okay. As you think about the pace and price trade-off, are you making any adjustments as we go into 2027?
Jim Brickman
We make adjustments every day. Jed, why don't you talk about that?
Jed Dolson
We're in the business of selling homes. Jim mentioned we have the buffer and the gross margins to provide increased incentives.
We're seeing when we do make changes to our incentive packages as rates go down or rates go up that we sell more houses. We're going to continue to balance price versus pace.
There's no doubt this is a challenging market, but we feel like we can execute very well in this market.
Rohit Seth
Okay. You're still buying down to about five, 5%?
Is that right?
Jed Dolson
Varying on the day and the community, somewhere in the range of 5%
Rohit Seth
to 5.5%. Great.
I'll pass it on. Thank you.
Congratulations, Jed.
Jed Dolson
Oh, thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Gilbert with BTIG. Please go ahead.
Your line is now open.
Ryan Gilbert
Hi, thanks. Appreciate the time.
First question is on I guess just your philosophy around land investment in the current market, and I know you pulled down the 2026 investment spend guides incrementally. How are you thinking about I guess the trade-off between elevated land investment relative to prior years versus pulling back some of that spend and waiting for potentially improved opportunities in the event that the market gets weaker from here?
Just how are you thinking about land spend here?
Jim Brickman
Cautious. Very cautious.
In order to have us do a significant land spend, our underwriting criteria now has to include 10% elevated incentives into the modeling, and just it's hard to find land deals that work and provide the internal rate of returns we want today. I don't expect that to change.
It's interesting in that the high-margin land deals are still hard to find. Low-margin C-minus, D-location deals are plentiful.
We're seeing peers just rearrange deck chairs in the Titanic, trading these assets amongst each other. I don't know why they do that.
It's not going to help one or the other at the end of the day, but we're not playing that game. If we find a land deal that makes sense, we will move on it.
They're just harder to find.
Ryan Gilbert
Okay. It sounds like land prices aren't really resetting to any material degree as of now?
Jim Brickman
They are on lots we don't want.
Ryan Gilbert
Got it. Then second question on gross margin, it looks like maybe around half of the year-over-year decline was related to incentives.
What would you attribute the other half of the decline to?
Jeff Cox
I would say, this is Jeff. The other half is really probably two things.
It's the continued shift towards Trophy, their buyer segment is much more rate-sensitive. The other thing that gets lost within the incentive number when we look at it year-over-year is just the change in base prices that our operators have had to make year-over-year.
That is really probably the balance of the difference. Trophy is continuing to look at traffic every single week, and if they need to also reduce base prices to continue to drive traffic, they'll do that, and they'll continue to lean heavily on mortgage rate buydowns, which is what you're really seeing in the incentive.
Ryan Gilbert
Got it. Are, I guess, individual home base price reductions included in incentives, or is it just any base price cut regardless of whether it's individual home or community-wide base price cuts?
That's all excluded from the incentive number?
Jeff Cox
Typically, when we have a reduction in base price, that will flow through to existing inventory, and so you won't see elevated incentives necessarily when those sales come through. From base
Ryan Gilbert
price cuts,
Jeff Cox
correct.
Ryan Gilbert
Got it. That's helpful.
Underlying land inflation, just ballpark, where are you seeing that on a percentage basis?
Jim Brickman
It's very low for us because our interest costs are so low that we're not capitalizing interest into our land inventory or lot inventory. Because we don't land bank, we're not incurring a dead asset that's 15% or 10% of the lot cost that's dead money and paying a land banker 8% to 12% that has to get paid somewhere, and that's getting reflected in lot prices for a lot of our land-light peers.
Jeff Cox
We're seeing call it our lot prices percentage of revenues, like everybody, it's ticking up, but it's ticking up at a much slower pace than our peers.
Ryan Gilbert
Great. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jay McCanless with Citizens Bank. Please go ahead.
Jay McCanless
Hey, good morning, guys. First question I had with the mix of Trophy now being nearly 60%, is that the ASP we saw this quarter, is that likely to repeat in the fourth quarter or could it move down a little more as you're bringing more Trophy communities online?
Jim Brickman
It'll move down, Jed, how much do you think?
Jed Dolson
We're not going to give a number, but it could slightly move down in Q4. Okay.
Then
Jay McCanless
what is Trophy right now on a sales absorption basis? What's Trophy averaging in Dallas, you think?
Jeff Cox
Jay, this is Jeff. Trophy, similar to last quarter, they're running about 85% higher than the rest of our brands.
Their pace in Q3 was about 5.2 sales per month when the average pace of the company is 2.8, they're moving quite a bit faster.
Jay McCanless
Gotcha. Then the next question I had, incentives end of the quarter just under 10%.
Thus far in the quarter, have you had to move the incentive level above that to keep your sales pace?
Jed Dolson
This is Jed. Jay, we've seen a little bit of pick up with the mortgage rates.
They got really nasty at the end of the quarter, and they've backed off a little bit. We're spending so much money, as our peers are, on mortgage rate buydowns.
Those buydowns are costing a little less than they were 2 weeks ago.
Jay McCanless
Gotcha. Then the last one for me, just any commentary on Atlanta?
I know I asked about it last quarter. Seeing a little bit of sales headwind there.
Maybe talk about what you saw this quarter and how you are thinking about the end of the year for Atlanta?
Jed Dolson
This is Jed again, Jay. I'll answer it, Atlanta and then North Dallas as well.
The areas where we had heavy tech cultural buyer are challenging right now. That middle market from say $500,000 to $800,000 is very soft.
We're very pleased with the results under $500,000. We're pleased with our brands that are executing $900,000 and above.
That $500,000 to $800,000 range which the majority of Atlanta falls into, it's a challenge right now. I think Toll Brothers mentioned it on their call.
It's just a tough market.
Jay McCanless
I hear you. Thank you, guys.
I appreciate it.
Jed Dolson
You're welcome.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Rygiel with Texas Capital Bank. Please go ahead.
Alex Rygiel
Thank you and really nice quarter in a difficult market. Could you talk a little bit more about what you're seeing in Houston and how that's progressing over the last 6 months since you opened?
Jed Dolson
This is Jed. Houston is a small market for us at this point in time.
We have one community open in Houston. We'll have two more at the end of next year.
We're not a good barometer for the Houston market, but we're pleased with just the overall results of Houston. It's a blue-collar industrial town.
We're selling very affordable houses, and we think we're going to do well there long-term, just like we have in Dallas.
Jim Brickman
This is Jim. When you get down to land spend, that's one market we're looking at very cautiously, though.
If it doesn't underwrite, we're not going to expand just to generate revenue.
Alex Rygiel
Makes sense. Then transitioning over to cycle times, they've improved a lot and probably industry-leading right now.
Do you see more opportunities for improvement, and then sort of a second question is, do you see any opportunities to kind of value-engineer your homes to take some cost out?
Jim Brickman
Let me answer that at first, Jed. We don't see a lot of cycle time improving a lot.
Matter of fact, we're seeing the first sign of immigration headwinds, where we're seeing labor constraints, particularly in Austin. There's been a lot of increased activity in masonry, electrical, drywall that's putting cost pressures that we haven't seen for the first time before.
Framers. Framers.
It's interesting, because these are these undocumented workers that are being picked up. It's not like there's a replacement workforce, even though the wage is well above minimum wage.
I think that that has bottomed, and we're not going to see a lot of improvement in either value engineering or the labor side of our business.
Alex Rygiel
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Gilbert with BTIG. Please go ahead.
Ryan Gilbert
Hi, thanks for taking my follow-up, guys. I had a question on absorption, and I appreciate the breakout that you gave between Trophy Signature and the rest of the business.
When we were going into the quarter, I think we expected the continued mix shift towards Trophy Signature to drive positive absorption growth rather than the slight absorption decline that we saw, even in a weaker market. It sounded like just based on your commentary, the Trophy Signature business sold pretty well throughout the quarter.
I'm wondering if you could compare the year-over-year change in absorption between what you saw on Trophy Signature versus the other builders. I'm just wondering if there was just a much deeper decline in absorption for the move-up builders than Trophy?
Jed Dolson
Ryan, I'll take this. It's Jed.
I think you kind of answered the question. The decline in Trophy absorption was less than the decline in the other parts of our business.
That $500,000 to $800,000 part of our market
Jeff Cox
that's
Jed Dolson
where we really saw huge declines in sales.
Jeff Cox
This is Jeff. I'll just add on to that.
The decline that Jed's referring to is just the quarter-over-quarter decline. If you look year-over-year, Trophy's actually increased its sales pace from 4.7 last year to 5.2, they had an 11% increase in their pace.
The really challenging areas that we're seeing are more with the second, third move-up buyers that Jed mentioned earlier. We saw more declines there year-over-year with Trophy really helping to kind of carry the torch.
Ryan Gilbert
At a much higher price point, Jed. Slow.
Got it. I guess are you able to offer better incentives or more incentives on Trophy, or are those second- and third-move-up buyers having trouble selling their existing home and that's why they don't want to acquire the new home or just sentiment issues?
Just would be curious on any additional details you could provide.
Jed Dolson
We're just seeing the suburban second- and third-time move-up buyer, especially the cultural buyer, just really frozen right now. Like I've previously mentioned, over $900,000, we're very happy with, under $500,000, and really under $400,000, where we're really just hitting the entry-level buyer, we're very pleased with how that business is going in this very tough environment.
It's limited lot supply at that $500,000 to $800,000, and we don't want to burn through our lots at the expense of lower margins.
Ryan Gilbert
Got it. Yeah.
No, that makes sense. Thanks again, guys.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Jim Brickman, CEO, for closing remarks.
Jim Brickman
Thank you for everybody for attending our phone call. We would encourage anybody that wants to visit us in Dallas to see our communities, because we think that's a big differentiator.
We really look at our business different than our peers, and if we took you on a tour, I think you'd see that firsthand. Hopefully you'll come visit us.
Thank you.
Operator
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending.
You may now disconnect.